Using Paid Advertising: Make money by Spending money

Posted by Felix Okoli on Tuesday November 1, 2011 11:18:29:

I don't know if a lot of people who really do business or want to do business in Nigeria actually know about this but you can't really do business without making use of advertising. Advertising as I see it is what brings customers to your business, no matter what type of business it is.
Think of it, people don't go to eat out at places like Tantalizers, TFC or KFC if they have no knowledge of it such as where their address is located or their products. People don't go for bargain shopping if they have no knowledge of where the market it or what category of goods that are sold there. Even people don't go for window shopping(Going for Shopping without buying) if they don't know where to go. Women don't go to plate their hair at a barbing salon or men go to a beauty shop to play golf. So people and traffic to a business are really based on what they know and that comes by advertising.

While advertising is seen as involving financial expenses, not all forms of advertising really involve money as we have what we call free advertising. So even if you have a profitable business and you are not yet paying cash for advertising, you are still getting free advertising for your products or services. In this post however, I want to focus on paid advertising and why it pays to make use of it to make more money in Nigeria.

Paid advertising produces quick results
If you really want to see fast results and make more sales, putting your money to work can just do that for you. At times, after you might have tried several ways to make more sales or get customers assuming you are a new business, you would find out that when you actually spend money on advertising is when you start seeing positive results. Your product or service may be good or even the best in your industry but you may not just have that connection with people yet but by simply investing your money into advertising, you could start making profits.

Online vs offline advertising
The type of business you do may help determine what form of advertising you should invest into. But nowadays though, people are making use of online advertising more and more to promote their offline services and products. Airlines and booking agents, car dealers and real estate investors, banks and computer businesses are making use of online and offline advertising to promote their business. Online advertising is when you make use of the internet to advertise your business. Offline advertising in this context is when you just make use of other means rather than the internet such as newspapers, banners, posters, radio, tv, sms, local publications and so on. They all involve money and they can help cast your net on a much wider market. You could just imagine how many phone calls you would get after making a successful advert.

Reviewing performance for your advertising projects
If you have invested in advertising, one of the things you would need to do periodically it to make review of its effectiveness. You should be able to separate your performance before the introduction and after the introduction of advertising into your business. Have sales increased or has it remained the same. If your advertising methods or investment are not working, then your should make changes such as using customer targeting, changing platforms, re-writing your campaign and so on.

Online advertising rocks
If you have any business or a good business idea you can work that is not yet bringing you any sales, one easy way to get it to the market is by advertising online. To start using online advertising, you would normally need a website or sort of online platform via which potential customers can look-up to contact you. For instance, there is an example of a successful Nigerian Internet entrepreneur who started a membership site but was able to get over 100,000 members within a short time just because he used Google adwords. So even if you are selling something like recharge cards or bulk sms online, or building content website, making use of online advertising can achieve fast results. Online advertising can be used to capture your potential customers just by targeting places where they go and things they do while on the internet.