Tell Your Public to Act
If you don’t advertise, you will get nothing done.
Great products, excellent ideas, superb services have been and continue to be conceived. Even with the great array of products out in the market, conceptualisation of products and services seems to have no end. That makes it for a very lively competition. It is a jungle but it is fun.
Goods however are just as good as the patronage that it can get. No matter how excellent it is, if it is not made public, if it does not reach the attention of the consumers, if the seller finds it embarrassing (as sometimes sellers do) to advertise them, the market will not react. No sales. No revenues. No nothing.
This is why companies that is in selling marks millions of dollars in advertising budgets. Even companies that are already market leaders in their own categories, still advertise. Mc Donald’s, Nike, Pizza Hut, are few examples of brands that will be flocked by customers, even when they do not advertise for a while, still tries to gain as much advertising mileage as possible.
This way to the market.
It then becomes more reason for start up businesses to get their names out there. Small businesses, personal trades, and home-based businesses are often constrained by advertising budgets. It does not have to be so. Advertising can only be as inexpensive as you want or as expensive as you want. The idea is to get the public attention
The television, print, radio, bulletin announcements, billboards, streamers and posters are some of the more popular means to advertise. Today there is a definite trend towards digitalization. Create a good domain with an attractive dot. com. and file your site to free web directories It can add value to what you are offering. Be creative. Make attractive and simple business cards and swap them with other advertisers. Offer free printing (or charge a reduced fee) of labels and standees used in commercial establishments. Print flyers and distribute them in terminals and airports, drop them in mailboxes or hand them out to where people congregate. Wear a shirt. Use roving advertisements. The variations are almost endless.
The idea is to get as much exposure as much you can because without exposure your business will not happen.
Sometimes it can be embarrassing for many people to self promote. Then again, creating products, posting it in a good site and waiting for people to just stumble on your ad and hope that the phone rings does not really make things happen.
Do not imagine things out, act it out. Promote the product with the energy that you have because in the so many goods and services offered in the market today, a product that is not advertised (even those that are ineffectively advertised) can easily get lost.
Even if we do not have the data to hold this out, it is still safe to assume that many great innovations have turned flat because of no or ineffective advertisement. And so get your ideas off of its launching pad.
Quit the planning board. Get out and advertise. Even if at first you only succeed with attracting one person to you. One good word of mouth, if your product is worth it, can spread, gaining you at least initially the exposure you might need.
Having said that, there is still one very important point to consider. You may have all the advertising space and mileage for the product. But from the point of view of customers, you only get one chance. When the phone starts ringing and sales have come in, your product has to live up to what it has promised and the benefits it has claimed.
Continued business hinges much on this. Without that, there will be no repeat business to look forward to.
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