How to advertise your service/product

[Dubserve]

Hi

I was wondering if there is any good material on how to advertise your service/product in the "real life" as well on the internet ?

It is all about advertisement right, so you can have the best service/product in the world but if you don't know how to promote it and do the advertising you will never get success.

Cheers
Thomas

[Sven]

Well, get started with seth godin, he has a lot to tell you...for free

[David-Andrew]

+1 on Seth Godin

[camdengirl]

I suppose it depends a bit on what your product or service is but there are lots of inexpensive ways to promote a product.... Okay so let's say you sell AMAZING coffee (just coz it's Saturday morning and that's on my mind!).

1) Give free samples of different kinds of coffee to your existing customers.
2) Ask them to bring in some of their friends/recommend you in return for free coffee.
3) Find the local garage/coffee shop/hairdressers and get them to display that they use your coffee.
4) Loyalty cards to encourage repeat custom or Prepay cards to make it easier to pay.
5) Bundle coffee products together as a gift.

I'm generally against advertising per say as I think there are cheaper, more effective ways of getting custom for small businesses. (And this is from a former Ad-girl! :o ) Unless you have the budget of Coca-cola your advert will be a drop in the ocean and generally people respond better to recommendations rather than you just saying "I'm really great - honestly!". Flyers are also a bit rubbish unless you can follow them up - something like less than 1% response and 5% recall within 3 days.

I do really like the Brad Sugars "Instant Cashflow" book for loads of good ideas.

If you can tell us a bit more about your real life product I can probably be a bit more specific?

[webgal]

Sponsoring events is one great way to get your name out there. You can also sponsor a networking event locally. There are businesses that would complement your product and you team up with them to have a fundraising or networking event.

That's just for starters.

You can also join your local chamber of commerce. They'd have many opportunities for you to get your name out there.

[officer_dibble]

Think PR rather than advertising. It's cheaper and becomes editorial rather than stuff to ignore.

Stunts, polls, reports etc can be good ways of getting media coverage for free. Tim also covers becoming an expert/rent-a-quote in his book.

It takes very little to get coverage in a local paper - even a letter will do. Or you could consider a regular column.

[janet444]

Sponsoring events is one great way to get your name out there. You can also sponsor a networking event locally. There are businesses that would complement your product and you team up with them to have a fundraising or networking event.


Plus, if you do this, you have a great excuse to write and distribute a press release!

Janet

[webgal]

Now you're thinking Janet. I submit a free announcement in the newspaper. People bring it up to me all the time. "I saw your name in the paper." Or, "I saw your picture in the paper." What's funny is that they have no idea I just send in the announcements and they print it. PR rocks. And advertising doesn't have to be expensive. For clients I want to impress, I make up a physical 3-d mailer or leave behind and have it delivered with a hang tag. You simply have to be creative.

[dmaloy]

Guerilla Marketing
Checkout the 100 guerilla marketing tactics and rank them as appropriate for you.

[Delbert]

Hi

I was wondering if there is any good material on how to advertise your service/product in the "real life" as well on the internet ?

It is all about advertisement right, so you can have the best service/product in the world but if you don't know how to promote it and do the advertising you will never get success.

Cheers
Thomas


Advertisements can be done in different forms. While some businesses require a huge budget on advertising, others would require little but has to spend a lot on other things such as a team to personally sell the products and services.

However, for small businesses there’s one exact path to follow in advertising. This would be to occasionally advertise their products or services on a small scale such as putting small ads in classified sections in local newspapers or most recently, in websites.