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HOW TO SPEND YOUR ADVERTISING DOLLARS         

It can be challenging to decide how much money to spend on advertising your business and even harder to come up with a plan when the other pressures of business are upon you. Too often these very important decisions are made by the salespeople in the local popular media -- they call you, tell you that you need to be in a certain publication or time slot or that they have a particular special running, and before you know it you are spending hundreds, even thousands of dollars without a plan in mind. Don't let others control your advertising budget; these simple steps will help you to come up with a solid plan for your advertising.

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ESTABLISHING A BUDGET

I am often asked how much money is the right amount to spend on advertising. Most people envision that an advertising budget is going to take a significant portion of their income and they wonder how their business will make up for it. In the short term the concept of advertising is expensive, particularly when the payoff can seem nebulous.

But establishing a budget is as easy as picking a number, any number, of dollars you might be comfortable spending this year. It can be a small number, it can be a large number, but it needs to be a number you can live with and it needs to be in proportion to your business. A newly self-employed person might choose to spend a few hundred dollars, a new boutique might decide that number should be a thousand or so, and onwards in relation to your business and your market. Once you have analyzed your options you may decide that number can go up or down, but to begin with just come up with a figure that is in keeping with the other sorts of expenditures you will be making this year. This is your starting point; now you need to collect some data.

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GET MEDIA KITS FROM MANY ADVERTISING VENUES

The next step is to collect media kits from every media outlet you can think of that might pertain to your market. A media kit is a packet that contains a list of the advertising opportunities available such as ad sizes, frequency of placement, ad packages, submission guidelines and deadlines, and pricing. Most reputable advertising venues will have something of this sort that can be mailed, downloaded from their website or emailed to you in pdf format. Ask if demographic information is included in the media kit; if not, ask for that data as well. You need to know who the audience is for each venue.

It is also important to think outside your comfort zone. You may be a reader of this paper, a viewer of that channel, a listener to this radio station, but that may not be where you need to advertise. Advertising venues such as newspapers, magazines, radio, telephone books, tourist guides, TV stations, radio stations and internet websites might be applicable to your market.

And don't forget your signage and website! Add the cost of a good sign into your budget if you have a location where this is possible. Seeing your name and logo repeatedly along with print/radio/TV/internet ads will help reinforce your name in your customer's mind. If your sign needs repair, make that a priority. If you need a website, or need yours updated, that's a priority too. Sending customers to an out-of-date site will do nothing for your business. Once these two items have been attended to the cost of their upkeep in the future will be negligible, so include them in the plan.

After you browse the offerings from each venue and their prices, make an initial stab at determining what a good spread of ads for the year might be based on any seasonal needs your business may have. You don't need to advertise everywhere all the time. For example if your customers are tourists arriving from elsewhere, it might make sense to advertise to them online in the off-season, and in local news/magazine products while they are in the area.

Put yourself in your customer's shoes -- where is it most likely that they will find you? What media will make the most impression on them? A magazine ad that is expensive might not sound like a good bargain, but the magazine might be kept around for a while and read by many people. A radio ad may sound expensive, but if your audience are frequent listeners their chance of hearing your name repeatedly is high. It may be hard to judge the impact of an ad repeated weekly in the newspaper, but the frequency with which your audience sees your logo might be just what is needed to make your name stick. An online ad that allows people to click through to your website might bring more people to your site than any other means.

What usually happens is that your audience will be diverse enough to respond to a mix of media, and therefore spreading your budget out over a number of venues with which you feel comfortable will be a good way to start. What is most important is to be as frequent and consistent as you can during the time you feel is your peak season. Small ads run repeatedly will be more effective than a splashy ad run once.

It is very easy after viewing all the possibilities to now find that the amount you are planning to spend far exceeds your initial budget number! Unless there is a very good reason for allowing this 'creep' to happen, it is better to pare those ads back until the advertising budget is close to your original number. Plan your ads, and add in a dollar factor for those few unexpected opportunities that will arise during the course of the year.

Now the hard part: STICK TO THE BUDGET! This can be difficult in the face of talented salespeople who call regularly throughout the year and insist you should be a part of this publication or that event, or that there is a special discount you really shouldn't miss. Sometimes they are right and you might decide to dip into that extra fund every now and then. But more often these salespeople do not know your business the way you do. Their job is to sell as much advertising as possible.

Do not let them run your bill up unless you are sure that there will be a positive outcome for you for the dollars spent. Take a couple of days to think about it. If you haven't seen the publication before, ask yourself whether it is really pertinent to your core customers. Ask to see a copy of the publication before you make any decisions. Stick with what you know about your business, trust your own instincts. You can always advertise next time, or next year!

So many times I hear people say that they aren't advertising because it didn't work, because they couldn't tell if anyone came to them because of their ads, because they asked all their customers and no one mentioned their ad, etc. I can tell you right now that it is very hard to establish a direct correllation between the ad dollars you spend and your annual profit.

Advertising has to be thought of as an investment you are making to put your brand and information in your potential customer's mind on a repeated basis. Think of how you yourself operate in the face of ads. Occasionally one single ad may prompt you to action, but more often it is the repetition that does the job. All of a sudden when you need that service theirs is the first name that comes to mind. That thought is then reinforced by seeing their signage, their products, hearing their name repeated, hearing recommendations from others.

And the business that does advertise will have more people thinking of them than a business that doesn't. Word of mouth is wonderful, referrals are wonderful, but all of that combined with the legitimacy of seeing your name in print, hearing it on the radio or TV, being able to click to your site on the web, all of that reinforces your message in a myriad of ways.

Consistent advertising will add to your credibility. It may take a while to find just the right mix of advertising that make you the most comfortable; at the end of each year get the new media kits and go through the process again. Look at the dollars you spent in a certain market in relation to the profit you made from that market. Adjust your message or the advertising venues as you need to, and adjust your budget up or down as you need to.

Keeping your name in the forefront will help you beat the competition and advertising is the way to promote everything that is great about your business.