Small Office, Home Office Information

Yes I’m back … after too many days stuck in the salt mines with hardly any time to call my own I’m back to spend a little time on my own projects.

One of the tasks we’ve been doing over the last couple of months is encouraging a friend who owns a computer store to take his business to the next level. There’s been a make-over in his shop, a part of his business that was taking up his time but providing little income has been ditched, a new business card has been designed and he is trying to boldly going ahead with an advertising campaign.

Unfortunately he has been a little hesitant with the advertising and did miss some opportunities but we’re encouraging him and slowly he is beginning to trust our reasoning and judgment. He has tried some televison advertising but failed to follow it up effectively and this week he tried some newspaper advertising.

Here in the town where we live there are three free papers delivered to everyone’s home each week and we know of a lot of business people who feel that advertising in those papers is a bit of a waste of time. Our friend has tried it in the past but like many, he has been a little tentative and kept his ads small and barely noticeable.

Today though he splurged and this advertisment appeared in the paper.

(Trust me, my photography does not do the ad justice)

That full page ad cost our friend around $1600 and I’m sure a lot of you would never think of spending so much on an advertisement. I must say that I was a little surprised that he went ahead with it but today he learned a lesson.

Despite what a lot of people will try and tell you, advertising in small local papers can pay off. In the first four hours of trading today he had more than paid for that advertisment with new customers continually coming through the door.

The ad used the graphics from the business card we designed for him so it really does catch the eye and it also brands his business.

I am sure that he will agree that the $1600 was money well spent but once again, he’s missed out on an opportunity to capitalise on the success of that ad . Instead of building on that ad with other forms of advertising he is going to let that page go as a one off for December.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2005 at 8:39 pm and is filed under Advertising, Small Business Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.