As a small business, you may never have taken a structured approach to advertising.  There may be an advertising budget that you outlined at the  beginning of the year, but you were well under or over that amount at the end.  Now that the economy is slow, you might be asking if it is doing any good.

The best approach is a structured advertising plan.  Compare the elements of a solid plan listed below to your market, your business and your customer.   

-Geography

-Target Audience

-Advertising Budget

-Media Types

-Marketing Message

-Placement

-Review

Today we'll start with Geography...

Make some measurements of the geographic market area that you serve and the people that live there. Find out who they are, how much money they earn, what stage of life they are in and where they live.

Consider how far your prospective clients are willing to travel for your products or services and use a free zip code radius finder to determine the area that you need to be geo targeting.

Geo targeting is the first step in ensuring that your marketing budget and efforts are waste-free!

Stay tuned for more tips from 

Morris in our small business series!