From SoHo Savvy:
Marketing Comet gives us the two biggest problems with small business advertising:
- The message stinks. Advertising's main job is to inform and then persuade. If you aren't Nike, don't waste your money on a billboard with your logo. Most small business advertising I see is poorly written. Billboard, TV, radio, print, web - the words are the most important part of your ad.
- The targeting stinks. Unless you are in a business that the general public actually uses, like a grocery store, advertising to everybody is a waste of your money. Many business owners have a false view of who is interested in what they're selling. "Everybody needs this." Maybe so, but not everybody is going to buy it.
I think this is 100% correct. I know many small business owners that believe that they just need to slap their name and phone number up in an ad and business will magically flow to them. This is not true.
Small business owners need to be even more careful than large businesses when it comes to ad spending. They do not have the luxury of “learning from experience and trying again”. The nest thing a small business can do is understand their best customers – customers who purchase frequently and in high volume. Once you have identified this customer, figure out why they buy your product or service and where they come from.
Armed with this information, you can now decide the best way to communicate with them. I cannot stress this point enough: You need to know your customer. Good marketing decisions (and advertising decisions) begin with understanding who your best customer is and why they buy.
Read more about Small Business marketing at: SoHo Savvy
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