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4 Small Business Advertising Ideas To Boost Lead Gen & Maximize Budget

small-business-advertising-ideas

Advertising your small business isn’t exactly straightforward. Even if you have a killer outbound marketing strategy, it can still be tough to decide: 

  • What your budget is
  • Where you’ll spend it
  • What kind of ads you’ll develop
  • What keywords you’ll bid on
  • And what content you’ll use to attract the attention of the right leads

For most small businesses, the biggest struggle is getting the most leads out of a modest budget. Here are a few small business advertising ideas you can use to boost lead generation while maximizing your PPC budget:


01. Recapture Your Audience with Remarketing 

Remarketing ads are one of the best, most cost-effective small business advertising ideas to boost lead generation. The beauty of a remarketing ad is that it only goes to people who have already visited your website, which means you’re advertising to a small but relevant group of people. 

These are ideal for small business lead generation, because most of these leads will be people who have already been to your site, checked out a product or services page, and just haven’t made a decision yet. Remarketing ads can help you bring those people back to your site to ultimately convert. It’s a win win, right?

Pretty much. The only thing to remember with remarketing ads is that you have to have enough people coming to your website to start a remarketing campaign. If you don’t have a decent amount of organic traffic, you might not have anyone to remarket to. If you need to build up your website traffic before you can start a remarketing campaign, check out some of these blogs for tips and tricks to boost qualified traffic coming to your site.




02. Claim & Verify Your Local Listings

This is supposed to be a blog about small business advertising ideas. So why am I including a tip that says “claim and verify your local listings“? Because it’s actually that important. It doesn’t matter how great your small business advertising campaigns are if you don’t have the platform to show your visitors that what you’re selling is legitimate. That starts with claiming, verifying, and double-checking your local listings.

Unless you have an e-commerce site, almost no one will click on your ad, head to your website, and immediately make a purchase. More likely, those leads will end up on your site, do a little digging, learn more about you, and if they like what they learn then they’ll make contact with your sales team. 

It’s important that your digital presence is set up to meet those leads with all the information they’re looking for. One of the most basic ways to win someone’s trust is to have claimed your Google My Business listings, as well as any Facebook or other social media pages for your business. With those listings claimed, your business looks legitimate, and you now also have a place to collect positive reviews. Let’s talk a little more about those positive reviews:

 

 

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03. Use Reviews to Your Advantage

What’s the last thing you look at before you decide to make a purchase? If you said reviews, you’re right there with the majority of consumers on the internet today. Online reviews are the new word-of-mouth. They inform our opinions and our purchasing decisions. If your small business has online reviews from your Google My Business listing, your Facebook page, or from an email review campaign you’ve started — use them. This is a small business advertising idea you see all the time, but probably don’t even stop to think about. Have you seen ads like this?

HungryRoot-Review-Ad-Example

This is a great example of a company using their reviews to their advantage. Putting direct quotes from your reviews into your display ads, or using data from reviews can help convert leads.

People love to see what other people are saying about a business or a product. And it’s natural for you to put those reviews on your website, or direct people to your Google reviews, but it’s good to know you can also use those reviews in your ads! They make very compelling content that is enticing for new leads.

 

 

 

04. Partner With Industry Leaders to Maximize Your Reach and Your Budget

Many small businesses struggle with the budget that comes with paid advertising. The problem with paid advertising is that you’re often competing with companies across the country for placement on certain keywords. And that means more money. (Check out these Google Benchmarks by Industry to get a better idea of how much other SMBs like you are spending, for what results.)

While you should combat this problem by targeting longer-tail keywords that are more relevant to what you do, there’s no getting around the fact that putting more money behind quality campaigns can only help improve lead generation. 

How to get more money or expand your reach

One great small business advertising idea that can boost your reach in a targeted way is to partner with other industry-leaders and industry-specific associations.

Partnering with a larger industry authority can help you get that extra budget boost you need to increase your reach. And your partner benefits from that exposure too. A collaborative campaign like this can help boost lead generation for you, which in turn increases your order quantity from your partner.

 

Paid advertising is a complex component of your marketing strategy. For small businesses especially, there’s truly an art to maximizing your budget in a way that’s still pulling in more of the qualified leads that you want. Test out these small business advertising ideas and see what you think. And if you run into any questions, or would like some guidance as you optimize your advertising strategy, Evenbound’s PPC experts are always here to help!