If you run any type of enterprise, one of your primary decisions is where to market your business effectively and successfully. The answer depends largely on the type of business, your intended customer and the market in which you operate. With the growth of the internet and social media, it is now possible to reach a very large audience of potential customers with very little outlay. You can demographically and geographically pin point your marketing campaigns to reach new audiences, even if you are working with a very limited budget.
The most important consideration when devising your marketing strategy is to identify who your customer is likely to be. Where do they live? How old are they? What is their gender? What do they like to do? What are their consumer habits? Without this vital information your marketing campaigns are likely to be chaotic and unorganised and offer a poor ROI (return on investment). Once you have identified your customer, then you can decide where to market your business in order to reach your target audience.
Next, look at demographics. Do you run a small local business? If so advertising nationally is not going to be very effective as it will not be relevant to most of the people who live outside of the local area. However, local press and radio advertising, regional business directories, leaflet drops and even door to door canvassing may be. Vice versa, a national or international business will not benefit very much from just being advertised in a small area.
Almost every business benefits from an online presence and it is very inexpensive to get started. Being listed in local business directories such as Google Places is free, and Google estimate that around 97% of potential customers now search for local businesses online. Yahoo also offers a free business directory service at Yahoo Local. It takes just a few minutes to create a profile and any business which has a physical presence can be listed free of charge.
Social media sites such as Facebook are an invaluable source of advertising for all businesses. You can create a fan page for your business, brand or website for free, giving you an instant web presence without having to build a website. Paid Facebook advertising allows you to target customers by gender, age, location, and hobbies and interests making it a very effective way to target niche audiences who may be interested in your product. Likewise, online businesses should make the most of pay-per-click advertising where you can reach your selected audience by bidding on keywords and phrases which are relevant to your customer. For new businesses in competitive industries, pay-per-click advertising may be prohibitively expensive particularly on main stream networks such as Google AdSense. However, Google do offer advertising coupons from time to time which can save you lots of money if you want to try out this form of advertising. Alternatively, you could try targeting longer tail keywords or less competitive terms, or try one of the smaller PPC networks.
