What small businesses can learn from The Super Bowl

Whether you’re perusing the grocery store spotting the game day displays or watching a website builder Super Bowl ad, there’s one thing small businesses can deduce from the football madness.

Marketing is a big deal.

While a 30 second Super Bowl ad may run you $4.5 million dollars (crazy, right?), there are plenty of cost effective options for your small business to advertise within your budget. Here are three ways to get started.

Email marketing
We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again. Email marketing is not dead.

And moreover, it’s still a huge piece to the marketing puzzle, as it’s a cheap, simple method to reach the masses.

Getting started is simple. Here’s how:

• Get an email address to match your custom domain name
• Collect the email addresses of your audience in exchange for something up their alley (i.e. ebooks, music downloads, etc.)
• Sign up for an email client, (MailChimp is a great option)
• Start sending out mailings your audience will open

Paid search
When it comes to spreading the word about your company, a great bang-for-your-buck is paid search.

Why?

Well, with 40,000 search queries per second and 3.5 billion Google searches per day, what can we infer about the Internet community as a whole? That they’re online and browsing search results constantly. What better place to set up your [Internet equivalent of] your digital billboard?

And these days, paid search has been made easy. Instead of dedicating hours upon hours to keyword research and overseeing your own campaigns, companies like SiteWit can manage all of this for you, with campaigns starting as low at $50.

Social media
Let’s circle back to Paid Search briefly. Paid Search campaigns are managed by setting a budget, and bidding on keywords that when searched, your advertisement will appear. The more popular the keyword, the higher the price.

Small businesses have the opportunity to advertise through social media in a very similar way. Along with keywords, you have the ability to bid on an audience based on gender, language, and interests, among much more. The more popular the audience, the higher the price. Once you’ve decided on your audience, set your budget and the maximum amount you’d like to spend per website click, and you’re set.

And the options are not limited there. Learn your audience, and make your campaigns more targeted – adjustments can be made at any time.

Creating an advertising campaign on social media

Now while you’re watching the big game today, just remember there are plenty of ways to reach your audience within your budget.