3 top ways to advertise a small biz

By Steve Strauss

Q: Steve - I love the Super Bowl ads. If I could afford a big ad agency and had a $1 million budget, I could get results for my small business. But I don't. What should I do? -- Kate

A: It truly is amazing that the Super Bowl has become as well known for its great advertising as its football. Who can forget Coca Cola's Mean Joe Green ad from 1979, or those funny Budweiser frogs?

And then again, not all of the ads are great. One of the worst ever was one for Holiday Inn in which a woman at her high school reunion was revealed to actually be a man, her sex change apparently akin to recent renovations at the hotel.

So bad ads can happen to good businesses, even when those businesses have million dollar budgets and marketing wizards. By the same token, when it comes to small business advertising, while budgets may be a scapegoat, they are rarely the real problem.

The problem for most small businesses is a lack of creativity, boring ads, and doing the same thing again and again. One reason Super Bowl ads are so popular is that, when done right, they are clever and compelling.

So if you want "Super" ads too, follow these three rules:

1. Do the unexpected

Great ads are usually great because 1) they get the point across in creative and/or unexpected ways, and 2) they help sell the product.

Recall the Mean Joe Green ad I mentioned. Why do we remember it above the din of all of the other soda and beer ads over the years? Because it was unexpected. Watching the ad, you never thought that the gruff football player would get some help, in the form of a Coke, from a sweet kid.

Here's the deal: There are 28 million small businesses out there. That's a lot of competition. Even worse is that people are now being bombarded with advertising in places and at times they never before experienced, so many are simply tuning advertising out.

The only way you can get your ad noticed then is to have it be a bit quirky, unexpected, and clever. For example:

On the side of a coffee vending machine is a life-like picture of a woman. When looking at the vending machine, it almost looks as if she is inside the machine, hard at work, making and brewing coffee. Below is the tagline for the temp agency, "Life's too short for the wrong job."

During tax season, a CPA ran radio ads that began with three sharp, loud alarms, like the beginning of emergency broadcasting segments ("If this had been a real emergency . . . .") He then talks about your tax emergency. It's unexpected because it is not your typical accountant advertisement.

2. Try shoestring advertising

There are all sorts of ways to get your business name out there and get attention without spending big bucks, if you are creative.

What about a contest? I once had a client who owned a bakery. She decided to have a banana bread baking contest. She got some chefs to be judges, the local media picked up on it, and before you could say rice pudding, she had an annual event that received tons of free publicity.

Or consider co-op advertising. Your major distributors and wholesalers may pick up a large chunk of the cost of your ads if you mention their product. Ask.

3. Expand your Web presence

Did you know that half of all small businesses do not have a Web site? That is an amazing and sad statistic. If this describes you, the first thing you must do NOW is go get a Web site. Here is a wonderful resource that will enable you to create a professional Web site, and market it, for free.

And if you do have a Web site, then one of the smartest things you can do these days is devote more of your marketing efforts and dollars to it. Don't know how? It, too, is easy. What about your blog? I know, you probably don't have one, but you should. Even I, the most cynical guy around regarding blogs, have not only come to appreciate that they are a great way to communicate with your customers, but that they are also a smart, cost-effective way to get new ones.

Yes, I, too, have joined the blogosphere, if belatedly. You can read my new blog, Business as Unusual.

So no, you do not need a super budget to create a super ad campaign.