Matt’s Creative Advertising Blog

Smart Business Advertising Revealed

September 18th, 2007 Filed under: Uncategorized — Advertising Author

However, there are some very simple techniques you can do to advertise your business. The problem is that not all of them work. Since we live in a smaller town, we thought we could do our advertising more low key. I was opening a new restaurant downtown and figured it would be visible to enough people who were passing by to scare up enough new customers. To be on the safe side, we painted a big sign in the front of the place, had a grand opening ceremony and even put an ad in the local newspaper.

Opening day turnout proved to be less than dismal. I realized it would be a struggle to open a new restaurant. What I didnt realize exactly how big of a struggle it would be. For the first couple of weeks, customers were very scarce. Then, we took a smarter approach to advertising our business.

Different businesses approach smart business advertising differently. I have a cousin who was involved in an online business and he needs to use some pretty sophisticated advertising tricks. For him, it is all about maximizing Google hits and improving the search results. He uses business articles, keyword lists as well as links to other popular websites all in hopes of promoting his business ventures. However, in my particular situation we do not need to utilize such advertising techniques. After all, we are a local business. Where I live, people dont really use the Internet, especially for dining.

For my business, the key to success was to maximize outdoor exposure. First off all, this meant I needed to buy an advertisement on a billboard on the local highway. Since we live fairly close to the interstate, I cannot believe I didnt think of this sooner. The billboard was successful in getting out of town customers to visit our restaurant. But we were still looking to appeal to the local clientele. In order to do that, we invested in some neon signs that were quite snazzy. Since my brother is a designer, he was able to hook me up with an excellent deal on my business signs. We also went to the local grocery stores and handed out coupons good for one free meal. Although we lost a bit of profit in the short term, in the long run, we were able to pick up a lot of repeat customers.