SMEs on a budget eye digital advertising

Dubai: Although you’re a small business and do not have billions to spend on advertising campaigns, you have a brand that needs the widest reach possible — and you can achieve this on a small budget.

Advertising on social media is your best option if you want to reach the largest number of people, while keeping your costs down, according to Colin Beaton, managing director at Limelight Creative Services, a boutique retail strategy and design firm in Dubai.

Social media has an advantage of being “ very targeted,” said Reda Raad, COO at TBWA/RAAD, an advertising agency.

On your company’s Facebook or Twitter profile, you can monitor conversations of users that belong to the demographics you are targeting. These conversations can be measured to calculate return on investments, according to Raad.

Another effective tool to gain a wide exposure to your brand for less is Pay-per-click (PPC), he said.

Google AdWords, a form of PPC advertising, allows you to advertise on Google and their advertising network — and you pay per click. It gives you the option of choosing the type of customer action you want to pay for, frequency of ad display and the number of conversations received.

If you want to broadcast your brand’s creativity to your potential customers, then a Youtube channel is a great option — and it’s free. It can give a wide exposure — and you “can get millions of views,” Raad said.

Meanwhile, word-of-mouth is also an effective way of advertising with minimum costs. Customers trust their friends and are likely to buy the products they share, according to Raad.

“Controlling that conversation is important,” he added.

However, word-of-mouth can “lead to slow growth of your business,” Beaton said, adding that social media is ideal in boosting business growth.

Another low-cost advertising option is sending messages for future promotions to customers, as an email or a text message. “It can be used to measure satisfaction of customers,” Raad said.

You will need to create a database and store your customers’ contact details.

“After-sales care for SMEs is critical,” said Raad. This is especially important for new companies that need customers’ feedback for improvement, he added.

Radio ads and promotions done by public relations agencies are also options available to SMEs, he said.

Mobile advertising, which is mostly done by big companies, can also be an option for SMEs due to the platform’s great penetration and reach, Raad said. “It has a great opportunity for growth.”

Before choosing the ways you want to advertise, you need to understand your target market first, according to Beaton.

“You need to know what are the media channels customers look at. You need to consider how many potential customers see your brand, so that you can get a better return on investments,” he said.