How Small Business Advertising Works

Advertising is just one part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. The marketing mix
includes four Cs: client/customer, cost, convenience, and communication. Advertising is
the paid media part of the communication piece, along with earned media such as public
relations and owned media such as a company website.1

Goals of Advertising

Advertising has three main purposes:

To inform: Informative advertising helps build awareness about your brand, product or

service.

To persuade: Persuasive advertising tries to convince its audience that a company's

offerings are the best for their needs. Its goal is to influence consumers or businesses to
switch brands, try a new service, or stay loyal to the current brand.

To remind: Reminder ads prompt people to remember their need for a product or service,
or how it can benefit them if they buy more soon.2

Target Market

Establishing your target market is the critical first step in any advertising campaign. You
need to know who your intended audience is before you can reach them. If your target
audience is senior citizens, for example, an advertising medium such as Snapchat is a
poor choice. Similarly, millennials are much less likely to read newspapers.

Defining the target market involves building a demographic profile of the prospective
customer by taking into account criteria such as age, gender, marital status, lifestyles,
shopping habits, etc.

It is also important to check out what competitors are doing in their ads to see if there is a
target market they're ignoring that may be a good market for you to target.

Common Advertising Methods

There are many different types of advertising that are typically used by small businesses.

Online advertising

Online advertising includes a myriad of advertising opportunities, such as:

 Search engine advertising: Advertising with a search engine such as Google or

Bing allows you to serve your message to a very targeted audience that is looking
for information related to your product or service.
  Pay-per-click advertising: This is a type of ad that runs on one site and drives
traffic to your site. You can get extensive customer data from these ads and you
only pay when users click on the link.
 Email ads: This requires a customer email list and adherence to anti-spam
regulations. But for customers who opt in, your emails can be a powerful way to get
keep your business in their mindset and get the word out about a new product or
promotion.
 Social media: With easy access to user demographic data (such as age, interests,
spending habits, etc.) you can finely tailor ads to the audience. Creating a Facebook
page for your business and using it to regularly promote products and services can
be a cheap way to advertise. For instance, restaurants often use fan pages to
promote new menu items or specials and to receive feedback from customers.
 Local website listings: Many municipalities and Chamber of Commerce chapters
have websites that provide listings of local businesses.
 Classified ads: This is a low-cost way to advertise a household service, such as
house cleaning or home repair services.

Newspaper Advertising

While on the decline (U.S. newspaper ad revenue dropped by over 52% between 2002
and 2020) newspaper ads can still be an effective way to reach customers.3 Many
municipalities have special interest newspapers that can be used by businesses for local
advertising.

Direct Mail

Direct mail can be costly if sent via post, but brochures and flyers can still be delivered
directly to residences or businesses in targeted geographic areas. 

Cable TV and Radio

While network television spots are be out of reach for most small businesses, cable
companies often have local information channels that offer affordable advertising for small
businesses.

Local Deal Vouchers

Advertising deals through sites like Groupon and Living Social can be a way to acquire
new customers quickly without paying anything out of pocket. But the deal site takes a cut
and if you've offered the customer a significant discount, you could end up giving away
most of your profit.

Question.
What's the difference between marketing and advertising?