Promote It

Make deliberate and wise media choices.

Consider your customers first when making decisions about where to advertise. What vehicles will pique their interest most? Millennials and Generation Zs respond well to websites and social media. Boomers, on the other hand, tend to be more old-school; they still make buying choices based on TV and newspaper ads.

Whether you choose traditional or digital media or a combination of the two, just know up front that you can never reach everyone, nor should you try. Then, forge ahead and begin to make choices, keeping two important caveats in mind:

Responding to comments and queries on social media can take up time that might better be spent on activities only you — as the business owner — can address. Consider naming a staff member your firm’s “social media specialist.”

When purchasing advertising space, avoid the trap of “bigger is better.” Media studies repeatedly show that when it comes to paid advertising in traditional media, frequency and continuity are more important than size/length of the ad or the amount you pay for it.

DivvyUp Socks, Tallahassee
Even as students in the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship at FSU, Mitch Nelson and Jason McIntosh knew they wanted to start a business to make money but also do good. At a loss for ideas, they queried a homeless shelter in Tallahassee: “What’s your greatest need?” The answer came back: “clean socks.” And so DivvyUp Socks was born — cool socks sold at first from a table on campus, then custom socks sold online. But then owners Nelson, McIntosh and Spencer Bluni got the idea to put the face of someone’s dog on a pair … and the business took off. DivvyUp hit the million pairs mark at Chris^™as. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg even posted a picture of himself wearing DivvyUp socks.

Tags: Florida Small Business, A Road Map for Success