How Can Advertising Help Your Business?

Have you ever wondered, how can advertising help a business?  In short, it helps your business grow.

Benefits of small business advertising include attracting new customers and helping  you sell more products and services to existing customers. It can increase profitability, too, by helping increase order size.

What Does Advertising Do?

Advertising helps change outdated or negative perceptions of your business, if needed.  Advertising can also increase visibility within your industry, helping you attract partners that can expand your business.

Indirectly, advertising helps you grow word of mouth referrals. The more new customers you gain through advertising, the more word of mouth those customers in turn will share with others.

To sum it up, when trying to answer the question “how can advertising help a business?” you can see how it brings in more top line revenue, and drops more to the bottom line.

The Benefits of Small Business Advertising

Let’s drill down to understand exactly how advertising can help a business, depending on your industry. But in reality, what does advertising do? Here are 18 benefits of small business advertising:

Increase Foot Traffic

For brick and mortar businesses, advertising in newspapers,  magazines, television and radio can get more customers in the door.

Generate Leads

For B2B businesses, advertising can fill your sales funnel and help you get more leads for your sales force to follow up on.

Introduce New Products

For software or consumer manufacturing businesses, advertising can help launch products with a splash.

Highlight Product Enhancements

If your business has an existing product or service, advertising can make the public aware of improvements.  Letting the public know about your innovation can boost sales.

Get Traffic to a Web Page

For online businesses, advertising can attract people to a landing page where you can convert the visitor into a customer.

Improve Brand Awareness

Advertising keeps your business top of mind so consumers think of it when they require a service. This is especially good for service businesses such as HVAC or pest control. But almost any kind of business can benefit.

Spread the Word about a Sale or Special Promotion

For any kind of retail business, advertising can make the public aware of a sale or promotion bringing in more customers in the process.

Drive Immediate Online Sales

For ecommerce businesses, advertising with pay-per-click ads can bring online sales almost immediately. PPC ads can move the buyer to act as soon as they see your add and click on it. It’s direct response!

Lift Brand Image

For businesses in industries suffering from an outdated or poor perception, advertising can transform public opinion creating a more favorable impression. For example, advertising can make people aware of expanded capabilities or offerings.

Boost thought Leadership or Industry Profile

If you are a consultant or run a tech company and want to be known for your expertise, advertising can help. Native ads can promote your content demonstrating your expertise and building your reputation as a thought leader.  Sponsoring content that features expertise also raises your profile and helps attract industry partners.

Announce a Store Grand Opening

Use outdoor advertising, newspaper ads or mailers to publicize a new location. Get more foot traffic.

Get Seen by Local Searchers Online and in Phones

For local businesses, it’s critical to be seen in maps search and mobile search. That way you attract those searching for a restaurant, shop or other business right in your area.  Start with a free Google My Business page and Bing Places for Business page. But don’t stop there.  Get more visibility by promoting your business with Google or Bing ads.

Beyond the search engines, get listed in local directories. Use a listing service such as Yext to make sure your local business’s address, phone, hours and other information is accurately propagated across the web to as many directories as possible.

Stand Out from the Competition

For businesses in crowded markets, advertising can set your brand apart.

Convert Online “Window Shoppers” into Buyers

Retargeting or remarketing ads can remind visitors of your products after they leave your site. This technique is proven to convert more shoppers into buyers. Let’s say someone abandoned a shopping cart in your ecommerce store or simply didn’t buy for some other reason. With retargeted ads, they will be reminded of the product by seeing an ad days later.

Grow your email List or Social Following

If you want to get more email subscribers or more loyal social followers, then social media advertising may be useful to accomplish these and other marketing objectives.  Once people consent to receiving email marketing messages from you, or choose to follow your social posts, you have more chances to get your messages in front of them.

Increase Order Value

Advertise special bundles and order size incentives to increase your customers’ average order value.  Example: offer “threshold based” coupons, such as 10 percent off every order over $150.

Boost your Content Marketing Impact

Content marketing is a powerful marketing technique. But advertising can give it even more impact.  Share your content on social media, and then boost the social media update. It will get your content seen more widely and you will get more click throughs and engagement on your content — which in turn can help improve your search engine position.  Or opt for sponsored content on a popular site, so your content is seen more widely.

Expand the Power of Word of Mouth

Advertising can help jumpstart and amplify word of mouth.  About 85 percent of small businesses report they get most of their customers through word of mouth, according to a study by Small Business Trends.

But what if you could drive the word of mouth sharing by your customers even higher?  The more new customers you get through advertising, the more happy customers you will have to share word of mouth praise about your business!

The above list is not exhaustive.  But it should help you answer the question “What does advertising do?” and get you thinking about how advertising can help a small business better achieve its goals.

How Can Advertising Help Your Business? A Tale of Two Owners

Let’s look at two case studies to better understand the strategic benefits of small business advertising. Our case studies focus on two mythical business owners, Joe and Mary.

Joe, the Restaurant Owner

Joe owns a local restaurant with awesome food.

Like the majority of small business owners, Joe gets most of his new customers from word of mouth spread by happy current customers.  He’s been proud of the positive word of mouth, as he should be.

He’s always avoided advertising, thinking he didn’t need it. And he didn’t want to spend the money.  But his attitude toward advertising is beginning to soften.

Recently, Joe has started to feel as if his business is stagnant. He’s tossed and turned a few nights, worrying.

Weekends are good, but weekdays are slow. He feels the number of customers has plateaued.

Joe also is worried about falling behind the competition. Another restaurant a half mile away has expanded into new premises. The competitor is now offering customers free WiFi, food tastings, outdoor seating on a 3-season patio and more.

Joe is profitable and is getting by, but just barely.  Without some profit cushion he can’t invest in the kind of amenities his customers are asking about.

The restaurant is starting to look a bit worn. He can’t afford the new booths and chairs needed for a facelift — let alone a beautiful new patio like his competitor.

He also doesn’t have the money to invest in new technology.  As a result, his business expends a lot of staff time grappling with an ageing point of sale system.

Aside from lack of growth, he’s beginning to worry about his business shrinking.