Financial Times

Advertising for the small business

By Nilooka Dissanayake
Do small businesses and entrepreneurs need advertising? The answer depends entirely on what your business is all about. In this article we shall discuss the basics of advertising to help you make the decision yourself. This, you would realize is not easy because you have to do a lot of thinking for yourself. And that is what this series of articles is all about: providing food for thought—for not just those dreaming of their own business but also those already in business.

So, what is advertising? Obviously everyone in business needs to let their prospective and current customers know what the business is doing and what products and services they are offering. Advertising is about getting this message across to the intended recipients. But, advertising is just one method of achieving this objective. The whole gamut of activities that you must undertake to promote your business is called promotion (what else?) in marketing parlance. If you recall the famous Four Ps of marketing, which we discussed in articles very early in this series, you would remember that promotion is one of the four Ps.

Marketing professionals classify promotional activities into four general categories. They are: personal selling, sales promotion, advertising and public relations. As a small businessperson, you need to understand how each of these can help you to promote your product or service.

Personal selling is meeting your customers and prospects in a one to one meeting. It does not mean visiting personally although that may not be a bad idea once in a while. Soon after the former CEO of Union Assurance, Sarath Wickramanayake, took over the helm, he told us that he made it a point to visit personally all of the large corporate clients of the company. In his opinion, business is all about building relationships. So while he was not selling insurance to corporate clients, he was selling the company and it’s commitment to serve the clients. That is some food for thought for each CEO, whether at a blue chip or in a small business. This relationship building is what made the proverbial Matara Mudalalies successful. They are masters of relationship building and it does wonders for the business. Oriflame, the cosmetics and personal care product company, uses only personal selling to promote their products.

Sales promotion includes most of the things you do to promote your business other than advertising and public relations. It includes everything from periodic sales to special deals like buy-one-get-one-free offers and the like.

My former employer, Brown and Company uses service campaigns effectively to promote the loyalty of their Exide Battery and Suzuki customers. What can your business do by way of sales promotions?

Chrishantha Jayasinghe, the Joint Managing Director of Q&E Advertising, defines advertising as the “science of getting a required response from a member of the target audience by incurring the least cost.” Advertising is all about using electronic, print or other media and paying for it. Please note the last part of that sentence. If you pay for exposure in the media, that is advertising.

Public relations or PR includes all the things you do to get publicity for your business. Ever wondered why everyone seems to be inviting VIPs to opening ceremonies and the like? Well, that is for the purpose of increasing the news value of the event. Logical enough, isn’t it? There are also other things that you can do to get publicity.

Taking part in community activities, promoting environmentally friendly campaigns, making donations for worthy causes, organizing newsworthy events are all part of the PR activities open to your business which will get you free publicity as opposed to paid advertising.

According to Nimal Gunawardena of Rowland PR, public relations is a very powerful tool open to small businesses who do not have money to spend liberally on media advertising. And it is unnecessary for a small business to go for media advertising if the business is operating in a limited geographical area. In such cases, advertising only boosts the ego of the business owner and does not achieve the intended objective of reaching the target audience at the least cost.

Nimal also speaks of other options open to small businesses such as direct mailing.
If you have specific questions on advertising and PR, we look forward to hearing from you. We will try to get the experts to flex their thinking muscles on answering your questions.

You can reach us at ft@sundaytimes.wnl.lk or 074-304112.

The writer is the Managing Editor of Athwela Vyaparika Sangarawa (Athwela Business Journal), the only Sinhala management monthly targeting the small and medium sized business operators and its English version, Small Business International

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