Small businesses often complain that advertising is too expensive.

This can indeed be true, but I’ve seen countless examples where one business successfully uses advertising to generate leads while another simply wastes money doing the same.

The difference – two things – successful small business advertising requires ruthless application of experience and measurement.

Experience includes – past experience gathered from clients, experience of an honest ad sales rep, knowledge of your industry, experience gained from measuring past campaigns (competitive experience – usually contrasuccessful)

Measurement – don’t even consider running advertising if you can’t measure the results, it’s too risky. Measure every medium, daypart, and location, online and offline. Measure every element that can be measured – headlines, offers, images, type, copy. It may feel extremely tedious to do so but when you have a limited budget it’s suicide to do otherwise.