marketing, it isn’t! If you haven’t done your Marketing Strategy then aside from pure luck, brilliant insight or the Midas touch, it’s likely that whatever you are advertising won’t be of interest to your Target Market even assuming that they’re reading or looking at whatever you’ve placed your ad in,or on.

Now, none of this is intended dissuade you from advertising.  Properly thought out advertisements placed in the right publications at the right times are an invaluable business tool.

Small business advertising budgets are often meagre at best and so advertising in papers, magazines, local publications, event programs, radio, television and a lot of Internet advertising are prohibitively expensive. So, for most, money is not the issue, they don’t have any in the first place.

Small businesses often advertise via word-of-mouth.  While this is cheap, even free, it still requires investment of that most precious of resources, time. Time is the one thing that none of us can ever get any more of. Time, once spent, is gone forever and can never be got back or spent again.

So, however you advertise yourself via word-of-mouth - by accosting people in the local supermarket (please don’t!) or by attending networking events to meet others - it is imperative that you spend your time wisely. There is no point to networking events that are not also attended by your Target Market.

We’ll discuss lots of ways in which you can advertise yourself and/or your business later. Whatever your method of advertising however it is imperative that you understand that without a clear Marketing Strategy you are likely to be wasting time and money.

 

Advertising

Advertising is not marketing per se. Advertising is part of the execution of your Marketing Strategy.

Lots of people confuse advertising and marketing, they are separate disciplines and marketing should always come before advertising.

Lots of people make the mistake of thinking that buying advertising is

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