How can advertising help your business?

Have you ever wondered, how can advertising help your business? In short, it helps your business grow.

Benefits of small business advertising include attracting new customers and helping you sell more products and services to existing customers. It can increase profitability, too, by helping increase order size.

Let’s drill down to understand exactly how advertising can help a business, depending on your industry. But in reality, what does advertising do? Here are some benefits of small business advertising:

For B2B businesses, advertising can fill your sales funnel and help you get more leads for your sales force to follow up on.

For software or consumer manufacturing businesses, advertising can help launch products with a splash.

If your business has an existing product or service, advertising can make the public aware of improvements. Letting the public know about your innovation can boost sales.

For online businesses, advertising can attract people to a landing page where you can convert the visitor into a customer.

Advertising keeps your business top of mind so consumers think of it when they require a service. This is especially good for service businesses such as HVAC or pest control. But almost any kind of business can benefit.

For any kind of retail business, advertising can make the public aware of a sale or promotion bringing in more customers in the process.

For businesses in industries suffering from an outdated or poor perception, advertising can transform public opinion creating a more favorable impression. For example, advertising can make people aware of expanded capabilities or offerings.

If you are a consultant or run a tech company and want to be known for your expertise, advertising can help. Native ads can promote your content demonstrating your expertise and building your reputation as a thought leader. Sponsoring content that features expertise also raises your profile and helps attract industry partners.

Use outdoor advertising, newspaper ads or mailers to publicize a new location. Get more foot traffic.

Indirectly, advertising helps you grow word of mouth referrals. The more new customers you gain through advertising, the more word of mouth those customers in turn will share with others.

Advertising can improve brand awareness.

Retargeting or remarketing ads can remind visitors of your products after they leave your site. This technique is proven to convert more shoppers into buyers. Let’s say someone abandoned a shopping cart in your ecommerce store or simply didn’t buy for some other reason. With retargeted ads, they will be reminded of the product by seeing an ad days later.

If you want to get more email subscribers or more loyal social followers, then social media advertising may be useful to accomplish these and other marketing objectives. Once people consent to receiving email marketing messages from you, or choose to follow your social posts, you have more chances to get your messages in front of them.

Advertise special bundles and order size incentives to increase your customers’ average order value. Example: offer “threshold based” coupons, such as 10 percent off every order over $150.

Advertising can boost startup businesses.

To sum it up, when trying to answer the question “how can advertising help a business?” you can see how it brings in more top line revenue, and drops more to the bottom line.

A tale of two owners.

Let’s look at two case studies to better understand the strategic benefits of small business advertising. Our case studies focus on two mythical business owners, Joe and Mary.

Joe owns a local restaurant with awesome food. Like the majority of small business owners, Joe gets most of his new customers from word of mouth spread by happy current customers. He’s been proud of the positive word of mouth, as he should be. He’s always avoided advertising, thinking he didn’t need it. And he didn’t want to spend the money.

Recently, Joe has started to feel as if his business is stagnant. He’s tossed and turned a few nights, worrying. Weekends are good, but weekdays are slow. He feels the number of customers has plateaued. Joe also is worried about falling behind the competition. Another restaurant a half mile away has expanded into new premises. The competitor is now offering customers free Wi-Fi, food tastings, outdoor seating on a 3-season patio and more.

Joe is profitable and is getting by, but just barely. Without some profit cushion he can’t invest in the kind of amenities his customers are asking about. The restaurant is starting to look a bit worn. He can’t afford the new booths and chairs needed for a facelift — let alone a beautiful new patio like his competitor. He also doesn’t have the money to invest in new technology. As a result, his business expends a lot of staff time grappling with an ageing point of sale system. Aside from lack of growth, he’s beginning to worry about his business shrinking.

Mary also owns a small business — a gift shop. Like Joe’s restaurant, her business gets customers through word of mouth. She too is proud of that.

But two years ago she realized she had to reach out beyond her business’s current circle of customers and their referrals. So Mary started to advertise her business. Admittedly, her advertising budget is small — nothing huge. But through careful planning and clearly understanding her target market, she’s been able to attract new customers and accelerate growth.

Mary has a written advertising plan. She tracks ad expenditures against results to make sure her business gets a good return on investment (ROI). After all, she doesn’t have money to waste. By taking a calculated spending risk, she’s been able to profitably grow her business in double digit percentages. In turn, she’s earned the money to expand inventory to sell trendy artwork and unique gifts, upgrade the building sign (thereby increasing foot traffic), hold more events with refreshments and invest in a new ecommerce website to grow online sales.

Here’s something she wasn’t expecting: by advertising her business, word of mouth also increased! The more new customers Mary attracts through advertising, the more those customers talk about her business. This attracts even more customers. In other words, Mary increased word of mouth referrals by advertising. Mary didn’t just get a one-for-one return for her advertising dollar — she got more.

The main difference between Joe and Mary is that Mary realized much earlier she needed to do something. And she also recognized that an initial modest investment in advertising could pay off. It wasn’t long before new customers were funding her business growth far beyond the modest amount she spent on advertising. She still advertises today to keep a steady stream of new customers. For Mary, advertising was the first step in her overall strategic plan to make her business stronger. So the next time you wonder “how can advertising help my small business?” just think of Joe and Mary.

As for participation in various trade fairs, advertising can make it even more effective, attract even more visitors to your stand. Do not forget to use any offered opportunities! Take a look at advertising options of Children's Fashion Fair!

Source: smallbiztrends.com