When you start out in small business, often you hear horror stories of other business owners staking their whole business future on one particular advertisement method that didn't work. It's a scary thought because we all know people do things with the good intentions of making their business grow. Advertising is important aspect of all growing businesses however, and you need to approach without fear and in a way that fits your budget.

I want to walk you through the real-life advertising campaign my husband and I used for a small movie theater we managed for 2 1/2 years. Obviously your business may have a different product or service involved, but I think the general outline will give you a great place to start.

1) Do a Lot of Planning and Research First.

Try to develop a way of figuring out who your main sets of customers are and how you can reach them better. In our case, we were dealing mainly with families, children, and teens. This led to brainstorming of ideas like field trips, special combos for families, a website where coupons could be printed, and other related idea. Even if you don't use everything, it gives you a nice starting point.

2) Pick up the book "Guerrilla Marketing" by Jay Levinson.

Every business owner who is about to spend a lot of money on advertising should get this book first. It shows you that inexpensive techniques can be just as effect (if not more) than traditional techniques that are more expensive. You can customize the techniques to your particular business.

3) Consider partnerships with other small businesses.

What I really liked about the community the theater was located was that small business owners all knew each other and wanted each other to succeed. When you can pool your advertising budgets together for events that reach more people, everyone wins.

4) Look at ways you can be involved in the community.

Be a co-sponsor of a little league team or other sports team that needs help. After school activities are often very underfunded, so a lot of times students go around looking for businesses to sponsor them in exchange for putting your logo on their t-shirts, etc. This is another win-win situation.

5) Let word-of-mouth work in your favor.

This can be based on just providing extraordinary service on a daily basis or with a particular promotion (bring your own bag for free popcorn on Tuesdays). If you want to have a website built for your business, have some element to it that will keep bringing people back again and again and tell their friends about it as well. In this way, your website should hopefully pay for itself in a short period of time.

6) Consider rewarding people for their business.

Ever shopped at a business that offered punch cards of something like "buy 5, get your 6th one free." Make sure you have a way of preventing fraud, but this can be a great way to spend your advertising dollars because it's a guaranteed thing that you've made a profit from them.

In becoming a business owner myself, I'm glad that I had the opportunity to learn and apply these techniques. If you take the time to track what works and what doesn't for your particular business, advertising does not have to be a complicated process. As you grow, you may want to consider more expensive techniques, which can be effective you can afford them. Just make sure you're stable before trying anything that can potentially do more harm than good.

Learn more about this author, Patricia Gilliam.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Deciding how much money to spend on advertising a small business?
We want to hear your view. Write now!