For your business to grow, you need to put the words out there. That is what is known as advertising. However, small business advertising can be tricky as it requires a huge budget, which small businesses lack. If you are searching for the best ways to advertise a small business, this article is for you. Read on to get ideas and tips.
Best Platforms To Advertise For Small Businesses
If you are trying to advertise a small business, the first question that will come to your mind is the right platform to use. When thinking about an excellent online advertising platform, there are several questions to ask yourself. These are:
- What are my customers searching for online?
- Where and when are they seeking such products?
- How can you make your products unique from the competition?
After getting answers to these questions, you can implement an advertisement strategy that works for your products. Here are some of the best advertising platforms for small businesses.
Google ads for small businesses
In the past, small businesses only had the option of advertising on platforms such as the Yellow Pages. But today, Google ads have made it easier to advertise their products and services affordably.
This is even though online advertising is more affordable and effective. With Google ads, you can create your target audience for your ad using factors such as age, geographical location, and sex. What is even better is that after running a campaign, you can easily measure the performance of your social media ad campaign.
With Google ads, you advertise the search results to people searching for products or services in your niche.Each time someone clicks on your ad, you pay a small fee to the search engines. This Is why the advertisement method is called pay-per-click or PPC. For the best results with Google Ads for small businesses, follow these tips:
Only bid for high-intent keywords.
Before bidding on Google Ads, you should only bid on keywords with a high commercial intent. These are keywords that indicate the searcher is looking to buy something. They include words like for sale, under $100, and best.
Try different targeting methods.
You should focus on creating highly targeted ads for the best and most cost-effective Google Ad. For instance, targeting options will help you focus your ads on a certain demographic, such as working-class women or customers within a particular earning range.
Improve the quality score.
Google assigns a quality score to every keyword on your Adword campaign. This score ranges from one to ten, showing how relevant your keyword is to your target audience. When your score is high, it shows how relevant your target keyword is.
Google Adwords keywords with a high-quality score and a low PPC cost. Therefore, to reduce your advertisement, you must improve your Quality Score.
Using social media for small business advertising
With over 5 billion people on social media, this is another great advertisement option for small businesses. This is why you need to create a social media advertising plan. You only need to place an ad on forums like Facebook, Instagram, and Titkok to use this advertising channel.
Placing an ad on a platform like Facebook is usually cheaper than other advertising platforms. The social media platform also allows advertisers to create ads for their target demographic. For instance, if you want your ad to reach working-class women aged 35 to 45 who are Democrats, you can easily do that on Facebook and other social media sites. You can read our comparison of Facebook vs. Pinterest advertising.
How to reduce social media ad costs
To get the most value for your money when advertising on Facebook, you should use these tips:
- Leverage data. Analyzing data lets you easily target the right demographic with social media advertising. This will give you ideas on social trends, cues, interests, etc.
- Focus on retention. One of the mistakes small businesses make is focusing on luring new customers while ignoring new ones. Studies indicate that acquiring new customers is usually five times more expensive than getting new ones. Therefore, for the best results on social media advertising, focus on retaining existing customers.
- Take advantage of user-generated content. As the name suggests, user-generated content is usually created by the end-user of the content. It could be in videos, audio, images, and more. With minimal cost and user-generated content, it’s a great way for small businesses to advertise their products and services.
- Reduced Frequency. There are two ways of measuring the success of social media ads. This is either through frequency or reach. Frequency refers to the number of times your viewers view your ad. Reach is the number of ad viewers. You can cut your ad budget and reach your target audience by reducing reach.
On top of the above tips, ensure you have a social media post where you can post and engage with prospective customers.
Add a Google My Business Profile
One free small business advertising idea for local businesses is adding and optimizing a Google My Business profile. This resource will enable your small business to appear in Google Maps, a local section of Google, and the knowledge panel of the SERPs.
When people search for businesses in your niche, Google will show them your business. That way, you will get free traffic to your site.
Optimize your site for local SEO
With SEO, you do not have to pay anything to appear on the SERPs. However, you must ensure that your site is well-optimized for search engines. While local SEO is free, ranking high on the SERPs takes time, so start today.
Final Thoughts
Small business advertising doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. With online platforms, small businesses can advertise on a budget. Use the above tips to advertise your small business on a budget. We also recommend you read our comparison of the performance of Google ads vs. Facebook ads to determine which is best suited for your business.
