Have you ever been to a restaurant with a menu that seemed never ending? When we’re given too many options as consumers, our brains get overloaded and we don’t know what we want, let alone what we need.
Well, the same is true for advertising a business. It seems that every year there are more and more platforms business owners can choose from to advertise their business, and in a world with millions of options, it becomes overwhelming.
Here are a couple of tips that will help you weed through the avalance of options that bombard you on a daily basis (and maybe the next time you’re stumped by a restaurant’s menu).
Free is not really free
When you have no idea what you’re going to order, do you start rating things by price and lookin for the cheapest thing on the menu. Don’t be fooled!
Advertising is no different. Free is never really free. Facebook is the poster of free gone bad. When it started out, Facebook pages seemed too good to be true. You could create a page and get your business in front of the world. People were spending a great deal of effort on engaging people on Facebook® until they suddenly turned off the faucet. Now if you want all those people who liked your page to see your content you need to pay. Now if you want any real attention, you need to pay to get it.
Free should never be at the center of your marketing program.
Start with the basics
So when you’re stumped and you don’t know what to order, go with something basic and classic, something that won’t let you down and you know will satisfy your hunger.
For marketing, its having a good website and an email marketing program Email marketing is still the most cost efficient way to reach people – you own the list and no one can take it from you.
For example, I went to a Colombian restaurant this past weekend. So this restaurant is a destination for Colombians who want authentic food, but when I pulled up their website on myphone I couldn’t click on their address for directions. It was frustrating to find it. We got there and the food was good, but they didn’t ask for an email. How little effort it would have been to get my email and send me an email every three months with a simple reminder that they are still cooking my favorite foods from Colombia.
It seems simple and basic, but when you are bombarded with advertising options it is easy to get lost. Ignore all the other options until you have a website and email marketing programing in place and you will save yourself a lot of time considering all the many choices you have to promote your busines.
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