Low-Cost Advertising Ideas For Startups & Small Businesses
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Let’s face it, as a startup or small business, there are limits to what you can do when it comes to advertising. Even though you are convinced that your product or service deserves an audience of millions, the plain fact is that your budget won’t allow it.
Unfortunately, your dreams of a thirty-second Super Bowl placement will have to be put on hold, at least until you have tens of millions of dollars spare to pay for it – not to mention the production costs of making the ad.
There are, however, plenty of advertising options out there that won’t cost you eye watering sums of money. And, as long as you are sensible, have a strategy, and have a thorough understanding of your market – and where they hang out – you can get significant success. Let’s take a look at some low-cost advertising ideas for startups and small businesses.
Targeting
Before you start anything, it is essential that you focus on finding your target market. Failure to do so will lose you up to 90 percent of your advertising spend – possibly even more. The reality of publicity is that not everyone is interested in your product, and without high-quality targeting, you will be unable to reach the right people. Your copy, imagery, message – all of it needs to communicate directly with your target audience.
Google AdWords
Google’s AdWords platform – and others like it – is a good starting point. Why? Because you are supplied with extensive stats about your ad campaigns, you can actually find out a lot about what is working – and what isn’t. It’s also a good place to start testing – which, by the way, is an integral part of advertising in any form. Be careful, though – without constant attention and tweaking, it’s easy to let your AdWords account rack up an enormous amount of spending without any ROI.
Applications
The world of apps is vast – there are tens of millions available on the App Store and Google Play alone. And that means there is the possibility of you using app advertising techniques to get your message out there to the people that will be interested. You’ll need to find a partner to help you deliver your ads to the right people, but make no mistake about it: with highly targeted ads and a strong message you can get a significant return on your investment.
Facebook Ads
When Facebook arrived on the scene, many marketers and advertisers believed it to be a game changer. All those people with Facebook accounts and you can access all of them for zero spend, other than the cost of posting updates and creating content. The reality has since turned out to be different – you need to pay for ads if you want to reach people on Facebook. That said, advertising on Facebook and other social networks are a lot cheaper than you think. And, much like Google AdWords, you have an excellent opportunity to deliver your ads to the people that might be interested in your product or service.
There are plenty more advertising opportunities for startups and small business, of course – let us know about your favorites in the comments!
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