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Advertising Without an Agency

    by Kathy J. Kobliski, Author & Owner of Silent Partner Advertising

    Advertising is often considered to be an "evil necessity" by small business owners who try to find affordable ways to increase name recognition of their business and traffic to their location. A small advertising budget will not allow you to hire a professional ad agency to direct your dollars to the right audience every time with enough frequency to make your dream customers get off their behinds and seek you out. So you must make these expensive decisions alone -- usually with little or no expertise in the advertising business, relying on information provided by media sales reps.

    I have never met a business owner who advertised without the help of an ad agency by choice. It’s something a small budget forces you to do. Advertising, after all, is not like wallpapering your guest bathroom, or landscaping your property little by little over the years to save a little money. Once you begin advertising, every dollar becomes crucial and all facets of the process become critical.

    I have met many advertisers in the last 20 years who said they had "tried" radio, or "tried" print, or "tried" television advertising and it didn’t work. Let me say right away, that you can’t "try" any form of advertising and expect it to work. You must use it, and use it correctly. Then, and only then, will it work to increase the traffic in your store or make your phone ring. Why is it such a problem to do it right? For the purpose of this article, I will use radio for my example.

    Remember these 3 words -- in fact, embroider them on your underwear:
    • Location: Where will you place your ad? In a medium size market there can be 30 or 40 radio stations vying for your money. Depending on your business, you may only be able to use 3 or 4 of them to effectively reach your target audience.

    • Frequency: How often will you give your audience the chance to be exposed to your ad? Radio stations with "easy listening" or "talk" formats keep their audiences for long periods of time, so you can reach their listeners with fewer commercials than you can on a station where the typical listener channel surfs. A station where the listeners spend only short amounts of time require larger blocks of commercials to be run in order to have a chance at being on when the listener is tuned in. Current wisdom dictates that a person must hear an ad 2.5 times to take action on it.

    • Message: What will you say in your ad? Are you trying to create name awareness? Promote a special event or a sale? Image advertising projects a feeling about your company and your product or service rather than providing price and item information. Remember the first Saturn television ads? You never saw a car. You saw beaches, water, and footprints in sand, but you never saw a car and certainly not a price. This is image advertising. Motivational advertising gives the customer specific information about your product or service, price, a special offering, and especially a time limit to trigger a prompt response.

    And once you begin to advertise, you really shouldn’t stop. Once you start pushing the ball up the hill you must keep pushing, because if you stop, the ball rolls back down and you have to start all over again. You can’t advertise a little, then disappear, and expect people to remember. However, advertising builds nicely as you go, so if you keep the ball going up the hill, slowly but steadily, your name awareness and traffic will grow. You have to be brave. There’s no doubt about that. It takes guts to see money going out and be able to wait for results. But there’s no other way. No magic. No "let there be light." It takes time.

    Advertising Without an Agency is geared to the small business owner who is working with a small advertising budget. It is a beginner’s guide to understanding the basics of radio, television, print, direct mail, and outdoor advertising. Small business owners have many other things to do each day and they can’t be expected to learn all of the ins-and-outs of the advertising business, which is in itself a full-time job for advertising professionals. Yet it is one area where thousands and thousands of dollars are easily wasted by making uninformed decisions.

    The information in my book takes you passed the normal advice on where to advertise, to the all-important how to advertise. Step-by-step worksheets (for media reps to complete) save you time and costly mistakes by providing you the "fluff-free" information you need to make sure your advertising dollars are placed correctly every time.

    Along with worksheets for each medium, there are also worksheets to help you determine exactly who your customers are (you may be able to advertise to more groups of people than you thought), and keep track of changes in your customer base. The book also lets you know what kind of help you can expect from your media sales reps...how they can save you time and how you can benefit from the really great creative reps. The material is presented without a lot of jargon and is written in a conversational manner, perhaps even making it seem more basic and simple than it really is. A great deal of material is covered in an easily understandable fashion, taking a lot of the confusion out of the subject. It’s not, and was never intended to be, a ten-pound textbook. Small business owners rarely have time for that. A better description is a handbook, a guide, a primer for getting the job done right the first time (and every time). It’s also a great "back to the basics" read for those who have been advertising for a while.

    © by Kathy J. Kobliski. All rights reserved.

    Kathy J. Kobliski
    • Author of Advertising Without an Agency (PSI-Research/Oasis Press, editions 1 & 2, 1998, 2001).

    • Monthly columnist for entrepreneur.com for two years (2000 & 2001).

    • Written articles for Sales Masterminds, Canadian Women’s Business Network, HomeOfficeMag.com, and StartupJournal.com, and others.

    • Quoted by the Wall Street Journal, Kiplinger, Independent Business, Golf World Business, Switchboard.com, BankRate.com, SkyRadioNet.com, General Motors, The Money Room and The Ron Thomas Business Forum, and others.

    • Owner and President of Silent Partner Advertising in Syracuse, NY since 1984.

    • Taught advertising and media-buying within the New York State Small Business Development Program for three years.

    Advertising Without an Agency Order Today!


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