By Lynne A Saarte

If you plan on running a business be prepared for it to involve every part of your life. Starting up and maintaining a business is by no means an easy feat and can be very time consuming. This is especially true when it comes to marketing your business, and often if you’re so busy running the company you won’t have as much time to dedicate to marketing.

The best thing you can do is figure out all the ways to continually market yourself on an everyday basis without devoting large portions of your life to it. There are all sorts of easy ways to constantly be marketing without taking up all of your time.

There’s no reason not to use flyer printing to always have flyers ready to put up and hand out to people. Flyer printing gives you the ability to keep a few with you at all times so if you go into a store with a bulletin board, why not ask them if you can put a flyer up? Take advantage of every opportunity by always keeping your eyes open for them.

The same is true of custom poster printing. While you can’t always carry them around with you, pay attention to good locations to place them when you’re out running errands. That way when you actually do get your custom poster printing taken care of you can have your list of locations already picked out to put your posters up as quickly as possible.

Label printing is another quick and effective way to always advertise yourself. Everything you send out to any customers or potential customers should have a label with your company name and logo on it. Learn to form a constant association between yourself and your business. It isn’t hard to do a single, large batch of label printing and then get into a habit of always slapping on those labels.

Lastly, postcard marketing is a great way of constantly advertising yourself. Design a great full color postcard to send out to people that mentions any upcoming sales or important information about your company. With your postcard marketing always going in the background, you can be sure that people will never be without a reminder that you’re ready and waiting to do business with them whenever they need to. Plus, unlike normal marketing letters, full color postcards are more likely to be noticed and looked at due to the fact that they aren’t hidden behind a white envelope.

If you want your business to be successful you’ll have to get used to living and breathing your marketing. Always be on the look out for the good opportunities to boost up your business and get your name out there. So long as you’re aware of the quick, easy ways to promote yourself, you won’t need a lot of time or money to generate strong business.

By Simon Elliot

Did you know that under current regulations ITV, Channel 4 and Five are only permitted to run 7 minutes of ads per hour (averaged over the day), with a maximum of 12 minutes in peak time on ITV 1?

These rules save us from getting bombarded by ads like they do across the pond. However, Ofcom have recently put forward a proposal to increase the amount of advertising UK broadcasters can show. From an agency stand-point this is a double-headed coin. The increased number of minutes for sale may mean that ITV, Channel 4 and Five will need to decrease the media costs to fill the airtime; and if it’s more affordable it means more clients can add TV advertising to the marketing mix.

Satellite and cable channels have slightly different rules and are allowed an average of 9 minutes an hour of ads but many of these stations struggle to fill those minutes and as a consequence it is cheaper to place your TV ads here.

From a viewing stand-point there is a danger that the quality of the adverts will diminish as the current higher media costs have encouraged creativity and investment in the production values - you just need to experience the ‘home-made’ feel of some ads on the more obscure channels.

Broadcasters understand that having increased minutes to sell could be the beginning of the end for the higher media rates on which their businesses have thrived. With some of their core revenue generators such as junk food and alcohol advertising also facing restrictions, they could end up with more time to advertise fewer products. If this happens we could see more poor quality advertising to fill the extra minutes.

Broadcasters are keen to keep the status quo and if the rules are changed, they are likely to be pressurized to increase the amount of ads they show, however unwilling they may be. The big brand advertisers are also keen to keep things as they are as the current limits work in their favour by increasing the cost of advertising and keeping smaller rivals off the screens.

Now ads are often entertaining in their own right (sometimes more than the programmes themselves), and whilst we might all question whether we want more ads, we most certainly want quality. So if you find yourself looking at advertising your company on TV, don’t scrimp on the creative and production costs.

Anyone who understands anything about running a business knows that well placed ads and commercials are important to the bottom line of a company. Consumers also rely on them to get information about products and services. But the question remains, how much is too much? And why isn’t quality the overriding focus?