How to Start Your Own Business, Based on My Experiences: Part 6

Now that your video store in all setup and ready to open, now you need to get customers in the door ready to rent your movies. You are excited and optimistic about the success for your business simply because you know it's there, you know you have the best prices and the best selection around, but after a week or so you realize that you are not getting the traffic or visitor to customer conversion you were expecting. So what can you do?

The first method of advertising and of course the most common media used for advertising is the local papers. A word to the wise and budget minded do your homework on this before you layout the money for your printed advertisement. There are many things you need to know about the paper you are thinking about advertising in before you layout your money. The most important thing needed to know to determine the value of the paper is the amount of daily readers that particular paper has. While the numbers are not a perfect count, the methods used to estimate are fair. Papers determine their daily reader aspect by counting how many prepaid subscribers they have for their daily and Sunday papers (both separately and combined). It is important to note that anywhere you look; you will find that there are more Sunday readers than daily paper readers. This of course if due to the weekly ads that are delivered with the Sunday papers. It is for this same reason that the cost to advertise in a Sunday paper is higher than that of the daily papers. You see, the newspaper is very much like the location of your business. The papers that get less subscriber and reader attention are not as valuable to the printers as the paper that gets many more times the number of readers in one day than the rest of the week. Its all about traffic count, they know that more people will see your ad in the Sunday paper than they will any other day of the week. You should also be aware of contract requirements or offers that these papers have. In many larger areas, your price per printing will be much cheaper if you sign a thirteen, twenty six, or fifty two week contract to advertise on a regulated basis.

Another method of advertising uses the power of radio and television. All local radio stations offer advertising spaces consisting of thirty or sixty second audio ads that play at random times throughout a contracted time frame. This method is more expensive than the papers yet reaches more potential customers than most other methods. Many cable television companies have added a channel that airs banner ads on television all day and night long at random for their subscribers to be able to see from their homes. This method is the most expensive way to advertise but frankly is the most common place people spend their evenings (in front of the television).

The cheapest method of advertising, and probably the most valuable way to advertise your business is through word of mouth! Especially in smaller towns and areas that are still living in the past more or less, this is the only real way to make your business a success. If you win over a customer with superior service, prices, and selection, they will go out and tell all their friends to come check this place out. From this method the web of you customer database will grow from there. This same method however can also destroy your business over night. If you upset just one customer one time, they will tell everyone then can get a hold of and make sure that they spread the word not to give you any business anymore. So be careful with how you treat your customers!