As a small business owner, your operating budget is limited. And your marketing budget is even more strained. So, how do you decide where your marketing dollars should be spent? Odds are, you have spent plenty of money on advertising campaigns that have not produced the results you expected: print ads, direct and email campaigns, media commercials and more. However, on line advertising has always been a cheap way to advertise that has proven to be effective.
While there are a number of free on line ways to market your business such as Google Places, Bing Maps and more, there are plenty of other opportunities out there that are relatively inexpensive and are very effective in driving the traffic you need to make more sales.
Adwords
Google has been at the top of the on line advertising pyramid for a long time. Google is the leader when it comes to search traffic making Google Adwords the largest pay per click advertising platform available to your business. In order to create an effective, budget conscious Google Adwords campaign, you will need to do some research on finding the right search terms that have high search traffic and low bids, but it is possible to generate a large amount of traffic this way on a budget. Find out more about Adwords Express for small business.
Microsoft Ad Center
Microsoft Ad Center is to Bing as Google Adwords is to Google Search. While Bing has a much smaller portion of the Internet search traffic, it still sees quite a bit of traffic. And search terms are generally less expensive, making it a viable endeavor.
Face book Advertising
Face book is still the king when it comes to social media advertising. Facebook ads work because studies have shown that your target audience spends as much as a quarter of their "on line" time engaged in social media or reading blogs. And the majority of that social media traffic is on Face book. Facebook ads work in the same way that other pay per click advertising campaigns work in that you only have to pay for your advertising activity when someone clicks on your ad and is redirected to your site. What's cool about Facebook ads is that your ads can have images as well as text, which make them more visually interesting to customers and helps with your brand identity efforts. What's even better is even if nobody ever clicks on your ads, you still get tons of exposure for your business and you won't have to pay a dime. And those that see your ads have expressed previous interest in the products and services you provide because Facebook spends a lot of time and money understanding the likes and dislikes of their user population in order to ensure they only see the things they like.
On line advertising works
When it comes to advertising, there is no doubt that on line advertising works. In many cases, it works better than many of the more traditional advertising routes such as print ads and television commercials. It's efficient, to the point and targets the people who have a real interest in the products or services you offer, increasing the odds that they will buy something from you. What's nice about most on line advertising opportunities is that you only pay when the campaign works, meaning that you are not wasting dollars on campaigns that are not doing anything for you.