How to advertise?

Question

I got a new job - flying as a commercial pilot with a small local company - however the catch of the job is, I need to advertise (for the first few months) or recruit people to travel on 10-14 day tours of the Australian outback in order to get work.

In addition I need to advertise for other customers who might need flying services...

What should I do to advertise? Where to place ads? Are places like train stations and aero clubs a good idea?

Tourist offices?

What sort of advertising?

How about for other general customers?

Any help appreciated!

Answer 1

Have you thought about pay per click programs? The two biggest, I think, are Yahoo! and Google

A few free resources – check out the sources box for links:

1) Create a blog pertaining to your field

2) Use Yahoo! Local & Yahoo! Groups – Be sure to read the TOS for each one!

3) Write articles pertaining to your field and/or expertise.

4) Advertise on Craiglist

Also, consider signing up for an affiliate program. These programs enable you to advertise on other's sites (your affiliates) and once a sale is made to you, your affiliates & the program are paid a commission.

I listed a few handy sites & articles relating to marketing, promotion & advertising. Here are some book titles that are relevant:

* The Complete Idiot's Guide to Marketing Basics by Sarah White
* The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries, Jack Trout
* Creative Advertising: Ideas and Techniques from the World's Best Campaigns by Mario Pricken
* Entrepreneur Magazine's Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide: Over 1500 Great Marketing Tricks That Will Drive Your Business Through the Roof by James Stephenson
* 301 Do-It-Yourself Marketing Ideas: From America's Most Innovative Small Companies by Sam Decker

Hope that helps! I wish you much success & happiness in all your ventures!

Answer 2

These are all good questions and for someone with little to no marketing experience I can offer this sage advice. First find out or better yet target an audience. Try and figure out who would use your services. Once you know who you are targeting it would be a lot easier to market to those people.

A cheap an affective way to start is internet advertising (i am assuming you have a web site or the company does. if not you can create one for next to nothing), like google ad sense and Overture which is owner by Yahoo. They charge on a CPC cost per click basis. You put in specific search criteria like "trips to the outback" and your ad will appear when that phrase or word is typed. I would try and be as granular as possible it helps on the conversion, this is a good starting point.

http://www.content.overture.com/
https://www.google.com/adsense/


Good luck.

JKD

Answer 3

Hi

Something that we found that works well, is getting contact with complimentary businesses and "sharing customers". Say there is a local hostel neraby; you could offer them say a 5% kick back (commission) for refering customers who stay with them on to you. This can easily be tracked via coupons. It's basically the affiliate marketing concept, but in the offline world, and you'll tend to find that referal customers will convert at a much higher rate than those who just find your services.

Saying that, I would suggest you don't put all your eggs in one basket, and try the Google and Overture Pay Per Click as suggested above too.

Hope that helps
SEOG

Answer 4

http://www.wallaroundtheworld.com