30 Excellent Small Business Advertising Ideas to Consider in 2023
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Starting a business can be a daunting task for many entrepreneurs. Usually, their top-of-the-list concerns or tasks are creating the product, finding customers, and constantly worrying about growing the business. A lot of times, more prominence is given to setting up the company than advertising and marketing – which is one of the critical business growth strategies.
Advertising and marketing campaigns can help you get your business and product/services out there irrespective of the local and industry the business is in. Whether you are just starting your new business or looking to grow an existing one, a solid online presence can do wonders for your business.
The global digital advertising and marketing market is estimated at $350 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $786.2 billion by 2026. So if you are not already tapping into the gold mines of digital marketing and advertising for your business, there’s no better time to do that than now.
Luckily for you, we have compiled a diverse list of 30 excellent Small Business Advertising Ideas To Consider in 2023 in this article.
Keep reading!
What are Advertising Ideas?
An advertising idea refers to marketing efforts and tactics that marketers and business owners use to promote a business, service, or product, interact with existing and potential customers, and get them to notice the brand, engage with it and possibly make a purchase of their products or services.
There are a wide variety of marketing and advertising strategies that you can use to elicit emotions from customers (existing and potential customers) and promote the brand and products to persuade the consumers to make purchases.
Remember that each advertising technique works differently to achieve the ultimate business goal of encouraging and finalizing a sale. We have provided more information on this different technique below. Please continue reading to learn more about them.
Why is Advertising Important for Small Businesses?
Advertising is a fundamental part of business promotion and growth strategy. Its controls every business effort, from brand identity promotion to lead generation, customer engagement and relationship management, product/service promotion, and ultimately, sales.
Beyond their significance to sales, we see advertisements daily and everywhere, from TV to billboards, social media posts, local events, google ads, flyers, emails, postcards, etc.
The list of advertising methods is endless. People need to be aware of your company, products, or services to grow and gain paying customers as you expect. Building your online presence and getting your products or services to people who need them would be challenging without investing in the proper advertising channels.
Benefits of Advertising
Advertising is significant to your business’s success. Creating and managing adverts for your business advertising campaigns can help you gain the following:
1. Increasing brand & products awareness
Developing an effective advertising strategy can help boost your brand, product, or service awareness. Over the years, different kinds of advertising have included direct advertising, paid search advertising, native advertising, display advertising, social media advertising, broadcast advertising, and outdoor advertising.
All these advertising forms can help you quickly get your business, products, or services to your targeted market.
2. Attract existing and potential customers
Aside from increasing your brand awareness, effective advertising campaigns can also help you reach out to your target audience faster, add quality leads to the sales funnel and boost your revenue. In addition, the right advertising campaign can help you improve your store traffic by highlighting your store’s location, increasing your web traffic or driving more people to your online store, and enhancing your customer engagement.
3. Educate your customer’s about your business
An excellent and surefire way to get your customer’s attention and get them to notice your brand and be interested in it is by providing them with up-to-date information and content about your products or services, what it does, how it can benefit your audience, and why they should buy it.
Advertising is a structured process of reaching someone you want to patronize with you and to take them from a “not interested” stage to a customer. Therefore, written content like Infographics, eBooks, product guides, white papers, reports, etc., can be super effective.
Similarly, video content like product tutorials and how-to-videos can also be used to share valuable business information.
4. Help you stand out from the competition
The exponential rate at which businesses are growing in these present times has intensified the competition among many companies today. So if you are starting a new company or currently running one, there’s a high chance you have competitors already offering your service – which is where advertising comes in.
You can create a tailored advertising campaign to push your business out and help you stand out from your competition. You can achieve this by creating and promoting your unique selling point and what makes you better than the competitors.
5. Increasing Sales & ROI
Creating an advertising campaign aims to promote your brand, products, or services to increase sales. Also, by targeting the correct audience/market, advertising can help you improve your return on investments “ROI.”
Offline (traditional advertising) will increase your local business reach and awareness. In contrast, online advertising via social media and other digital platforms will help increase your online presence and engagement.
6. Supporting other business operations
Advertising is a part of your company’s digital strategy. When done well, it can help you improve your customer service, build and manage a positive impression of your brand, make recruitment a lot easier, and help your sales and marketing teams do their jobs better.
Small Business Marketing Strategies in 2023
Here are some proven marketing strategies you can use to grow your small business this 2023.
1. Understand your audience
Your target audience is an essential part of your business growth. A good understanding of your buyer persona can make or mar your business. Instead of creating content or a campaign for a general audience, creating targeted content or a campaign for specific audiences can help them make a purchasing decision and increase your revenue.
An effective way to do this is by conducting in-depth research to discover your current customers and creating a list of people you would like to work with. Then develop your buyer persona with this information.
2. Focus on a single goal or objective
Running a business and tackling multiple tasks can be a tiring and daunting tasks, especially for the new business owners. First, there’s the concern to create helpful products, find customers, make money, stay ahead of competitors, and constantly stay in business, and the list is endless. Unfortunately, this is not very different from marketing campaigns, as you might feel tempted to set too many goals simultaneously.
Watch this, and don’t fall victim to the goal rush! Instead, set smaller, achievable goals and develop a marketing strategy and advertising tactic to grow your business.
3. Highlight your value proposition
As emphasized earlier, the competition is quite fierce in the business community. There’s hardly a chance that your new business has no competitors; hence through competitor analysis, you would determine your brand value proposition or unique selling point (USP).
Your value proposition will differentiate you from your competitors and give your current and potential customers a reason to shop with you instead of others.
4. Develop and focus on short-term goals
An exciting thing about running a business is that you are going to be working on many things almost at the same time and also getting new ideas also almost instantly. This is because the goals are not ending; you get new ones as you achieve your plans.
To keep this organized, consider setting short-term goals that can significantly impact your business sales. Get all the essential business data needed to take your business to the next level.
5. Leverage the power of your current customers
Customers are the lifeline of your business. Existing studies report that it costs five times more on average to acquire a new customer than close a new customer. Therefore, rather than finding a potential customers, you nurture the existing oners.
Besides from the money needed to get new customers, it can be very time-consuming, considering the time it takes to nurture and convert a potential customer to a paying customer.
Identify opportunities for repeat purchasing, cross-selling, and upselling. Also, since these people have bought from you before, they already trust you and are more likely to buy again based on their experience with your product or service.
6. Create a website to promote your online presence
The world is a global village. As a result, virtually all success-driven companies strive to build their online presence. Aside from your physical store, a digital store – a website can help you connect with your customers online.
This is where you can showcase your brand, products, or services – what you do, where you are, who you are, what you offer, and how a potential customer can get in touch with you.
SEO is a fantastic business promotional tool that can help drive organic traffic to your business online. You can only leverage the power of SEO by creating a powerful website. When you optimize it well, your website can be an excellent tool to generate leads and turn them into your potential customers.
7. Use available promotional tools
Digital marketing and advertising are fundamental in the global marketing and advertising space. There are many free marketing and advertising tools and resources are available online. Some of the popular ones are Google My Business, Google Analytics, Canva, Buffer, Yoast SEO, Ubersuggest, etc., and can be of great use to your sales and promotional efforts.
8. Increase your content marketing efforts
According to the Technavio report, the Content Marketing Industry is projected to grow at a CAGR of 15.8 percent and make an estimated growth of $487.24 billion from 2021 to 2026. This growth is also expected to double up, with an estimated CAGR of 38% in the Asia Pacific region.
As a result, you should leverage the power of blogging and content marketing with a robust SEO strategy to increase your organic traffic. Create more blogs and downloadable content that your prospects and web visitors can read and download to learn more stuff and be more informed about your business.
9. Promote your business on social media
Following the report that more than half of the world population (59%) now use social media channels, with 137 million new users have come online within the last 12 months.
Social media marketing uses social media channels to promote your customers on the platforms, build customer interaction to grow your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. There’s no better and easier way to promote your brand than social media marketing.
10. Leverage email marketing
Email marketing is a powerful marketing strategy that creates and sends personalized email campaigns to people in large quantities, with 4 billion email users daily and global email marketing revenue expected to reach almost 11 billion by the end of 2023.
Email marketing is a fantastic online marketing strategy that can get you closer to your customers and help nurture your potential customers into paying ones. Consider using marketing automation platforms to manage your email marketing campaigns.
Traditional Advertising Ideas for Small Businesses
Traditional advertising is a form of advertising that uses offline media to promote a brand, product, or service to a particular target audience. The primary examples of traditional advertising include newspaper ads, print ads, billboards, mail advertisements, and TV and radio advertisements.
Suppose you are a small business owner looking to sell to a local target market that is not tech-savvy or stays within the vicinity of your physical store. Here is a list of traditional and local advertising ideas to leverage to grow local businesses.
1. Print Ads
Print advertising is a form of advertising strategy that uses physically printed materials or content in local or international newspapers, magazines, or publications to reach their target audience on a broader level.
This form of advertising highlights the product/service and provides the target market with short, concise, and straight-to-the-point information. The ads – which mainly include photos, texts, or editorial partnerships- in this case, are printed in hardcopy on newspapers, magazines,
Small business owners looking to connect with their local audiences can print their ads in newspapers, magazines, or other publications
2. Flyers or handouts
A flyer is a paper advertisement generally smaller in scale than pamphlets or brochures, contains fewer words, and is typically intended for wide distribution. It is posted/ distributed or handed out to individuals in public areas like bus stations, shopping malls, streets, etc.
It is an excellent tool for two reasons – it is a cheap alternative and gives easy access to people. If designed correctly with the correct design elements and content, it can help you reach out to more people without spending too much money.
3. Business Cards
A business card is a small printed, credit-card-sized paper card that contains important information/details about your business and contact details such as your business name, logo, cardholder’s name, email address, phone numbers, and social media handles.
Your business card is a physical representation of you, your personality, and your brand. When appropriately designed, it can offer a fun, memorable, and visually captivating option to showcase your brand and leave a long-lasting impression in many ways, even long after you have handed it to a potential customer.
To promote your business, you can create creative business cards and pass them to your target audience at networking events or place them in the corner of your office for people to pick when they visit.
4. Promotional branded products
Promotional products like branded bags, hats, and mugs with your company’s logo and brand colors can be excellent advertising tools. In most situations, these designs are applied to items that customers use daily. Since most of these items remain in the homes, offices, and cares, the recipients of the things are continuously reminded of your brand.
You can organize special events to hand out promotional pens, drink bottles, tote bags, coffee cups/mugs, t-shirts, apparel, caps, hats, confectionery, notepads, and notebooks to increase brand visibility.
5. Trade Show or Event Sponsorships
A trade show is where companies in a particular industry gather to showcase their products or services. Renting a booth, you can promote your business at trade shows or other special promotional events. Depending on the event you go for, you could also post signage or distribute marketing material to sponsors.
6. Referral Program
A referral program is a word-of-mouth marketing tactic that encourages customers to advocate your brand to their families and friends. Instead of the online option of writing online reviews or submitting customer feedback surveys, referral programs allow your customers to share their brand experience with their colleagues, partners, and friends.
Consider creating a referral marketing program to encourage your customers to refer your business to their colleagues. This could include offering them discounts, cash, or free products to those who send new customers your way.
7. Billboard Advertisements
Billboard advertisements involve large-scale print and digital advertising boards called billboards or hoarding to promote a brand, offering, or campaign. Billboards are primarily on highways or major roads or traffic-heavy areas that are highly populated.
It is an effective marketing strategy that will help you reach a broad audience from various locations, getting you many views and long-term brand impressions. Irrespective of your goals, billboard adverts can help you gain local or national brand recognition.
8. Direct Mail
Direct mail is a marketing strategy that involves sending a physical letter, package, mailer, postcard, or brochure to the physical addresses of your target customers through the mail.
Unlike billboards targeted at a general audience, direct mail is sent to people who have expressed interest in your company, products, or services or live close to the business. This way, you can build their awareness of the company.
9. Cold calls
When we talk about traditional advertising, none beats phone call advertising, following a 2019 report by BrightLocal that 60% of consumers preferred calling local businesses after finding them, which is a 28% increase from 2016.
Cold calling is a B2B marketing practice that involves placing phone calls to sell high-value products to consumers. Consider placing cold calls to reach your clients and pitch your products directly to them.
10. Networking
Networking is the corporate process of making and building meaningful connections and relationships. To create your business success, consider attending networking events or organizing one to connect with your influential peers and move you closer to your target audience.
Understand that the goal of your networking event is to gain a deeper understanding of your target audience’s needs, wants, and pain points and to increase your brand awareness.
11. News Stations
News stations are television stations that are devoted to news broadcasting. Example of some of the international stations is CNN, BBC, News 24, Euro News, Sky News, Al-Jazeera, etc. Though TV ads are effective in helping you gain broader brand awareness, it would be best to opt for/target local news stations or cable TV to get your ads in front of the right target audience.
Digital Advertising Ideas for Small Business
Digital advertising is a form of advertising that uses online channels such as websites, social media, video streaming platforms, email newsletters, blog content, search engine, and more to promote a brand, products, or services over the internet. In simple terms, it is advertising for the internet.
It is often included as part of a brand’s digital marketing strategy, where most activity involves purchasing advertising space for marketing campaigns. Unlike traditional advertising, digital ads can be managed and measured to increase brand awareness and customer engagement and drive repeat sales.
12. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is improving your site to increase visibility when people search for products or services related to your business on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others. Essentially, it involves giving your page more visibility by helping you rank higher on these search engines so you can appear when your potential customers are looking for you at the right time.
Consider developing a robust SEO strategy to be more visible on search engines by adding relevant keywords, updating helpful content, and improving site accessibility.
13. Online Business Directories
Online business directories are more like the modern version of phone books. This listing can make it easier for your customers to find your business (especially if they live or work close to your business), help you rank higher on Google ( or other search engines), and drive online and offline traffic to your website and office.
To grow your small business online, consider creating and updating your Google My Business account (Google business profile) and other business directories like Yelp. These platforms are generally free. However, you can also pay for sponsored listings.
14. Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads are a form of digital marketing that allows you to show targeted ads to the users who have visited your website but didn’t complete a conversion, such as filling in a contact form, purchasing an item, downloading a file, etc.
Essentially, It allows you to target those who have already purchased or engaged with your website in some way.
15. Blogging
Blogging is the process of writing and creating photographs and other media that’s been published online. An online blog is an excellent medium to grow your business’s organic search, drive website traffic, and boost customer engagement.
By creating your own website with a blog, you can make content that can educate your potential and existing customers to nurture them to buy from you.
16. Google Ads
Google Ads is an online advertising platform developed by Google. Advertisers and businesses bid to showcase or display their ads, product listings, service offerings, or videos to web users.
It would be best to consider purchasing Google Ads to increase website traffic, get more people to notice your business, and encourage sales. Instead of SEO, purchasing Google Ads will help your web page appear on the top-most part of Google search.
17. Sponsored Blog Content
Sponsored blog content is content brands, and companies pay bloggers and influencers relevant to your industry to post on their platforms. Occasionally, bloggers and influencers use their expertise to create valuable content about your industry or offering.
To grow your small business, you can pay for sponsored posts to tap into the online (social) followership and influence to increase your brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate more leads and gain more revenue.
18. Email marketing
Email marketing is one of small businesses’ most cost-effective marketing strategy options. It refers to using well-structured email campaigns and messages to promote products or services while developing relationships with potential customers and clients.
Legal practices guiding email marketing involve sending personalized promotional messages to people who have signed up to receive updates. You can reach more prospects and customers through email newsletters and increase brand awareness.
19. Display Advertising
Display advertising is a popular and effective form of online marketing that advertises a product or service using text, images, videos, and a URL link to the company website where the users can learn more about your product or buy the product. In addition, marketers create and use banner ads and other visual ad forms to advertise a brand, project, product, or service on third-party websites, apps, or social media.
You can display ads for your product, services, or business to appear on other popular websites where their web visitors can find you and interact with and locate your business via the URL link.
20. Native Advertising
Native advertising is a form of paid digital advertising where the ads are programmed to match the look, feel, and function of the media format they appear. Unlike banner or display ads, native ads fit seamlessly on the webpage (in a way that does not disrupt the user’s interaction on the page. As a result, they are a less intrusive way of introducing your business to third-party web visitors.
21. Sponsored ECommerce Listings
A sponsored e-commerce listing is an e-commerce item that appears high or on top of the search results to increase brand visibility and boost sales. Many marketers and business owners pay for these features on global e-commerce sites like Amazon, AliExpress, eBay, Walmart, Etsy, Best Buy, etc., to help the product appear on top of customers’ searches and help them make more money.
Social Media Advertising Ideas for Small Businesses
Social media advertising is a subset of digital marketing that uses social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, Tik Tok, and others to promote a brand, products, or services. Some of the social media advertising ideas include:
22. Image Ads
Image Ads allow you to promote your business, products, or services using a single image or graphic. It is popular and mainly used on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. This ad helps showcase your products’ features and entices your target customers to purchase.
23. Video Ads
Videos advertising allows you to display ads about your business, products, or services using short, creative, and high-quality videos. They are mainly used on platforms like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, etc.
23. Carousel Ads
Carousel ads are a popular advertising format on Facebook and Instagram that combines multiple videos and images into a single ad. It allows you to add multiple images to show all the exciting features/ benefits of your products or services – thereby increasing your chances of conversion or sale.
24. Influencer Campaigns
As the name implies, influencer campaigns involve sharing your sponsored posts and messages with an influencer in your business industry to encourage them to share them with their large followers.
Since most social media influencers have sizeable social followership and influence on their audience, you can partner with a reputable influencer in your niche to share your post with their followers. This can significantly impact your social media followership and get you to your right target customers.
25. Sponsored Posts
Usually, you are allowed to post content on social media platforms to boost your organic reach. However, since organic reach has reduced drastically over the years, particularly on Facebook and Instagram, you can sponsor your post to reach a wider audience and help you achieve your business results much faster.
Low-cost Small Business Marketing Ideas
Running and managing marketing and advertising campaigns can be costly and time-consuming for many small business owners. To help you get through this without stress, here are low-cost/free marketing ideas that you can use to grow your small business.
26. Offer free product samples
If you can afford to give away some of your products for free to people who could become your paying customer, you’d consider this option. Give your free product sample to people who visit your store or customers who have bought from you. Remember that the goal is to make sales, so don’t rule your new and old customers in this initiative.
27. Offer discount codes for email signups
A sad reality about modern-day marketing is the need to give something to get the target customer’s attention. Try including discount codes in the signup forms available on your web page to encourage more people to sign up for your email marketing newsletters.
28. Give influencers free product samples
Pretty sure you must have seen videos of Influencers on Youtube (especially food, makeup, and skincare products) using certain products in their videos and giving reviews on them.
This product is often given to the influencers for free to request them to give their review and possibly influence their viewers to buy the same product. Doing this can help you gain more customers, thereby increasing your revenue.
29. Create a customer loyalty program
A customer loyalty program is a custom retention strategy developed to encourage repeat buying and make them choose you over your competitors.
An excellent example is the Starbucks reward program that gives customers stars when they buy coffee – where stars can be redeemed for free drinks and food, and priority service. You can also consider a befitting loyalty program to increase customer loyalty.
30. Create a memorable unboxing experience
An unboxing experience happens when shoppers record the process of opening up a package to take out what’s inside, and share their exciting feelings on social media to influence other people to buy the same product to have a similar experience.
The user-generated content is an effective way to grow your social media presence and grow viewers to potential paying customers.
Advertising & Marketing Tips for Small Businesses
Here are some practical advertising and marketing tips for building and growing small businesses.
- Define your brand’s identity
- Develop a logo
- Determine your buyer’s persona
- Build your online web presence by creating your business website.
- Map out an effective marketing strategy
- Build your content marketing strategy
- Build a solid SEO strategy
- Plan an email marketing and social media marketing strategy
- Invest in better digital analytics
- Invest in CRM software.
Conclusion
The ultimate goal of every business is growing and making money to stay in business continuously. This is not very different for small businesses; the pressure is even more for small businesses. They are constantly looking for ways to increase their brand awareness and maximize their ROI. An effective way to achieve this is by developing an effective marketing and advertising strategy.
We have identified 30 advertising and marketing ideas you can use to grow your small businesses. Irrespective of the stage of your business, you can be sure to adopt any of the ideas above to take your business to the next level.
