Small Business Advertising Advice

Quite a few of the folks who read this website are small, independent computer consultants, full or part-time. Most of those readers probably have an ad at our Unix and Linux Consultants listings.

Here's the interesting thing: some tell me they do very well with that and get leads from it often, others tell me they've been there for years and have never had a nibble. That seems odd, doesn't it?

Well, maybe not. The points I'm going to bring up here might help explain that, and are just as true for any advertising: newspapers, magazines, Google Adsense, whatever. While I'm at it, I'll be pitching for those of you who have free consultant listings here to upgrade to the Premium listing, but the reasons I give will be applicable to other advertising venues.

You have to ask

People don't always bother to tell you where they found you - usually you have to ASK, and if you aren't in the habit of doing that, you aren't going to know whether any advertising campaign is useful.

With newspaper and magazine campaigns, you'll often see something like "Department M" or "include coupon code Q234GH for special discount". Those are tracking devices so that the advertiser can judge the effectiveness of the ad. With a web ad, you have some built in tracking: if you are advertising a link to your website, your weblogs will show the referrering site. You can differentiate even more: if, for example, your website is "http://xyz.com", using the link "http://xyz.com?ad-one" will work just as well, but that "ad_one" will also be in your weblogs. Doing this kind of tagging can help you judge the effectiveness of web advertising.

Yes, of course I'm happy to add any tags you like to links you may have here, free or paid.

You have to sell

When I look at some of the listings here, I'm not surprised they don't work. If all you say is "Linux Consultant", do you really expect that to impress anyone and grab their attention? In this particular venue, I offer 200 characters of space (300 for Premium listings), but many don't even come close to using that up. Sometimes "less is more" is true, but probably not for this. You want to stuff an ad like this with information and keywords; if you do MySQL, say so, because otherwise someone who needs that will probably pass you right by if you don't mention it.

Saving money isn't the goal

I think sometimes people forget that goal of advertising is to bring business to you. It's about making money, not saving it. Looking for the cheapest advertising isn't what you should be doing: you should be looking at the most effective advertising, whatever its cost (assuming you can afford that cost).

Of course, there's nothing wrong with free: you can't lose with that. But just because you got no results from free or low cost advertising doesn't mean you wouldn't get results from something better. I really have to shake my head in wonder when people say something like "Well, if I ever get anything out of the free listing, I might upgrade to your Premium offer". If you aren't getting anything from the free listing, you should probably be looking at WHY - other people DO get business from it, so it's something you are doing or not doing, right? Maybe upgrading to a better listing is exactly what you need: clickthroughs on the Premium listings outperform the free listings ten to one.

The same is true for newspapers, Google Adsense and anything else: other people are using those places to find customers - if your ad didn't work, you need to figure out why, not just stop doing any advertising.

By the way, I really struggled with the pricing on the Premium listings idea here.. I wanted to make it inexpensive, but I was afraid that if I did, too many people would take advantage of it and lessen the value.. well, that hasn't happened, so those of you smart enough to realize that just ONE lead from that would pay the cost for many years are getting incredible value - thousands of page view exposures every day for cheap money. If too many people do sign up, I'll have to raise the price next year (I don't want more than 100 "premiums" at most), but we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. If the adoption stays low, so will the price. That's upside down from the way most providers would look at it, but remember that I'm trying to promote Linux and Unix, not just make money from the ads. Think of your friendly neighborhood newspaper running public service ads..

Stand out from the crowd

In a crowded niche, the problem may be too much competition. For example, if someone searches for Linux consultants here, they get a very large list. You don't want to be at the bottom of that list, right? Well, in this particular case, the way to stay closer to the top is to update your listing frequently - newer listings move toward the top (Premium listings get updated automatically). In other advertising venues you might have to use tricks like changing your business name (AAA Consulting, anyone?). Or, once again, paying a little more might increase your visibility.

Coughing up more green has the same effect for other placements. The more you pay, the higher up and the more often your Adsense ads will run. More money buys you more space and better pages in a newspaper or magazine.. simple enough, right?

Let the pros help

Advertising, marketing, copywriting: there are people who can help. I'd like to recommend a couple of resources specifically, but of course there are many more easily found on the web:

General marketing for very small businesses: http://ittybiz.com. This website gives excellent advice for micro businesses, and can be a lot of fun to read besides.. drop dead funny, at times, though if salty language offends you, you probably shouldn't visit.

Copywriting advice: Men with Pens. Again, a lot of good advice for small businesses. Thoughtful and helpful articles on writing effective copy - because the selling doesn't stop once the ad gets them to your website.

Effective advertising can bring you new business. Making your ads effective and valuable does take some work, but the payoff can be great. Spend the time to think about how your advertising can be improved and you will improve your business.

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