Advertising has always been a scary thing for small business. Costs can be high and resources are rarely as extensive as those of bigger organisations. My business has rarely advertised – even for staff. We do see it as an inferior alternative to word of mouth. As a small business ourselves, a big part is of course concerns of poor returns on valuable investment, perhaps it is also because we always feared that our larger competitors could advertise bigger.
Current technology and our financial climate puts an interesting twist on advertising.
- With companies cutting advertising and promotions budgets as a "non-essential" expense in times of financial difficulty, rates are good and competition may well be less visible.
- With the move away from traditional paper based media, things are different and changing rapidly for small business - now is the time to take advantage. Anyone advertising through Google, big or small, has the same ad appearance - there really is very level playing field.
Gone are the days when adverts needed to have anything to do with the product they are selling. Iggy Pop is now advertising insurance for a company that won't even cover musicians! Entertaining and engaging is as important as showing the product - online discussions about the company and brand will eminate from an interesting advert.
Brand does remains important. We look at ways to get our brand reputation known, as on the surface our product is not unique (the delivery is). In line with our sponsorship of Graduate Fashion Week we placed a full page advert in Drapers and of course we promote our corporate website. Although I see that as more passive, it is still a resource for potential clients that we are about to see or have just seen. It's also important for us to work on getting referrals, which means advertising to existing clients for new business.
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