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Marketing services for small and medium companies

Glossary of Terms - Advertising for Small Businesses

Advertising can be defined as a control message conveyed to a target market through selected media. The media typically selected for advertising are newspapers (local, regional and national), magazines, television, radio, posters, billboards, the internet, buses and taxis. Some of these media, particularly local press, magazine and internet are much more appropriate and likely to be successful when advertising for small businesses.

Selection of the correct media is crucial to the success of any advertising campaign and will usually be based on such socio-demographic factors such as age, sex, social class, geographic location, occupation, etc. When developing advertising for small businesses location may well be the biggest single factor in media selection as often the business provides its product or service in a local area or region only.

Advertising is usually but not exclusively paid for, examples of free advertising would be certain listing internet websites and directories which usually offer basic inclusion as a free option. Small and medium sized companies on a small budget can take good advantage of these types of offer to drive traffic to their website and raise their profile. Careful use of budget is paramount when advertising for small businesses, it is so important for smaller businesses to get return on investment from their marketing spend.

The key elements to any successful campaign and particularly when advertising for small businesses, are creating the correct communication message and selecting the correct media. Getting the communication message correct will usually involve developing a strong creative theme, good copywriting, clear layout and good, professional design. At local level it is very important to create a ‘point of difference’ for your business and to convincingly convey that to your target market via your advertising.

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