Advertising a small business

dingdongavoncalling

I know I can't do it on here....but wondering how best to go about advertising my small business.

To give you a bit of background I create items and sell them from home mainly via a facebook page which has 1350+ 'likes' at the moment. I also work full time. All my earnings from this business are going into a wedding savings pot.

I currently advertise on local selling sites.
I recently went to a craft fair with a friend but it was very quiet and not worth my time sat all day twiddling my thumbs! Made v.little profit. In fact, I sold far more that day from my facebook page than from sitting at the fair!
I have sold a little on ebay and etsy, but prices have to be slightly higher here to cover fees.

Nearly all the income is coming from facebook.

Any other ideas how to promote? x

Lagoon

I would recommend launching your own website, and ensuring that it's optimised. Facebook has been an excellent tool for businesses like yours, but relying on someone else's website without any other online presence has never been a wise idea. Unfortunately, that's now becoming more and more obvious as Facebook implement changes that make it harder for small businesses to succeed on their platform.

Pinterest is also a good idea to supplement your own website, as it allows you to share images of your products. The focus there is on pictures, and each can include a price and be linked straight through to your website.

Twitter is another good source of leads, and there are specific hashtags that you can use to network locally.

I think the best idea is to spread your online presence, but to ensure that it all focuses around your own site. I run a business specialising in this myself, so if you've got any specific questions then you're welcome to ask away or send a PM.

paulwf

If you've trialled various things and found Facebook works best for you then maybe for now work on growing that, with the current number of page likes there is plenty of potential to expand the reach of your page. It might be worth trying some precisely targeted advertising, if you aren't in a rush so aren't just throwing money at it then you can set a low budget and pay rock bottom prices to increase your page likes. There are loads of unpaid methods as well which are probably even more effective, just have a play on google and you'll soon find info. Facebook definitely works best if you play the long game rather than try and double your page reach overnight.

Lagoon has some great ideas too, the more channels you use the better but certainly focus on the ones that bring the most returns.