Advertising Your Business On The Internet – Introduction
Advertising is a necessary evil, we all know that, and I understand from 15 years of talking to local businesses the varying degrees of pressure small/medium businesses can feel when considering where to spend their hard earned advertising budget. Particularly in a recession where for many, business has slowed down, people are not spending as much and your outgoings hurt more than they used to.
The purpose of this blog and my related blogs is to help you really consider where you spend your money and what return you can expect from it by taking you through the range of online advertising services, directories and search engines that are available. I hope that I can give you enough insight into what’s out there and what to consider before spending your money to help you make a more informed choice with your online advertising.
So why advertise at all?
You may have a solid flow of customers through referrals and recommendations, however actively promoting your business must still be considered as peoples buying habits and needs change and today’s recommended customers may well be tomorrows lost business.
Even large national corporations with a solid branding and huge traffic to their business advertise as they too know that you cannot rely on today’s customers tomorrow.
During a recession, businesses tend to cut back on their outgoings and for many their advertising budget is reduced. If this relates to you, I urge you to be careful as you are potentially perpetuating the problem as reduced advertising WILL mean reduced business in the majority of cases and unless you want to reduce your customers, try not to reduce your advertising. By all means move your advertising somewhere else if you feel your current campaign is not getting the results you expected, but don’t stop it…..
Don’t despair though if money is tight, there are some great directory/search engines that offer really good, quality free advertising which I’ve covered in another blog – click here
