What Advertising Channels Are Right For Your Business?

By Author: Greg Sands
Total Articles: 40
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The statement ‘if you build it, they will come’ unfortunately has not applied to the business world for quite a long time. Even if you offer a superior service or product, if a customer or potential customer cannot find you, they will not be buying from you. For that reason, marketing becomes one of the most fundamental building blocks of lasting success.

The good news is that advertising channels have multiplied substantially over the past few years. Today, you have a wide variety of choices when it comes to reaching out to your potential customer base. Choosing the right one depends on your ability to determine where you target buyers are, how they are best reached, and how to fit that within your budget.

Direct Mail

When the message needs to reach a specific audience, in a specific region, and the company doesn’t want to cut the content short, direct mail can be the best format. In this way, there is no need to pay to reach out to those who are unlikely to buy the product or service and there is no direct competition within the source.

The message on advertising direct mail can be written ...
... however the marketing manager sees fit without concern regarding length requirements. Plus, the cost of advertising direct mail can be adjusted simply by altering the number of potential customers to be reached at one time. Though there were once concerns about long lead times for printing and mailing, with improved technology over the past decade, that has been alleviated.

Newspapers and Magazines

Hardcopy advertising remains a strong player today, despite the rapid growth of E-marketing concepts. The reason for this is that newspapers and magazines reach such a large number of potential customers. Due to geographical and content specifics, they also make it possible to target specific subsections of the population, depending on what you have to sell. For example, auto repair company advertisement would generally be most impactful on a local level and for the sub-population who does the most commuting. Automotive magazines and local newspapers might, therefore, be worthwhile advertising venues. Of course, there are some disadvantages to marketing a product or service in this way. The ad space can be quite costly, especially in popular publications and your ad must face direct competition with others printed alongside it.

Yellow Pages

This term was once thought to encompass the aptly colored section of the phone book. While that is still the case, there are also online Yellow Pages, which are rapidly growing in popularity. Both varieties offer a unique way to advertise based on location. Additionally, in the web-based arena, you can also place advertisements based on what the person is searching for. Another advantage of choosing this venue, as compared to something like direct mailing, is that it is very non-intrusive. A person sees the ad, but isn’t burdened with it. Furthermore, Yellow Pages ads tend to be one of the least expensive options for reaching such a large customer base. However, marketing flyers do not face the competing ads and Yellow Pages ads can appear clustered and risk overwhelming the potential client.

Radio and Television

Two of the most successful means of reaching customers, these forums continue to receive a lot of attention from companies trying to be heard. This is because they reach so many views, allow ads to be narrowly targeted to specific audiences (who is most likely to be up during that hour, watching/listening to that particular program in the specified region?). Unfortunately, the message is temporary, DVR systems allow viewers to fast forward through commercials on television, and the cost is often too high for the marketing budget to manage.

Article Source: Mudlick Mail