Our clients at Wildflower Furniture are a great example of successful small business advertising. The business is a small manufacturer and retailer of custom-made timber furniture and it maintains consistent cash-flow throughout the year due to a well organised marketing strategy.
As with a lot of small businesses they have busy periods and quiet periods of trade, so they have developed a strategy of forecasting when the quiet periods will be. They then utilise this time to do some TV advertising. The advertising is targeted at certain audiences and TV programs (Better Homes and Gardens, The Block) and generally results in a flood of enquiries and orders the following day.
The key to this strategy is the planning. You don’t want to leave it to the last minute to do the advertising as you may not see the results in time (have a look at this article for marketing strategy tips). You also want to plan your cash-flow in advance so you can fund the advertising cost, remembering that cash-flow is generally tighter when sales are slow (check out this article for marketing budgeting tips).
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by Scott Sharp
Scott is a Senior Accountant at Insight Accounting advice. He has a Bachelor of Commerce and is a registered tax agent. Scott’s experience covers all facets of accounting but he specialises in small businesses and SMSFs.
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