Advertising is a very wide topic

Do you know anyone that's starting their own company with a Million Dollars? If so, that person may be able to advertise all over and never give it a second thought. For most of us small business owners however, advertising is a large part of the budget. Sometimes it takes the largest piece of the pie.

As with any other big-ticket item, it takes some thought to properly target where these dollars go. Sure, it's easy to buy a big Yellow Pages ad and hope it works. But what if it doesn't? You are committed to a long expensive contract that may or may not be in your best interest.

So what do we do? Create a strategy. Just as with anything else in your Business Plan, you need to know how many dollars you can spend. That is first and foremost. Next you need to create a timetable! If you say you can spend $5K on ads, just exactly what does that mean? Are you thinking of 5K per month, year, or what? You will soon see that is is absolutely critical.

The reason is simple: You need to evaluate what you are doing on a cost basis, 6 months to a year later. Don't just pour a lot of dollars onto the ad campaign and hope that it's working.

Trace your customers, either on the phone or in person, by where they come from. Keep track of which ones you get from which Yellow Page ad. You may find that when it's time to renew your ad next year, that you can save that money or put it to a better use.

Spend some time or money on your website. Make your company look as professional as possible on the Internet and it may surprise you, dollar for dollar, when you look at what it gets you. Again, you need to track these customers. The key thing about a Website is keeping it actively updated and correct. Don't leave it looking the same forever, once it's up. Make changes to it at LEAST on a quarterly basis and make sure it looks correct. Misspelled words or other such carelessness can cost you a customer or at least an incoming call that you could convert into one.

If you do direct mail, the best advice I can give is for you to keep logs of every single dollar spent. It's deductible! Direct Mail is very expensive, but you can track these customers too by sending them coupons. Knowing a customer has this coupon tells you he or she is coming from Direct Mail if you didn't already have that info.

Final words on advertising: Experiment and be patient! (in that order)

When you try an ad campaign, give it a chance to prove -or disprove- itself to you before changing it or getting rid of it. Depending upon your individual circumstances or business type, it may be six months to a year before you know if an ad campaign is paying for itself. Others may show you what you need to know in a couple of weeks.

But switch things around, try different things, and keep plugging away at it. The ad that's destined to fail is the one that's been up for too long and never been updated or changed. A business that continually tries different advertising strategies with the same dollars is bound to win.

-Paul Brustas