Traditional Paid For Advertising versa Free Internet Advertising

This article is aimed at the small medium enterprise (SME) and business startup companies that will need to advertise their business products and services.

What is advertising or marketing?
There are many different types of advertising and it does not matter if your business is large or small advertising is part of business. In the traditional world of advertising when you stop paying for advertising you stop advertising your business.

In traditional advertising little is free. Unless you have a van for your business and have it sign written. Even then the van has running costs. Any business will have brochures, leaflets, letterheads, business cards etc. All of these have to be distributed either by hand or by post. If you stop distributing you stop advertising your business.

Local businesses will generally advertise in local papers or local magazines and at local exhibitions and possibly radio advertising. National companies can advertise on national TV or in national papers, magazine advertising and at nationwide exhibitions. They can even run an advertising campaign using outdoor advertising like billboard advertising.

All of which cost money. If you don’t have an advertising budget you can not advertise and don’t get exposure of your business products or services to your potential customers. Anyone in business knows that the national companies spend millions on advertising and marketing campaigns. Even when a company or its products or services are well known they still advertise, to keep them in the public eye.

Advertising on the Internet Brings Equality
The Internet is vast and international and large well known companies have been quick to get their presence on the Internet. Local businesses should also stake their claim with their presence on the Internet. Although, large companies can spend large sums on their websites a local company can still have a website next to a large company without the same advertising budget.

A local company could not afford a 30 second commercial on TV next to a multinational. Or a full size billboard advertisement next to a major brand. A local company may be able to buy lineage in a national magazine but not a full page colour spread. The Internet offers local companies equality, and the ability to reach an international market.

A website web page can not be bigger than your monitor screen size. Your website is multicoloured like the national companies. You can have as many web pages as any well known company. The cost of hosting a national company’s website is similar to hosting a small company’s website.

You can have graphics, flash, photos, video, in fact any of the technologies that make up a web page and you can get them free of charge. Even if you have a minimal budget for advertising your business website can still appear next to a multinational company’s website in search engine results. All you need is time and the ability to learn how to optimise your website.

There are literally thousands of free software programs that you can design your website with and tons of written and video tutorials to learn how to build your website. There are also thousands of websites with tutorials on search engine optimisation. There are even businesses that have built awareness of their products and services without a website and used just video to demonstrate or show case their products or services.

Facebook advertising is another alternative way to get exposure about your business. Both Google and Facebook offer paid for adverting, but the latest way to build business awareness is to have a ‘fan’ page on Facebook. National companies are quick to grasp new advertising avenues and companies like Addidas who have over 8 million ‘fans’ on Facebook must know something about marketing.

Creating a ‘fan’ page of your business on Facebook costs zero. You will need to be a little creative to get people to become a ‘fan’, but again it will only cost you a little of your time. When was the last time you were given something for free that could make you money?


Bio

My name is Alan Bunyan and I have been self employed since 1980 working and running my own businesses. I started working life doing an engineering apprenticeship for five years then ten years in computer maintenance.

I wanted to work for myself and my first venture was buying a village stores and becoming a grocer. After two years and making little money I set up the first video library in my town in 1980, but many of my friends said I was mad. I sold the business after three years for a large sum and by then had purchased the freehold of the property the video library was located in. Mad, no, just determined and now, a little richer.

When my wife and daughter decided to set up Edible Bouquets in 2007 it was my turn to have doubts about it. I expressed my concerns about starting a gift business at the beginnings of a recession. But after seeing their professional approach and start up marketing material I then helped with putting a van on the road for their deliveries.

I decided also to help with marketing http://www.EdibleBouquets.co.uk and the Internet was where I believed I could help built awareness for their business. I had been self learning for some years about building websites and how to gain visibility on the Internet. It has taken me three years so far to get a few websites, especially Edible Bouquets, ranked highly and start getting traffic to the website. Now most new customers come from the website with the remainder from referrals and repeat business.

I want others to know how I achieved it and how they can do the same. I have a new website called http://www.starting-a-business.co where I am writing about my experiences and Internet marketing knowledge.