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As I’ve tried to fill up posts this month about advertising, I’ve come to an understanding of an underlying belief that I hold. Advertising really isn’t all that effective for most entrepreneurs and small business owners. I’m much more in favor of using marketing and advertising. With that said, however, here are some tips I believe you should apply to your marketing plan — whether you accomplish these with advertising or not, that is not the point.

1. Be Consistently Present
Marketing, advertising and public relations efforts have a cumulative effect. Therefore you need to get your name out in front of people as often as you can. This helps build name awareness.
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According to Small Business Administration, 5% of an entrepreneur’s gross sales should be budgeted for advertising. That might not sound like a lot, but if your advertising is efficient, it can provide a health return on investment.

For example, and I know I’ve mentioned this before, but your advertising needs to be targeted. It must speak to one target market only. If you have more than one market, then you need more than one advertisement. Don’t delute your message — or you won’t communicate at all.

Another thing to keep in mind is where does your target market hang out? Do they read newspapers, magazines, ezines, blogs or something else? How do they respond to marketing messages in these various media? Some markets actually like to get marketing messages texted to them on their cell phone! (I’m not one of them, of course. I can’t stand text messaging!)
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Is your advertising effective? Does it accomplish it’s goals and bring in business? If not, read on. If so, go ahead and read on — you just might find a tidbit you hadn’t thought of before. Here are some common mistakes small business owners and service providers make when developing their advertisements. Any one of these could lead to your advertisement’s failure.

Bigger Is Better
Some think that a bigger ad is more effective, so they invest a lot of money in the ad, but still don’t reach their target market. Size of advertisement is not as important as placement. Your ad needs to be placed where your highly targeted market will find it.
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