Small business owners often need focus with their advertising efforts.  Most are on a small, limited budget and need to be strategic with their allocated resources and advertising strategy, yet often don’t know where or how to get started. Here are some tips on how you can get started in the right direction before you spend another dime.

Find your target audience

You don’t want to waste time and money marketing to everyone.  That’s a waste of resources.  You need to do research and find out who you should be targeting and then target those groups.  Collect data, then use it in your advertising strategy. To collect the data needed to find your target audience, you can create surveys, keep track of who your current clients are and graph out their demographics like age, gender, income and interests.  Create a persona for your customers and find out more about them. You can Google all sorts of articles and tutorials for how to create a customer persona.

Measure and track your advertising

There are many small businesses that simply don’t know if their advertising is working.  As a business owner, you have to know where you’re at. Establish key metrics to measure success or hire an agency like SYN3RGY Creative to measure them for you.  Set up a specific email  address and phone number for your business so you can track who is contacting you for your business from your advertising efforts.

Know when to advertise

Most small businesses can’t afford to be advertising 24/7.  The key is to use your dollars wisely.  You need to learn when your target audience is online, watching television, listening to the radio, etc; this way you can target them at the right time on the right day. There are numerous SaaS (software as a service) programs out there that can monitor customer buying habits for you, or we can track that for you.  If you sell seasonal products, you should be advertising during your peak season, not the off season for example.  Watch your competitors closely and see when they are advertising and if they are being effective.

Clearly define your brand

Can your customers identify you easily based on your advertising?  Will they relate to your logo, typeface and colors and brand message?  You want your customers to be able to identify your brand based on these things.  Use your brand identity to build loyalty.

Focus on your brand’s unique voice in your advertising campaigns instead of having them be a broad sweep across the board. You will spend your advertising dollars in a more strategic and efficient way.  This is incredibly important for small businesses.  We know your dollars count and we at SYN3RGY Creative can help you with all of these points listed above so your brand really takes off.