How To Get Small Businesses Online For Advertisement

By Godwin Gabla Last updated Mar 11, 2020

If you’re reading this article now, you’re probably a digital marketer, a content creator, you’ve just started blogging or you are someone trying to enter the field of advertisement in a couple of days.

Well, if you belong to any of the categories above, I’m happy to invite you on this interesting ride with me.

If you’re a content creator, I’m assuming that you’ve already started getting some sizeable number of views for your contents and you keep growing at a steady rate as I indicated in my earlier article ‘How To Make Money On Whatsapp As A Writer’.

Again, if you’re a digital marketer, I’m assuming that you have already completed a couple of campaigns and you have proof of your achievements (Portfolio).

Before I bore you with too much to read, let’s dive into the little details right here.

Categorise Your Content

As a content creator, you are unlikely to write on everything in this world. You definitely have some topics or areas of interest on which your contents are based. List these topics or areas of interest and put them under bigger categories just as you’d do for posts on your blog or website.

If Kofi Agbo writes about how to play some video games, he could consider himself as someone who writes on “Gaming Tutorials”. And again, he could categorise himself as someone writing on Technology in a broader term.

So, go ahead to categorise yours as well.

If you’re a digital advertiser, you may be feeling this is not for you. But frankly, it is just as important to you as it is to the content creator. However, the only difference is that you have to categorise the products or services you’re good at marketing.

Every product has its own unique way of marketing. Running a campaign for a music video can never be the same as a campaign for an eye drop. So you have to list the services or products you’re very good at marketing and categorise them.

List Products In Your Category

Doing a near-perfect job in the previous step gives you room to have enough precision on this step. Knowing your Content’s categories gives you a broader picture of which products or services related to your content.

Take a pen and paper and make a list of all the products or services you could think of which are connected to the kind of content you are known for.

If you’re into gaming tutorials like Kofi Agbo, you should probably be looking at game stores, high-speed computers, consoles and any other products or services related to games.

If you are a digital marketer reading this, it’s the same in your case too. Just list the products or services that are associated with the products or services you’re good at marketing. Make a thorough work of this.

Re-Arrange In Order Of Preference

Possibilities are that your list contains some products or services which you’re very sure that your viewers may not be so enthused about. And there are others you’re very sure about that once you put them up, you’ll get positive feedback.

So, to reduce the number of frowns you are likely to get, you have to re-arrange the items listed in the previous step according to preference. If possible, strike out some of them. Here, you need to understand your viewers and what they want to be able to make the right decision. So, you can check out the gender and age group of your viewers to enable you to determine what works out for them.

If you’re digital marketer, you don’t necessarily need this because you already have tools to do such analysis.

Your best bet is that the majority of the businesses you would like to advertise for or have a partnership with are already on one or more platforms online. In a world where one is a digital outcast when they are unavailable on social media, businesses have found a way to keep up with the trend.

The biggest platform where you may wanna find these products and services is on Facebook, thanks to Facebook Pages. With Facebook pages which groups pages based on the Products or services they offer and their location, a search term “Game store in Ghana’ should bring up a list of posts and pages that contain the keywords “Game store “ and “Ghana”. Now, you can imagine the list of pages that could come up.

Notice: Instagram and twitter are a little bit tricky with this because they only allow room for accounts and not pages so your search terms may not produce proper results so for the benefit of this post, we shall only use Facebook and Google search.

Same way, you could type the same search term in your address bar and google search brings up a list of online resources containing social media links, websites and the likes of companies that deal in such products or services.

Find Out Their Current Marketing Campaigns And Pitch Yours

Chances are that once the businesses are already online, other advertisers or content writers have contacted them for a deal. So obviously you wouldn’t be the first person to contact them. Again, chances are that those companies are already on some digital marketing campaigns already.

But hey, you’re here for business. You can’t close your business because of the competition. That’s what should rather make you stronger, right?

So the first thing you need to do is to check the companies online resources. Check their brand presence online. The Alexa ranking for their website, their likes on social media, their engagement on social media. And if they already have ads running, check how well the ads are running.

After doing your checks, you’re likely to come across their contacts. It could be an email address or phone numbers. In the unlikely event that none of these is available, you should consider messaging them on their social media platforms with your idea of solving their problem.

More likely than not, you’re likely to be ignored if you’re blabbing, trying hard to be funny or perhaps being outrageous with your figures. So, keep it simple. Introduce yourself, tell them the problem they have and tell them how you intend to solve that problem. If you kill it well, you could get invited for a tête-à-tête.

Price Your Service And Welcome To Bankroll

The previous step may seem a little bit daunting but if you’re able to overcome it, this next step would be your moment of smiles.

Based on the numbers you have, you get to price the service you’re providing for the companies. Be sure not to mention anything so huge for the first time. Chances are that you’ll get to work with them for a very long time, and of course, that’s if you do a good job.

So, try not to block your future income with today’s greed. Be considerate in your pricing. And make them understand that you’re giving them the offer because it’s your first time with them and you want them to see how you work.

Again, don’t mention a price that’s outrageously low. You could lose good clients at a very low price. You know why? People are concerned about Value.

If I have money to buy one original Rolex watch, why would I go to buy 10 fake ones? If your client has the money to spend and you give them a very low budget, chances are that they know what industry prices are so if yours is ridiculously low, you come across as a scam and trust me, the end is bad news.

Conclusion: This is a tried and tested way of getting clients online for advertisement. This could work for you perfectly.

Happy earnings!