For business-to-customer (often abbreviated as ‘B2C’) businesses, the right advertising strategies are super-important. The size of your company, which is often judged as a heavy factor, matters much less than how well you can engage your customer. Today, all of the traditional ad media are still in play as routes to getting customers’ attention, and you’ll have to plan to invest in advertising to reach the consumer. But not all advertising is equal! Here a few media that you might consider in your B2C ad campaign.
Print
Print advertising is an old standard that’s lost a lot of ground to other forms of advertising, simply because fewer people are consuming print media. You might be able to find some really great deals in specific niche publications. But if you operate and sell in a major metropolitan area, a half-page ad in the newspaper or a full-page ad in a local magazine may cost you thousands of dollars. If you’re trying to reach a national audience, the price can be very steep—think hundreds of thousands for the same space.
Internet
Search engines and online recommendations help people track down the products, services, and offers that they want. To earn a top spot in a competitive category, you need to invest a lot of time and effort into staying high on SEO and on the chatty people’s minds. An alternative to more organic awareness is interruption advertising like the banner ads placed by Google or on Facebook. These can be relatively affordable, though it’s possible to lose money tens or hundreds of dollars at a time if you’re careless and forget to stay on top of your sales funnel. You can streamline your online marketing process—both organic and interruption—if you hire an expert in the field. But top firms and talent will cost you thousands of dollars a month to care for your brand.
Vehicle Wraps
I wouldn’t call this a new option by any means, but wrapping your vehicles definitely brings an impact to a B2C operation. The investment that you make into a vehicle wrap lasts a long time, and allows for great results. The cost of getting a quality wrap installed is only a couple of thousand dollars, but it can yield tens of thousands of visual impressions every day that they’re in the field. You can demonstrate a local presence and indicate to people that you’re operating and selling in their area. Unlike print and online advertising, there are no real limits except for best practices. Use the slogans and selling points that make the best impression and use the graphics that get the most attention. It really doesn’t matter how many vehicles you have—a single car or a whole fleet will both get you scalable results. For that matter, location isn’t important either, because a wrapped vehicle can go to your target audience, wherever they like to buy.
Reach Them Where They Are!
Have you been using any of these methods to get customers for your B2C organization? What works and what doesn’t?