What is the Best Way To Advertise Your Small Business?

If I were to ask you what you want from advertising your business you would most likely say:

1. You want a way to increase sales that’s fast and easy.
2. You want to know if the advertising worked or not, judging by the volume of interested prospects who called or came into the store in the first few days the ad was running.

Being a small business owner myself, I feel you!

Fast easy sales and a volume of hot interested prospects flowing in the door is my ideal scene too.

The challenge is that advertising worked this way about 8 to 12 years ago.

Having said that you can create a flow of interested prospects flowing in and people buying from your advertising.

3 Challenges With Advertising for Small Businesses Today

The way people respond to advertising has changed and if you are not aware of it you will rack up failed advertising campaigns and waste a lot of your money.

1. About 95% to 98% of your potential sales will not happen immediately but will happen later. Only 1% to 2% of sales will happen after the initial contact with the prospect. Why?
2. Because the bigger the ticket of the item you are selling, the more people shop and the longer your prospects will take to decide.
3. People are bombarded with thousands of advertising messages every day. They have a short memory and will forget you very quickly.

You can create a steady flow of prospects coming in your door if you do one thing…FOLLOW UP!

How important is the follow-up?

If you are receiving thousands of advertising messages a day – which ones will you remember? The one you see the most.

If your day is packed with activity, things to do, random emergencies, and people calling for your attention, which advertising message are you most likely to respond to? The one you see the most often that seems to benefit you the most.

Let’s look at most of the large Fortune 500 companies. Almost all of them advertise consistently.

I know what you are thinking, “Well they have the money to advertise – I don’t.” You are right they do make a lot of money. These companies also made marketing their business a priority early and stayed with it.

Advertising and choosing the right way to advertise for your business can seem overwhelming.

• What is the best way to advertise your business?
• Which will generate the best return for you? These are good questions.

Let me try to give you the answer to these questions.

What is the best advertising medium for a small business? Do you know anyone who does not have a mailbox?…No, you don’t. Everyone in the United States has a postal address and receives mail every, single day. Making Direct Mail the only advertising medium available to you that has 100% market penetration and 100% usage.

Because your best prospects get their mail delivered every day and go through their mail every day, you can put communication directly in the hands of your best prospects.

Something you need to know about Direct Mail Advertising is that the way “response” is defined has changed.

Let me ask you this if you received an offer in the mail or even saw a TV ad and you had an interest, what is the first thing you would do?

If you said, “Go online to find the website,” then you are like the 90% of consumers in the United States. You go online and research the company and the offer.

• Is the company reputable? You read reviews.
• Is there a better/cheaper offer? You look at competitive websites for better offers.
• You get tired of searching the Internet, may get confused or maybe you see some clickbait that snags your attention and there you go, off down a rabbit hole forgetting what and why you were searching in the first place.
• Or, after researching you pick up the phone and call the business you most feel can help you. The majority of the time today the act of buying does not happen quickly.

The way people shop today presents challenges but also is an opportunity for you.

The opportunity is that the prospect was interested enough to Google your company since they just received the mailer from you otherwise, they would have just thrown the postcard away and would not have gone online to research you.

How people shop today has a definite benefit to a small business because there is technology available that allows you to use your website as a sort of funnel for hot prospects.

Once people go to your website Wilson Print Marketing can:

• Follow them with an ad on Google and Facebook.
• Send a follow-up postcard to all website visitors.
• Track the number of people who went to your website.
• Track exactly when your direct mail piece is delivered to your prospect.

No, it is not expensive.

Yes, it is easy and turnkey for you.

Yes, it works.

All you need to know is who you want to reach.

Things have gotten a whole lot easier for you to market your business. If you would like more information about how the above technology can help your business please give us a call 727-536-4173.