When you advertise online you need to define what you want to achieve. In marketing this is referred to as a conversion. You can think of a conversion in terms of your customer making an order, calling your business, signing up for a newsletter, etc. These are the goals you have in mind when you start advertising either online or offline.

For small businesses, advertising can be perceived as an costly expense, but if you don’t measure your return (ROI) you have no way to judge either way. Some business owners will even ask how much their marketing or advertising budget should be.  Then we have to go back and ask the fundamental question of what are you trying to achieve?.

Put another way,  how much must you spend to achieve your goal, and what does a conversion mean to you in terms of dollars.

Step 1: Decide what you want to achieve?
What do you want to have happen if someone responds to your advertisement. Is it to order your catalog or make a purchase? Starting with this, you can then determine where you might want to advertise or how to word your ad.

Step 2: Are you Spending on Search Advertising?
Studies have shown that small business use search engines to get found online, so you are probably already spending money on search ads. And if you are, then are you over spending? Or should you be advertising somewhere else? Without understanding how much a conversion is costing you in terms of advertising spending you will not know if there is a cheaper alternative.

Step 3: Have you made the conversion easy to do?
After you have generated interest and someone has responded to your ad do you make it easy to make an order, or find your catalog request form? These are key questions to ask yourself. If you have an effective ad but do not have a landing page or any easy to follow process after they click or respond to the ad you will lose customers.

Step 4: If you are heavily spending on one medium have you tried another?
Lets say for instance you only print flyers or advertise in the local paper. If you haven’t tried another audience or another medium such as paid search advertising or sponsorships how will you know if your returns for money spent is expensive or not. You might see better or worse results but then you will know if you are spending too much for each conversion or where you might be able to improve.

Step 5: Branding
Some people may suggest that all advertising is good because it gives you exposure in terms of brand awareness. However for most small businesses advertising is something that needs to generate results through conversions. If you are not getting conversions than it really doesn’t matter how much brand awareness you have. Perhaps you are marketing to the wrong audience, or using the wrong message. And hopefully you have made it easy to convert for those that wish to buy from you.

Image Credit: City on Fire (via Flickr)

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When you are about to send out a press release, or even publishing a new blog post you should definitely consider your timing too. Timing can be very important to maximize your announcement. Large companies tend to pick their announcement dates well in advance and they usually coincide with industry events or competitive announcements. But you too can use this technique to get more mileage out of your announcements.

Sometimes it is not enough just to have a great message, but you also need the right audience to capture their attention.

Perhaps some examples will help, imagine you are in the consumer electronics company and you have a new gadget that has been highly anticipated. What do you do? Well in the case of Apple they announced that in two weeks time there would be a big announcement. And for the two weeks that followed there was great anticipation and a lot of speculation of what it could mean. Exactly two weeks later they launched the iPad, a new product for the company and you were not even able to buy it yet.

Ok so you are not Apple and do not already have a cult following, but you could instead take advantage of recent news headlines. If you are selling cars you could take advantage of timing by speaking about product safety, since with the recent news of Toyota safety is once again taking over prime time news and television. Or if you have been watching the growing discussion about interest rates rising later on in 2010 you could use that opportunity to launch a new promotion.

In fact just today my mortgage company sent me an email asking me if I was thinking about the potential of rising interest rates and if I was interested in locking into a fixed mortgage before it happens. There it is, a perfect market timed marketing push.

What dates are key for your marketing messages?

Some key dates might center around conferences or trade events that you will be attending. If you release your announcement at these functions you can definitely make a splash and grab people’s attention. And if you’re lucky take attention away from your competition.

1. Watch the current news for ideas on what is going to get people talking today
2. Annual Awards where local businesses are recognized
3. Community Events
4. Holidays – Spring Break, Mother’s Day, etc.
5. Charity Events you might want to Sponsor or contribute a fund-raising prize

Image Credit: Redstamp (via Flickr)

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