Choosing the Right Advertising Medium for Your Small Business

If you are ready to get the word out about your business, one of the steps that you need to do is to select the right media where you will advertise and promote your business.
For a small business, every dollar is precious. Small businesses do not advertise for the sake of advertising. Instead, they want to get the most return for their investment. Your advertising campaign should translate to greater sales, more profits and healthier bottom line.
While there are a number of venues where you can promote your business, you need to ask three important questions:
* Where are my target buyers?
* What is the best medium to reach them?
* Can I afford to launch an effective campaign using this medium?

An important step to developing your sales and marketing plan is to select the right media to send out your message. There are no hard-and-fast rules as to which media is better. The right media for one business may be wrong for another.

Based on an excellent small business reference book "How to Start and Operate a Successful Small Business: Winning the Entrepreneurial Game" by David E. Rye, as well as contributions from our staffers, below are the relative advantages and disadvantages of the advertising media most frequently used by small businesses:

Newspapers. 

Newspapers are one of the traditional mediums used by businesses, both big and small alike, to advertise their businesses.

Advantages
Allows you to reach a huge number of people in a given geographic area
You have the flexibility in deciding the ad size and placement within the newspaper
Your ad can be as large as necessary to communicate as much of a story as you care to tell
Exposure to your ad is not limited; readers can go back to your message again and again if so desired.
Free help in creating and producing ad copy is usually available
Quick turn-around helps your ad reflect the changing market conditions. The ad you decide to run today can be in your customers' hands in one to two days.

Disadvantages
Ad space can be expensive
Your ad has to compete against the clutter of other advertisers, including the giants ads run by supermarkets and department stores as well as the ads of your competitors
Poor photo reproduction limits creativity
Newspapers are a price-oriented medium; most ads are for sales
Expect your ad to have a short shelf life, as newspapers are usually read once and then discarded.
You may be paying to send your message to a lot of people who will probably never be in the market to buy from you.
Newspapers are a highly visible medium, so your competitors can quickly react to your prices.

With the increasing popularity of the Internet, newspapers face declining readership and market penetration. A growing number of readers now skip the print version of the newspaper (and hence the print ads) and instead read the online version of the publication.

Magazines.

 Magazines are a more focused, albeit more expensive, alternative to newspaper advertising. This medium allows you to reach highly targeted audiences.

Advantages
Allows for better targeting of audience, as you can choose magazine publications that cater to your specific audience or whose editorial content specializes in topics of interest to your audience.
High reader involvement means that more attention will be paid to your advertisement
Better quality paper permits better color reproduction and full-color ads
The smaller page (generally 8 ½ by 11 inches) permits even small ads to stand out

Disadvantages
Long lead times mean that you have to make plans weeks or months in advance
The slower lead time heightens the risk of your ad getting overtaken by events
There is limited flexibility in terms of ad placement and format.
Space and ad layout costs are higher