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Sales are down, or at minimum they could be better. You, the business owner, read your company’s financials and determine now is the time to take action. You call a meeting to discuss your advertising and marketing because the only way you can get sales up is to get your phone ringing more, increase store traffic, and/or bring more people to your website.  

Consequently, you and your team decide it’s time for an advertising campaign to introduce more people in your local trade area to your business, or to offer something of value to get them to try your product or service again.

You need to find the best way possible to reach as much of your target audience in the local trade area where you do business, and with the highest amount of frequency for the lowest amount of money. Easy, right?  

After a quick internet search, you realize this might not be easy after all.

And after weeks of searching for advertising opportunities, calling media outlets to get information, and listening to 100's of hours of sales pitches, you’re overwhelmed. In your local trade area, there are over 10 different types of advertising media that you could use, packaged into over 300 media buying opportunities.

But each package or proposal results in a different idea of where to place those advertising dollars—and why—largely based on the media type sold by the representative a buyer is meeting with.

So you decide to seek a professional media buyer from an agency to help, and quickly learn that the dozens of small agencies in your area very expensive, and the information they give is confusing.

After all, each agency knows more than next about planning and buying media. Some agencies tell you to broaden your trade area, while others tell you to change your target demographic. Still others try to impress you with an analysis of media data, and another advises a market study to help you determine who your customers are, where they are located, and what you should be selling them. 

So how can a small business owner make sense of all that information and advice to maximize their advertising dollars?

By using technology to plan and place advertising.

Web-based technology has made nearly every business process more efficient, from accounting and online banking to contact management and internal collaboration.

With media buying automation technology, small businesses can benefit from these same efficiency gains in the advertising and media buying process.

No need to spend hours gathering information, listening to media sales pitches, and trying to determine what media package will work for your advertising campaign. Tasks that used to take hours and weeks now take minutes and days.

They key to being a successful business is being able to take advantage of market knowledge quickly. You can take control of your advertising, and do it yourself when it makes the most sense for your business.

That unsure feeling you as a business owner deciding how and where to spend your advertising dollars is gone.

Learn more about media buying automation and how it's helping small businesses maximize their advertising dollars and get new customers.