I'm certainly fed up of paying for adverts....it's very hard as a new business, a small business to find the funding for adverts....it's such a crucial part of a developing business, a gamble to take but the business you can get from just a few responses to your adverts far far outweighs the costs.
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Stag Cleaning Services

Have you an example of what worked for you and what industry you are in, I only ask as many other members are just about to waste money advertising when that money can be put to better use, what worked stagman?

I think the problem is that new businesses are naive about what they hope adverts will generate for them. They expect that people are just waiting to know about their business and as soon as they spot the tiny advert hidden in the classifieds on a Tuesday the phone will start ringing off the hook.

Secondly, they are not very good at designing an effective advert - they tend to put in irrelevant info,skip important stuff which might encourage people to get in touch, and do very much "run of the mill" stuff with it.

And thirdly, and this is the scary part, they aren't very good at monitoring where their leads come from, so they have no idea whether or not their advertising is working for them or not.

One of these days I am going to write a crash course in "How Not To Advertise".

You can't really blame the advertisers for taking advantage of their naivety - it's up to the business owner to be scrupulous about what they spend their money on.
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Caroline Wylie

www.virtuallysorted.com

www.SocietyOfVirtualAssistants.co.uk

many business waste money on badly targetted advertising. You need to advertise in a location that your target audience go to. If your target audience is heavy internet users then advertising in a paper newspaper is probably a waste of time as they will get their news online. However advertising on a newspaper website may well work. I have seen lots of ads in hardcopy media with a link to a website that is far too long for people to type in ie http://mywebdomain.freehostingcompany.com/index.html

now as a hyperlink thats fine but not many people that read that will bother to type it into a browser.

Another thing people do is put a big ad in exactly the right place and then fail to cope with the generated demand and so their reputation gets trashed.
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Richard How FIAP MAPM
How Associates - Programme Management Consultants
Quality Web Hosting
Photography Forum
Tourist Guide to Newport Pagnell

What about free directory listings on the net, has that worked for anyone?

I agree fully with Richard, many new businesses do not think before spending money on advertising.

If you fail to make a plan for your advertising campaign before starting it then it is just like starting a business without a business plan. IT WON'T WORK.

You have to look at a number of aspects including campaign duration, campaign budget, the overall aim of the campaign and a few other core aspects.

Advertising on sites like Yell.com and business directories is not going to drive in more than maybe a few leads per year unless you pay for premium listings. If you want good exposure you have to pay for it. If you don't have the budget for advertising then you better get on the phone and start making some calls otherwise you are in trouble.

We offer advise to small to medium sized businesses who are looking for ways to promote their business all of the time, it is just a damn shame that so many people do not know where to find this type of help before wasting money on ineffective advertising and marketing.
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David White - Advertiserbay
Affordable Advertising for Business Owners
http://www.advertiserbay.co.uk

Great points David, I see, and have done myself, so many companies wasting hundreds if not thousands advertising "in the wrong place" I guess we are touching on such a broad subject because so many different types of companies want different customers. By this I mean Websites who want traffic, local shops who want people through the door an now a days both !

But who then should we listen to?
The sales guy rings from Yell and promises the “world at your finger tips” but I cannot remember the last time I looked at or even picked one up. Actually I don’t think I have even got one! I know if I need or want something I look on Google, however, with the internet getting in such a mess you never really find what you are looking for as so many people have manipulated the search word criteria so even if you want a local bakery for a party cake (recent search) I ended up with the first results being from the USA company who offer naked girls jumping out of cakes, sounds great, but not really suitable for my sons 10th ! what annoys me more is I selected UK search only !!!!

So where should we seek the best advice, and proven results for our own industries?

Paul
http://www.gpslocals.com

In my previous role I was involved in an ROI project. I can't name the company, but it was a global asset manager. Part of the project was to look at the best ROI for the business, and it took into consideration all forms of marketing and advertising (including taxi cabs, train stations etc).

Of course I can't reprint anything but in short, these were the findings and rankings (best to worst) and also some of the comments (also reduced)

SEO - cheapest and easy to report/track. Does take time to implement and appear and not guaranteed first place listing
PPC - More expensive but easy to report/track. Targeted to the user and quick to implement.
Trade magazines - not overly expensive and targeted. Hard to track/monitor and often ignored
Online Ads - Can be expensive and not targeted by some media planning agencies. Easy to track/monitor
Newspaper - expensive and not targeted. Hard to track/monitor and often ignored

There were others in the report such as taxis, outdoor advertising etc etc. but this should be enough for now.
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SEO - Usability - Web Design - Analytics


Tyler Sheppard
www.tylersheppard.com

Hi,

I can understand that entirely spending to much for advertising can be extremely expensive, without naming any names im sure we can think of a few companies that will set you up in a printed directory sent out across the UK and will more than likely be used as a door stop

I work for a company that is dedicated to help reduce the number of startup companies failing and we have events setup purely for education on how to unlock the secret of PR instead of pay for advertising


Please feel free to have a look



Lewis
www.Rawbusiness.com