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The best time of year to advertise is all year long.

Advertising is a long-term investment, not a short-term expense. Experience has shown businesses that run ongoing advertising campaigns throughout the year are generally more profitable than those that don't.

Why? The answer's simple. Running your advertising consistently helps build a strong brand image, maintain top of mind customer awareness, produce current sales, and convert prospects or shoppers into future customers. Successful executives and business owners know ongoing advertising produces ongoing revenue so they advertise continually throughout the year.

The key concern of any successful business isn't "what is the best' time to advertise" but "what are the most effective advertising objectives and strategies for different times of the year, different market conditions and different financial situations." This holds true for all businesses, especially for home-based businesses or start-ups with very limited budgets.

Modifying advertising objectives, strategies and expenditures to meet changing business needs will determine who your advertising targets, what product or service you advertise, where you advertise and how frequently your advertising runs.

For most businesses, opportunities to increase sales, attract new customers, or generate leads are present all year long. It just requires altering your advertising and the strategy behind it to take advantage of these new opportunities.

Let's take the case of "Tres Chic" a stylish clothing store in a affluent mid-sized town. The store does very well with local resident business from September through May. "Tres Chic" advertises in the local newspaper once a week, periodically runs commercials on local cable TV, and mails postcards to residents when they're having special sales.

During the summer months, however, their thriving business comes to a complete halt. Unfortunately for them, once school's out, most of the residents leave town to spend the entire summer at their beach houses located over 100 miles away. The residents who remain for the summer have lower incomes and buy most of their clothing at Walmart. And to make matters even worse this summer, a new mall had just opened nearby.

"Tres Chic" can't close for the summer because the owners need the revenue. With rent, taxes, utilities, salaries and other fixed expenses, any income is better than none at all. Rather than sit in an empty store, read the paper and worry about the mounting pile of bills,

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