Thursday, February 28, 2013

Affordable Branding Strategies for Small Business Owners ? Small ...

affordable branding online banner advertisingAdvertising dollars for a small business are as crucial as time and employees.? They need to work, and work right away.? Find affordable branding strategies for small businesses can be difficult? With small businesses, each advertising dollar needs to be spent as effectively as possible to generate new leads.? Often times, the branding and awareness type of advertising that larger companies use on traditional mediums like radio and television are a completely out of reach expense for small business owners.

With budgets being smaller and generally needing to produce new leads rather than just brand a company, any sort of branding campaigns for small business need to be done with a low cost.

At TLG we are asked the question often, ?how can I brand my small business??.? It is a great question, and after a feeling out process to determine advertising budget and available resources we often settle on a combination of print and online banner advertising.? For the purposes on this article, we?ll talk specifically about the online banner advertising.

We?ve discussed the benefits of online advertising for small businesses thoroughly on this blog, but display advertising is a topic that we have not covered in as much detail.? An online banner advertisement is a form of advertising where a business places a flash banner (.swf) or image advertisement on a website.? This type of advertisement is beneficial because it can display all kinds of information, and contain animation or multiple different messages to attract the website visitor to click on the ad.? Typically display advertising is targeted based on the relevancy of the content on the page, compared to the products or services that the small business is offering.

There are a number of ways to utilize online banner advertising to brand your small business, but the best method (and TLG?s preferred method) is via Google Adwords.? Google Adwords is the dominant player in Search Based advertising, but has even more control, and a wider reach using their display network.? Google?s Display Advertising Network allows small businesses to place ads on just about any news site, blog or website that produces valuable, shared content.? It?s a great way to brand you business to a core audience, that might not necessarily be aware that your company of products exist.

affordable small business brandingAdditionally, the Google Display Network is great for small businesses because it levels the playing field regarding advertising budgets.? Sure, most small businesses have only a fraction of the advertising budget of a large corporation (like Albertsons shown on the right), but the placements that a company Albertsons receives are just as available to your small business.? Maybe not for the same amount of frequency or volume, but they are still available to utilize.

Depending on the geographic reach of where your small business pulls customers from (local, regional, national) there are a number of setting options for geographic targeting that your display advertising campaign can use to reach your audience.? Once you have determined a geographic reach, it a simple matter of editing the campaigns demographic, topics and interests to ensure that you are reaching just your perfect, core audience.? For example, let?s say that you own a health & nutrition supplement retail store, and that one distinct aspect of your store is that you also sell massage chairs.? From a branding perspective, it is important to accomplish two goals; one that you sell health supplements, and the other that you have a good selection of massage chairs for sale.? These two products while having similar types of customers will require two distinct branding campaigns for online banner advertising.

The first of the messages is to promote the health products and supplements.? Individuals will have lots of options on where and how (online, wholesale, retail) they purchase their supplements.? Convenience, selection and prices are going to be an important influence on why customers will choose one supplement store over another.? So for a online branding campaign, it will be important to limit the geographic reach of the campaign to just a few miles around the business, and to make sure to target precise interests in health and fitness.

The second of the branding messages can have much different targeting in order to produce results.? Since the massage chairs are expensive, and may take multiple impressions and trials before purchase, and because there are not nearly as many retails stores that carry the product, this will mean that the audience to target will be much smaller.? For this campaign, a wider-geographic targeting area is acceptable, and the interests and topics targeting can focus more on back pain, chiropractic and pain relief.? In addition to the targeting being different, the images within the advertising and the included messaging will be vastly different as well.

By utilizing online banner advertisements to brand your business, you can brand both the general (health products & supplements) about your small business and the specific (massage chairs) while reaching only your core audience.? Controlling costs and targeting the perfect market will ensure a successful online banner advertising campaign from a branding perspective.

If you are interested in formulating a strategy on how your small business can effectively use online display banner advertising to brand, then contact TLG Marketing in Long Beach, California at 562-537-6936 for a free 1-on-1 consultation with a agency partner.

Source: http://tlgmarketingconsultants.com/blog/affordable-branding-strategies-for-small-business-owners/

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