The Problem!

Do you have a small business?  How about a medium sized business?  Word-of-mouth can be great but at some point business will start slowing down.  Furthermore, how are you suppose to get new customers to get positive Word-of-mouth started?  How are you suppose to get people in the door?  If you had an unlimited amount of money you would think about hiring someone to do some outside sales.  You know, make some cold calls to get people into your store.  Have someone ‘hit the pavement’ to drum up some more business.

The first problem is, most people don’t have the training to set up a sales force, especially is you’re a mom ‘n pop shop.  The second problem is you probably don’t have the money to pay a ‘qualifiedsales person.  So then what’s the solution?

The Answer Is Advertising!

The answer is advertising and it doesn’t matter what kind of advertising you do either.  Whether it’s the people reading a magazine or newspaper, or the listenership of a radio station, every advertising medium has an audience!  That means the advertising medium is your sales force!

WRNJ Radio has 40,000 listeners per week.  That means WRNJ is a sales force that can send your message to 40,000 listeners every single week.  If you’re paying $800 per month for advertising on the radio then you’re technically paying $9,600 (a year) for a sales force that will ‘cold call’ 40,000 people a year.  You can take it one step further and break it down to $0.24 per cold call.  That’s not too bad and way cheaper than paying a sales person $30,000 a year (or more) and commissions.

But what if you don’t even have $800 per month…for a year?

It Doesn’t Have To Cost A Lot!

$800 isn’t that much when it comes to your advertising budget (or at least it shouldn’t be,) but I understand that small business’ don’t always have that kind of money laying around.  To be honest, if someone asked me to spend that kind of money for advertising I don’t know if I could afford it.  Luckily, you have to spend that kind of money (although it technically will end up costing more.)  Let’s take a look…

I Heart Blank recently designed and purchased three sets of post cards.  3,000 post cards cost $477.  Then I bought a roll of Stamps at the Post Office.  Those cost me $45.  Now when I see a new business in town, I take one of the post cards and send it out to that business.  Easy peasy!

Now technically the total cost is $1,827 and that’s for 3,000impressions.’  That’s about $0.61 per person.  Told you that radio advertising would technically be cheaper.

While radio is cheaper, it only cost me $522 to get going for 100 impressions.  I can live with that…

The Point

The point is advertising is important to your business because it is your sales force, every advertising medium has an audience.  No matter how big or small, you need to let other people know what you’ve got and what sets you apart from the pack.  Now, think out of the box and get started!