If you are trying to get a business off the ground, one of the biggest decisions is how much money should I spend on advertising? This is a very important choice as it is usually the difference in making your business successful or having it fail.
Of course, the flip side of that is that if you don't get the word on the street about your business, you have absolutely no shot of ever succeeding. You know you have to advertise, it is just common sense. You watch TV every day and see every major company in your face every time a commercial comes on. If McDonald's is still advertising, you better! Problem is that you don't have their budget, how can you keep up with the times. The answer is FREE advertising!
What you need to do is take advantage of the free advertising that is available to each and every one of us. It will save you money and get the word out to as many people as possible. I am of course talking about the internet.
There are tons of sites out there that want you to post your ads for free with no strings attached. They make their money in advertising for other people and you can take advantage of that and get your ad posted for free! Doing a search on some of the more popular engines will give you a great idea where to start placing your ads.
The next area you are going to use on the net is to get some pages going on social networks. If you check them out, Facebook, MySpace and Squidoo are not just for people making googoo eyes at each other. Most of these sites also offer some type of classified ad but you would really rather go the route of developing your own page or pages that will catch the attention of perspective buyers. Take some time to explore these sites and you will get the general idea.
The last thing you are going to do is to start your own website. If you don't have the money to have someone develop it for you, you can start by using a blog. It will serve the same purpose initially and that purpose it to generate hits. People search for stuff all the time on the web and you just never know when your site will pop up.
From there, you need to start going to forums and other bloggers to do link exchanges. This will enable everyone to send people to each others sites and it won't cost anyone a penny out of their pocket. In this case, you may actually want to diversify and make buddies with people who have sites that are totally different from yours as you want to hit as wide an audience as you can. You might be selling product x and someone is on a poker site and it hits them in the face when they sign on and check their forum. All of a sudden they remember that they are out of x and click on your link and make a purchase.
You can use this technique with the fellow members of your chamber. Most communities have a Chamber of Commerce and you need to join. You are going to buddy up with all of these guys and offer to promote their business if they promote yours. Nothing major, just a flyer, or maybe a poster in the local drugstore. Anything you can do to expose your business to more clientele. All of this will cost you not one cent and you will have more advertising for free that you would have ever thought possible.
Of course, the flip side of that is that if you don't get the word on the street about your business, you have absolutely no shot of ever succeeding. You know you have to advertise, it is just common sense. You watch TV every day and see every major company in your face every time a commercial comes on. If McDonald's is still advertising, you better! Problem is that you don't have their budget, how can you keep up with the times. The answer is FREE advertising!
What you need to do is take advantage of the free advertising that is available to each and every one of us. It will save you money and get the word out to as many people as possible. I am of course talking about the internet.
There are tons of sites out there that want you to post your ads for free with no strings attached. They make their money in advertising for other people and you can take advantage of that and get your ad posted for free! Doing a search on some of the more popular engines will give you a great idea where to start placing your ads.
The next area you are going to use on the net is to get some pages going on social networks. If you check them out, Facebook, MySpace and Squidoo are not just for people making googoo eyes at each other. Most of these sites also offer some type of classified ad but you would really rather go the route of developing your own page or pages that will catch the attention of perspective buyers. Take some time to explore these sites and you will get the general idea.
The last thing you are going to do is to start your own website. If you don't have the money to have someone develop it for you, you can start by using a blog. It will serve the same purpose initially and that purpose it to generate hits. People search for stuff all the time on the web and you just never know when your site will pop up.
From there, you need to start going to forums and other bloggers to do link exchanges. This will enable everyone to send people to each others sites and it won't cost anyone a penny out of their pocket. In this case, you may actually want to diversify and make buddies with people who have sites that are totally different from yours as you want to hit as wide an audience as you can. You might be selling product x and someone is on a poker site and it hits them in the face when they sign on and check their forum. All of a sudden they remember that they are out of x and click on your link and make a purchase.
You can use this technique with the fellow members of your chamber. Most communities have a Chamber of Commerce and you need to join. You are going to buddy up with all of these guys and offer to promote their business if they promote yours. Nothing major, just a flyer, or maybe a poster in the local drugstore. Anything you can do to expose your business to more clientele. All of this will cost you not one cent and you will have more advertising for free that you would have ever thought possible.
About the Author:
Alex Wu loves numbers and marketing. He operates a free advertising website that combines social networking with business marketing in this free ads network.
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