How to Advertise for Small Business

How to Advertise for Small Business- Advertising can be a daunting task. It’s easy to spend a lot of money on your ads and have nothing to show for it. But it doesn’t need to be like that. The key part of how to advertise for small business is understanding what effective advertising looks like, and how to work it into your strategy. That’s where we come in!  

People all over the world use Google everyday to find local businesses, read reviews and learn about products. And if you have a small business, it is definitely a great idea to advertise your small business online.

Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising is a popular choice for small businesses, because the cost is relatively affordable and you can be highly selective with the audience you target. For example, if you own a retail store, you can use ad targeting options to narrow the audience so that only people of a certain demographic living within a certain mile radius of your store are served your social ads. There are a few different social media platforms you can select from for social advertising, including:

• Facebook: Facebook is a great advertising choice for most small businesses, because of the widespread adoption of the platform and the relatively low cost of their ads. Almost 70 percent of American adults use Facebook, and among those who use it, nearly 75 percent log in to the service at least once per day. There are different ad units to choose from on Facebook, including video ads, customer offers, carousel images, lead generation, page likes, event responses and more. You can learn more about Facebook advertising on the Facebook Business site.
• Instagram: Instagram ads are a great option for small businesses with a highly visual brand that appeals to younger audiences, since 60 percent of Instagram’s one-billion users are under the age of 30. Instagram includes many of the same targeting parameters offered by Facebook and their ad units include image ads, video ads, Stories ads and carousel ads. You can also include clear call-to-action buttons to drive traffic to your website.
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn advertising tends to be a bit more expensive compared to other social networks, but it’s a great option for small businesses with a business-to-business (B2B) sales model, since you can target professionals in specific industries and with certain job titles through LinkedIn ads. There are more than 560 active professional users on LinkedIn.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a type of online advertising where advertisers pay a fee every time a user clicks on one of their ads, usually through a search engine. Advertisers bid on ad placements within the search engine, meaning they set a maximum price they’re willing to pay for a user to click on their ads. If a person sees your ad but doesn’t click on it, you aren’t charged anything. The most common platforms for PPC advertising are Google Ads and Bing Ads. PPC advertising is a form of search engine marketing (SEM). It can be a great option for small businesses with limited budgets and according to WordStream, businesses make $2 in revenue on average for every $1 they spend on Google Ads.

Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising is a type of digital advertising in which ads are served only on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. Mobile advertising can include:

• Mobile display ads
• Mobile search ads
• Mobile videos
• Mobile app ads, which are meant to drive downloads of a brand’s app
• Social media ads served on mobile devices only

Having a mobile advertising strategy can pay off for your small business. Eighty-four percent of adult customers under the age of 30 are most likely to shop online using a mobile device.

Print Advertising

Print advertising used to be the primary advertising method for small businesses before the advent of digital advertising. Now, print ad revenues are shrinking and as a small business owner you may find the cost is much higher than the cost of digital and social advertising. It’s also more difficult to measure the success of your print advertising campaigns, since it’s almost impossible to prove how many people who saw your ads in print went on to make a purchase at your store or become a client of your business. But, for some local businesses or businesses that target older, less digitally engaged audiences, print advertising can still be a good choice for your ad spend. Print advertising includes newspaper ads, magazine ads and ads in brochures and flyers.

Paid Search Marketing

Google AdWords and Bing Ads can bring in traffic to the website and help your business feature prominently when people search for relevant phrases. The key is to focus on long-tail keywords that are industry specific. This will get your campaign the highest possible click-through rate and conversions.

The best part about PPC campaigns is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get traffic. Instead, a targeted campaign with a budget of $20 to $30 a day can generate traffic and qualified leads for your business.

Social Media Advertising

Advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to target specific demographics and pinpoints you to the people you’ve not reached out to. This eliminates the extemporaneous clicks from consumers browsing or searching for information.

With a small budget, you can target specific customers by their age, gender, education and interests similar to your product/service categories.

Even when people don’t make an immediate purchase, they may end up liking and sharing your business. This helps in building a database of potential customers.

Local Listings

List information about your businesses on Google My Business and Yahoo listing for free. By adding the name of your business, website, images and hours you can take advantage of people searching for businesses on Google in your area.

Most of these online directories are free, but some may offer paid options to increase visibility.

Website

A custom-designed website with accurate information, attractive pictures can serve as an information source for your customers and a lead generation tool.

If you can’t afford to hire someone to design your website, you can use the templates and tools provided by WordPress, Wix and Squarespace to create a basic website. Just note that platforms like Wix and SquareSpace have issues when it comes to SEO; so if SEO is concern, you’re better off using WordPress.

Using Google Ads for Small Business Advertising

Way back in the 20th century, small and local business advertising usually involved broadcasting your message to large groups of people, hoping to catch the attention of a small percentage of them. You’d place an ad in the Yellow Pages or a local newspaper, or perhaps buy a radio spot, and hope for the best.

Online advertising is generally more cost-effective and more effective, period, because you’re able to target your advertising budget at a more select group of people, and closely measure how that audience responds to your advertising.

One of the most measurable forms of online advertising is paid search marketing, a system that allows you to place advertisements in the search results when people are searching for products or services related to what your business offers. You then pay a small fee to the search engine every time somebody clicks on one of your ads. For this reason, paid search marketing is also known as PPC, or pay-per-click marketing.

Because Google is the world’s most popular search engine, Google’s search advertising system, Google Ads, is the most popular platform for PPC.

You can make Google Ads work even on a limited budget by adhering to these best practices:

• Bidding on keywords with high intent: Only place advertisements on keyword searches that reveal commercial intent, or intention on the part of the searcher to buy something. For example, if you’re a real estate agent, you’ll get more value out of people searching for specific phrases like “boston 2 bedroom apartment available now” than something broad and generic like “vacation rentals.” Keyword research will help you find those “sweet spot” keyword terms.
• Using various targeting methods to focus your budget: For example, you could use targeting parameters to only show ads to users in a certain demographic (such as women or people with high incomes), or to restict your ads so they only appear during your small business’s active operating hours.
• Working to improve your Quality Score: Google assigns every keyword in your account a Quality Score, which is a “grade” between 1 and 10 that assesses how relevant your ads are to people searching for that keyword. The more relevant your ads, the better your score, which means that Google rewards you with higher ad rankings at a lower cost per click. Accordingly, businesses that take the time to create high-quality ads can get more exposure for less money.

To learn more about how AdWords works, check out:

• PPC University: A free learning resource that will teach you the basics of PPC.
• How the Google Auction Works: A visual primer on how Google’s AdWords auction works. It all starts with a keyword…
• How to Advertise on Google and Grow Your Business: A beginner’s guide to getting started with Google advertising.

Using Bing Ads for Small Business Advertising

Bing has a smaller share of the search engine market than Google, but it’s still used by millions of people every month. That’s millions of people you could be reaching with your advertising! As a bonus for small businesses, Bing Ads also tends to be less costly than Google Ads.

On average, costs per click (or CPC’s) on Bing Ads are 33% lower than on Google Ads. A few more reasons to try adding Bing Ads to your online advertising mix:

• Bing Ads offers more granular control of some parts of your advertising campaigns
• Bing is especially popular among older, more affluent demographics, as well as in the travel industry
• Bing has better device targeting options

Conclusion

People all over the world use Google everyday to find local businesses, read reviews and learn about products. And if you have a small business, it is definitely a great idea to advertise your small business online. Advertising can be confusing for some people, especially when they’re new to the small business world. It can be really expensive and time-consuming to get started with advertising so you don’t want to waste your budget and other resources on the wrong types of advertisements.