Should You Use Paid Advertising or Free Advertising?

Every business out there needs to advertise. Even businesses that think they can survive with only referrals or only word of mouth need to do some advertising to boost sales. This applies whether you have a small business that you run from your house all by yourself or if you are a large multi-million dollar corporation or if you fall somewhere in between.

Once you understand that you need to advertise, the question of what kind of advertising should you do will come up. And although you should ultimately be doing multiple kinds of advertising within your business there are many things to consider when making the decision about what kind of advertising to use and what is right for your company.

When you use paid advertising obviously there will be costs involved. But these costs will vary depending on what type of paid advertising you decide to go with and how far the advertising goes. Most of the time, the more people see your ad the more expensive it can become. For example, usually national advertising is more expensive than local advertising. So large scale paid advertising is usually better for large companies with a large marketing budget. Paid advertising can include a wide range of options such as newspapers, television, magazines and even web sites. It can usually be broken down into local, state, region, national or even worldwide areas.

On the other hand there are many free options available to someone who has a limited budget or even for a company that wants to expand their reach beyond what their current budget can include. Sometimes free advertising is more limited than paid advertising and may only include small groups of people and limit the number of people who will view the ad but that is not always a bad thing. Just because your ad might be seen by 1 million people doesn’t mean that they will all buy.

By targeting a smaller more localized area sometimes you will find your target audience more receptive to your message. Depending on the type of free advertising you use it may be limited to a local or statewide reach, although some free options such as web site advertising will still give you the opportunity to reach a national audience.

Sometimes your free advertisments don’t reach a completely receptive audience, but as long as you try to use options that will show up where your ideal client is likely to be, at least there are no costs if it doesn’t work out as well as you had hoped. Some types of free advertising include article marketing which requires that you write articles about your industry and submit them either online or to print publications. You can also place ads in Email newsletters that people send out to their list of subscribers or post banner graphics on web sites that have that option available to businesses. Many of these options also allow you to track the clicks your ad gets so you can see how effective it is and adjust as needed.

If you do decide to use a paid advertising option be sure to check and see if the company offers a way to track your ad. Maybe they offer a special phone number, or you can direct people who see that particular ad to a specific page on your web site that only they would know about. You can also provide the viewers with a special code that they have to provide in order to get a special discount. These things will help you track your advertising and determine if it is effective or simply a waste of money.

No matter which type you choose the key is to stick with it long enough to get complete data as to the effectiveness of that particular venture. And try out multiple options over time. Just because advertising on one website or one TV station didn’t work well, doesn’t mean that you should never advertise on TV or on websites again. It just meant that either that particular audience wasn’t interested, it was the wrong time of year, or maybe it was the wrong message. There are many reasons why an ad might not do as well as you hoped it would. You should always test variations of the ad as well as variations of the ad location.

By having a varied marketing plan that includes some free and some paid advertising your business is sure to benefit.

About The Author:
Ely Delaney is a dad, author, speaker, marketing consultant and Founder/CEO of Your Marketing University. His goal is to teach marketing in a simple easy to understand format that businesses can use to help gain marketing ideas & market their businesses to boost sales.

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