To flourish and grow, your business needs customers. To get customers, you need to advertise your business, and the options available these days can be overwhelming.

The first step is to define your business, and more importantly, your customers.

Defining who your customers are, their demographics and lifestyle, and the primary reason they want to use the products or services that your business offers is key to successfully advertising your business.

You can build out your brand from this information – the unforgettable name and design elements like a logo or slogan that will make you stand out and memorable to your customers. Applying this consistent branding across your business areas reinforces your story to your customers and gives them something to identify with.

Armed with this information, you can dive into how these potential customers find information about your business. Targeting advertising to teenagers is an entirely different strategy to targeting retirees!

Once you have considered how your targeted customers will tend to shop, you can review the advertising strategies to determine the most successful.

Online Advertising

There are so many options around online advertising now. Regardless of your target customers, they are worth exploring when prioritising how you will get the most impact on your advertising budget.

Website

The first step is often building a website. This will let your customers know a little about who you are, reinforce any branding you have designed and hopefully give them a way to buy or at least enquire about your products or services.

Once you have built a website with appropriate branding and functionality, driving traffic to that website is the next step in your advertising strategy.

Search engine optimisation and Search engine marketing

One of the main ways potential customers find things is through search engines. There are two ways to rank your websites on search engines for the search terms that resonate with your business, SEO and PPC.

The practice of improving your website's ranking on search engines like Google or Bing is known as search engine optimisation (SEO). If you can get your website to appear on the first page of a search result relevant to your product or service, you will gain a lot of audiences and advertising exposure.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising works in tandem with SEO. However, while SEO focuses on organic results, PPC focuses on how your brand appears in sponsored results. You have more control over who sees your sponsored advertisements in search results, which allows you to segment down to the core customers you want to reach for the best advertising results.

Social media marketing and advertising

Social media has become a fundamental part of any advertising campaign, from Facebook Business Pages to Tik Tok accounts that try to go viral. Social media marketing is a crucial part of any advertising strategy, bringing your business and product or service in front of millions of eyes.

Set up your social media accounts, ensure they follow your business branding and make sure you spend time connecting with other accounts and establishing relationships to start building your followers. Linking back to your business purpose and website, as well as paid advertising aimed at your targeted customers, are all ways to bring more clicks to your website and more purchases to your business.

Video

Video advertising is anywhere from short paid ads on YouTube or other video platforms, targeting your potential customer segment, or even content for your website, providing helpful information and answers to frequent questions your customers have. Once built, videos can also be promoted on social media to tie your advertising strategy together across multiple platforms.

While video marketing requires more time and money to produce, it may help people understand and share content more easily. Social media videos generate up to 1200 per cent more shares than words and photos combined.

In-Person Advertising

Audio

Audio advertising can be targeted to your core audience, from Spotify ads to radio spots. A fast-growing channel for advertising is podcasts, which provide new options for reaching new potential customers. You can host your own, be a guest on an established popular one with your target customers or buy advertising space.

Print

Depending on who you are targeting, print advertising is still a potent tool to advertise to your target audience. Concentrate on specific publications that reach your target and look for deals that combine online and print advertising in the same publication.

Outdoor Advertising

Outdoor advertising is any type of ad that can be seen outside the audience's home. They can be a straightforward way to advertise from billboards to bus shelters with consistent brand messaging if you tailor the location and type carefully to your core audience and potential audience.

Networking Events

Networking events or conferences related to your business are another way to advertise. Sponsor part of the event, or a specific award that would resonate to your target customer and promote your business name in lights for all potential customers to see.

Other Forms of Advertising

PR or Public Relations is the process of having articles about you or your business published in magazines and on the news or other websites. Significant milestones in your business like anniversaries or hitting specific goals are great opportunities for a press release to be published in a place where your targeted customers will see.

Although you can contact a reporter or journalist yourself to tell them about a potential story, you can hire a specialist PR agency who can deal with that side for you if this seems too overwhelming. This does not always guarantee that you will be featured, but an agency will understand best how to pitch you and your business.

Branded Merchandise

Spread the word about your business with promotional gifts and branded merchandise. These work well in conjunction with the other advertising types, as they allow positive reinforcement of your business and their brand after they have left the event or turned off social media for the evening.

Many types of branded merchandise are available, from clothing such as caps or shirts to office equipment and even technology-related items like USB or headphones. Choose carefully what aligns with your business and what products or services you sell and design a clever campaign around them, like the IAMS Australia promotional frisbees for their dog food, or when Dan Cummins, the host of the podcast Timesuck, asked his fans to stick custom stickers in random areas around their neighbourhood and take photos for social media.

Another method of advertising via branded merchandise is selling or giving away branded products. Promotional t-shirts are held onto for an average of 14 months[JB1] , and promotional outerwear like jackets are kept for an average of 16 months.

Tech products are also welcome, especially as so many technology workers are working from home now. Things that help keep a remote office organised and efficient are must-keep items, which will keep your business top of mind all day.

Why advertise?

Advertising can be one of the most vital aspects of a business. It is the most direct and essential connection to your customers – to let them know about your business and how your product or service can help them.

Advertising helps businesses to target their clients and establish long-term relationships with them. It gives the customer a sense of familiarity and trust, ensuring that they stick with your company and recommend it to their friends and family.

The market is constantly changing, and your new potential customer base is hopefully continually growing. Although not every customer will require your business's product or service today, there will always be a fresh customer eager to purchase. Advertising will reach these new customers that are fresh to the market to keep an ever-growing stream of customers to your website or business page.

With so many options in the market, these days, advertising and especially take-home items like branded merchandise ensures your business is always front of mind to your customer, reminding them of why they should choose you.

[JB1]https://www.godelta.com/blog/what-are-the-most-popular-promotional-items-infographic