The ideal in advertising is to reach your potential clients and inform them of what you have to offer. There are many advertising methods to look at these days, all of them willing to take a piece of your advertising budget, so the idea is to maximize your advertising dollar. Some businesses look at venues such as television and radio as being the ultimate advertising opportunity; however they are also the most expensive. The reason being of course is the wide population span that they can reach in one fell swoop. This is where the kicker comes in, not everyone that sees the ad on these large campaigns is a potential customer however you pay for the advertising as if they were.

First, a lesson in advertising comparison. Advertising comparison uses a measuring tool called the cost per one thousand rating number. That is the cost that it takes to reach one thousand individuals with your advertising dollar. If say the viewer-ship of a television station is 250 000 people and the cost per one thousand price is thirty three dollars (a typical number for my area), then your advertising campaign will cost you $8250. Simple math and simple formula, however if your clients are exclusively males between 18 and 35, you will reach a lot of them, but the rest of the 250 000 people are not your demographic and you had to pay for them to hear your ad as well, and these people may be 60% of the whole 250 000.

My recommendation is diversification in advertising, do not sink all of you apples in one basket. A prime example of this is a true to life story that I experienced. I was looking for a storage company that could provide me with a ten foot by twenty foot storage room. I started by looking in the yellow pages for my area. In a population covering perhaps 120 000 including surrounding townships, I found approximately 10 12 storage businesses, however only about 8 had picture ads with additional information about their businesses. So I eliminated the others and only concentrated on the 8. Now, I wasnt about to call all 8 of them, I only wanted to call perhaps 3 or 4 due to time constraints. 1 of them kind of stuck out more than the others, so I called them first, and ultimately used them for my storage needs. Why did that one stick out for me? They seemed kind of familiar; I finally recognized them from a refrigerator magnet that I look at every time I go in search of food. In this case their diversification in adding the refrigerator magnets to their advertising campaign put them at the fore front of my mind when I needed their services. They may not have gotten my business if their price was not competitive, but they did get the first call.

Diversification also means, if they only advertised on refrigerator magnets, they would not be well known, but add that to the large ad in the yellow pages and the combination can work wonders.

Refrigerator magnets may not be the kind of marketing that would be appropriate for your business, but look around at what is new and exciting in the advertising sector. Find a medium that best suits your needs and that is cost effective in cost per thousand numbers. Dont be afraid to try new things as newer forms of advertising start to break into the North American markets. Digital advertising is the newest high tech form of advertising that has been making headway onto the scene. As the cost of electronics has been dropping, this form of advertising medium has become more and more affordable. Digital screens are being put in more and more venues that cater to a narrower defined audience demographic, making the advertising space more valuable and cost effective for potential customers.

So to put a cap on all this, dont put all your eggs in one basket, know what your target demographic is, research the best way to reach them, and above all, dont be afraid to try new things.