Faith and Business 101: Finding Affordable Advertising

As a small business or someone in direct sales it can be difficult to know how to find affordable advertisement. You might have a very small, or possibly non-existent advertising budget. Especially since traditional forms of advertising are so very expensive, this can become very discouraging.

The good news is that in today’s online world there are several free or very affordable options! I will spend the next few weeks going over these options and giving some tips about using them.

The first two options that should not be overlooked or taken lightly is the power of social media. Facebook and Twitter are great, free, wonderful options for advertising your business. I have used both of these extensively and will be focusing this week on Facebook.

I would wager that all of you reading this have a personal Facebook page. You can use this to advertise your business, if you would like. The way that I have received 99.9% of my scrap-for-hire customers is through uploading my personal scrapbooking pages on Facebook, and including a note that said I also did them for a business and to message me for my rates.

A thing to be careful about with posting on your personal page is that you run the risk of having friends “hide” you if they feel like your page is one continual ad. While it’s perfectly acceptable to send out the occasional message about a special you’re running, or using Facebook invites to an online party-if you do this on a continual basis your friendship with these people will no longer feel like  a friendship to them.

This is why I strongly suggest you create a fan page–even if you have a blog that you’re promoting. I knew that my husband’s work friends really didn’t care if I was giving away baby food on my blog, so I created a Fan page. This way the only people that you are sending information to are those who want to receive it. You won’t be annoying anyone, and you will be getting your information into eyes and feeds of those who will actually be purchasing from you. If you are unsure how to set a page up there are many free online tutorials to walk you through the steps.

Even with a fan page you need to be careful about your content. If you only post about products and sales you will not gain many interested fans. A good idea is to post interesting relevant information, link to your favorite other pages, and from time to time open it up on your page for others to post about their own businesses. Through supporting others, being a relevant source of good information pertaining to your business, and networking you will gain a strong, interactive fan base that will benefit you in the future!

Copyright © Nicole Elliott, Moms of Faith, All Rights Reserved