Business Promotional Materials: Advertising basics 3

Now you know your way around the advertising obstacle course a bit better after Advertising basics 1 and 2, we can look at some of the options you have for handling your advertising and its costs.

If you're an average size business, you're more likely to want to be doing ads in trade magazines, classifieds in the local papers, or online ads using selected sites, and paying their fees. This is the sort of advertising you can do for yourself, save a lot of money, and get at least some exposure for your business.

As you'll have noticed, most ads of this kind are pretty much the same, in terms of appearance and information content. Your competitors are running fairly similar ads. The only real differences are size and appearance. All the local trades use a small column classified, some use bigger ads with graphics. Quite a lot of these ads are 'home made', or use a standard format supplied by the publishers.

If you've got a computer and a phone, you can do very similar ads. Just ring up the publisher, and ask about rates, sizes, and formatting. You'll find it's a very simple process, and they often advertise online simultaneously with other media. You can have a standard ad set up in minutes, and just vary it when you want to advertise something new.

The example given here is a very simple format which can be applied to practically any business.

You'll notice that most of the information is pretty similar to a Yellow Pages basic advertisement. That's because those ads do in fact contain most of the relevant information customers need to see. They're very effective, and can be a good template for your classifieds and other basic ad layouts.

This ad also includes terms of service, ad copy, and a discount offer for late arrival at a job.

Example

Please note: