Advertising

Best Places to Advertise Your Business (Online and Offline)

If you’re setting up a new business and you really want it to take off and be as successful as possible, it’s really not enough to just tell your friends and write it on your Facebook status. You really do have to get out there and advertise it in as many different places as possible in order to start seeing new customers coming from all corners of your area. You will probably find at first that no matter how much you advertise, you’re just not seeing as many customers as you’d like. However, don’t worry about it, because once you get going and people start talking to each other, you’ll get more business once it’s more established. For now, here are some of the best places and websites to advertise your business.

facebook-ads

Yes, there are many ways to advertise your business on Facebook. Use your personal Facebook profile first of all, and let all your friends now what is happening. Create a Facebook business page so that people can like the page if they’re just interested in your business. This is also much more professional, and doesn’t require you to add people. Another way of advertising on Facebook is to post on different groups and pages as your business page. However, be careful not to start "spamming" other groups with meaningless posts, since this will get you a bad name!

twitter-ads

People love to get followers on Twitter, so in order to make yourself known, set up a Twitter account and start following local people. This doesn’t mean just following the local celebs - follow random people in your area. They’re likely to check out your Twitter profile for your business, have a read of your recent tweets and if they’re interested, they may even come to visit your business. Even if they don’t pay you a visit, at least you’ve made them aware that your business is in the area. With advertising, it’s all about raising awareness of your business, what it does and why people should come and visit it and buy products/services.

directorybug

Websites such as Directory Bug which specialise in business listings are great for advertising your business. You should always check whether the website you’re about to advertise on gets a lot of users per month. Sometimes you can be paying $10-$20 or more per month to advertise on a website which isn’t really getting many visitors. This is why Facebook, Twitter and other social networking platforms are so good because millions of users are active each day.

craigslist

Gumtree and Craigslist are great websites on which you can advertise your new or existing business. There is usually a small charge to place a one-off advert, but this is a great way of seeing how your advert performs on there. Since the charge is usually a few dollars, you won’t have lost out on much even if you don’t get any business whatsoever from the advert. However, if you find that it has been beneficial to have the advert up for a few days or weeks, you can then choose to continue posting adverts on that website in order to get more business.

  • Local newspapers

The great thing about local newspapers when it comes to local businesses is the very fact that they are indeed local. This means that only local people will be reading it, and they’ll be interested in the businesses which are close by and local to them. When you place an advert in a local newspaper for your business, most people will be wishing you the best and coming to your shop or store if they need something which you sell. Even if they don’t need something personally, they will be more than happy to tell other people about your business if anything comes up in conversation.

  • Spend an afternoon leafleting

It doesn’t cost that much to print a couple of thousand leaflets, but the costs could start piling up if you want glossy pamphlets and more pictures and text. If you have a printer at home, you can do some home made leaflets in black and white or with a little bit of colour. Some people are even more likely to pick these up than the glossy factory-made leaflets since they seem more personal and interesting. While you can pay somebody $10 to spend an hour delivering them to the local houses, if you have some spare time on your hands, you might as well do this yourself and save the extra cost. Of course, it’s up to you, but if you get your other half or one of the kids to help you do it, it’ll be done twice as fast and you can have some fun doing it as well!

If you have any questions, please ask below!