1. Create a Compelling, Memorable Message

Some of the best businesses have established a single slogan or message for themselves that is both descriptive as well as memorable. You need to ensure that the potential customer is able to understand the goal of your business with just a few words as many people will simply breeze buy a business if its objective is not clearly stated.

2. Create Credible Ads

Many customers are wary, and often rightly so, of advertisements. You need to ensure that the claims you make are accurate and believable. Otherwise, you are simply wasting your money. Providing concrete facts based on research is a great way to improve the credibility of your product or service.

4. Create Targeted Ads Designed for Specific Audiences

Depending upon the business’ type, there will be certain demographics of clients that you will want to target. Make sure that your advertisements are designed with the customer in mind. For example, if you are business that specializes in weight loss, you will have a number of different potential viewers. Some will be more medically versed whereas others will be the more general public.

5. Test All Ads

Depending upon the targeted clientele and the type of small business that you are running, different mediums for advertising will succeed better than others. Because small business typically have a smaller budget, it is essential that your advertising dollars go towards an effective ad campaign. A simple way to test the success of your ads is to ask each customer where they heard of your business. This way you can determine which ads are drawing the greatest number of clients.

6. Make Yourself Accessible to Customers

Whether you are using the internet, emails, brochures, yellow pages, etc., it is essential that the potential customer have easy access to contact information that will facilitate communication between themselves and your business. Multiple contact options should be available including phone numbers, fax numbers, the address of the company, website information, and an email address. If the customer does not find it simple to contact you, they will be more likely to ignore your advertisement. Oftentimes, potential clients will view a company that does not provide its contact information openly as less credible than its competitors.

Many successful small trade businesses today are run by families. The Husband is usually the one who does the physical job and the wife/partner does the books and answers the phone. In Australia, these are the partnerships that seem to work out the best and as the business grows, so too does the staff. Brainstorming sessions periodically are a good idea even if you aren’t considering employing another person. What a brainstorming session will do for you, your partner and associates is bring out the creative aspects of building a business and it also acts as a reminder to tweak those small fleeting memories of “Oh that’d be a good idea” that we all often have but put aside due to more pressing priorities.

If you don’t want to do this with any of your business associates, then consider doing this with a group of fellow business people that you trust. This is where belonging to trade organisations or Small Business Associations can be helpful. But to get the most out of a brain storming session, everyone does need to be able to speak freely about any of their business problems and it needs to be respected as commercial-in-confidence material. These organisations usually provide this confidentiality as a ‘given’ but you need to get to know the people first. It is not something to be brought up or organised at a first meeting.

The best idea is usually to invite a group of 6-10 people for a business lunch that you host. This needs to be a mixed bag of various professional people from various industries and services who will all see a different angle to the problem or idea that you want their input into. If you have a trusted employee who is very familiar with your business, make sure they are invited along too. The morale prestige boost will also be beneficial for employer-employee relations as well as getting their input. Brainstorming is a surprising way to get a lot of information and ideas that you may never have been able to think of on your own and when practised with discretion, can increase profitability to many small businesses.