Are you advertising?

In todays economy you really need to be doing everything in your power to get the word out about your company or service. This can range from passing out flyers at WalMart or putting them under peoples windshield wipers to buying local TV commercial time. Depending on your business some advertising methods that you may think are the best turn out not to work. I’ve talked to a few people who have purchased commercial time on local TV stations and the reviews are mixed. One of the people said it absolutely didn’t work, not one call or email. Another man said he landed 4 new clients to his lawn care company, the third lady didn’t have much of an opinion but said if given the chance she probably wouldn’t do it again.

So what type of marketing is right for you? I don’t know, that’s something that takes a bit of investigation. Sometimes advertising methods that you don’t think would be a good match with your company turn out to be a great fit. For example, have you seen those little signs around town that say something like “Single? Go to naplessingles.net”. At first glance you would probably think it’s a waste of time. But did you know that the person responsible for those signs owns a 15 million dollar a year business? He has those signs everywhere, all across the country. He owns over 15,000 domains just like that naplessingles.net domain. That’s over $150,000 a year just to keep the domains registered. So why does this guy have such success? I imagine it has something to do with the saturation of online ads, especially online ads targeting sex and dating. Not a day goes by that we don’t get Viagra or Sex spam in our email. But how often do you see an ad on the side of the road for a dating site, especially a dating site that’s targeted directly to your neighborhood? Not very often, so when you see it you’re going to notice it and remember it.

The point is, don’t be so quick to jump at an advertising method and at the same time, don’t be too fast to run away from one.