You cannot find a better way to grow your business than with advertising and promotion. But too many business owners spend most of their time running their businesses and not promoting them. Another problem is that many in the advertising business are inexperienced and don’t know what does and does not work. The following are some tips that will help you promote your business more effectively.

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	Herb Gross is an award-winning advertising-results expert with 30+ years of experience.

1. Take Time at the End of Every Year to Brainstorm and Review Your Advertising. Invest a day, get your employees together, and make a list of reasons why customers choose to do business with you. I'm not suggesting that your employees make decisions about your advertising, but they do know a lot about your customers. List the top five to 10 reasons customers buy from you, and integrate that into your annual advertising message.

2. Upstage the Competition. Your company vehicles are a great way to promote your business, but so many of these cars and trucks look similar. They include the name, phone number, and possibly the website of the business, all of which should be on the vehicle. However, why not make your vehicles stand out and be remembered? Paint them in wild colors; make them fun to look at; and be sure they attract attention. Some places have turned their trucks into three-dimensional rolling billboards. For example, a SC seafood restaurant has crab claws enveloping their truck. If you're in the painting business, you could have a can of paint and a brush on top of your truck. You could also drive something totally unexpected. For example, for our rock-'n'-roll band, The Invictas (www.theinvictas.com), we drive a 1984 Cadillac hearse with the name of the band painted on the side. People love to look at it and wave. I even wrote a song about it entitled "Big Caddy Hearse."

3. Coordinate the Uniforms Your Personnel Wear with the Colors of Your Vehicles. Anything you can do to differentiate your business from the competition will make you stand out in the world of mediocrity. Never copy the competition: always look, act, and be different.

4. Success Requires Planning and an Adequate Budget. Sadly, many businesses run their advertising on a month-to-month basis. Your business needs to have an annual ad budget and a plan of action. The best way to determine your budget is to take a percentage of your projected gross annual sales, and allocate that amount for advertising and promotion for the year. Most retailers budget 5% to 10% of their projected sales for advertising. Your ad agency needs to verify that the budget is enough to do the job.

5. Choose an Ad Agency that Fits the Size of Your Business. The larger the agency, the more you may be billed to help cover their overhead. If you have a small business, choose a small agency, and you'll have more dollars to invest for media costs. Roughly 85% of your budget should be invested in media.

6. Know Your Customers. The business that thinks everyone is its customer is a business that will waste ad dollars. Take a look at your customers. You should know their ages, income levels, education, where they are located, and other habits. The more you know about your customers, the easier it is for your ad agency to focus your advertising on them and deliver results.

7. Change the Message, Not the Plan. Let your ad campaign run for at least a year. If you are not receiving adequate results, try changing the message, but stay with the plan. In other words, don't change the budget, the media, or the overall strategy. It takes time for an ad campaign to be successful.

About the Author

Herb Gross is an award-winning advertising-results expert with 30+ years of experience. He's the author of How To Win The Ad War. For free advertising tips, visit www.herbgross.com and join Herb's free ad-tip club. Herb's rock-n'-roll band's website is www.theinvictas.com.

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Herb Gross's Website
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Herb Gross's Rock-n'-Roll Band
www.theinvictas.com

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