Ideas for Advertising in the UK

If your business is looking for opportunities to capture an audience in the United Kingdom, you should know that your organizations’ marketing and advertising endeavors form a crucial part of your reception, and ultimately whether your business is profitable. In this article, we’ll take a look at some factors that can give you ideas on the proper way to advertise in the UK.

Social Media

Like any other developed country, the United Kingdom uses social media extensively. In fact, 42 million people and businesses in the UK use social media to stay in touch and advertise their business, making it a very viable source of converting money spent on advertising towards new customers and clients.

The following are the top social media sites in the United Kingdom based on market share:

• Facebook: 63.76%
• Twitter: 14.89%
• Pinterest: 10:38%
• YouTube: 3.96%
• Instagram: 3.23%
• Tumblr: 1.81%
• Reddit: 0.69%
• LinkedIn: 0.67%
• StumbleUpon: 0.29%
• Google+: 0.15%
• VKontakte: 0.1%

Image Source: Pixabay

Advertising on each of these platforms can put your business in front of lots of eyes, whether you choose to:

• Create a static page advertising your business
• Regularly post and create dialogue with your followers to get the attention of your audience (i.e. brand awareness),
• Pay for exposure (via clicks or impressions)

Depending on your business model, social media can form a large part of your advertising strategy in the UK. However, you should craft your social media presence carefully. For instance, if your company deals in products, short videos on Instagram can be a way of gaining clients. For service-based businesses or products that aren’t easily shown in pictures or video, you may want to use social media to entice customers to visit your website as part of your inbound marketing strategy.

Billboards

Consider that there are more than 37.5 million registered cars on the road in the United Kingdom, billboards are one of the most effective ways to get the attention of those behind the wheel. Billboards help build your brand awareness and make your business more familiar to a UK-based audience. After all, most people believe that if you can afford a billboard, your business is professional and worthy of dealing with.

The cost of billboards is variable, as prime locations tend to attract lots of people and higher prices; less-trafficked places obviously charge less. Another factor to weigh is that billboards come in either paper format or newer digital billboards. With digital billboards, you gain a professional appeal but the cost substantially increases. Depending on your organization’s budget, a billboard can be a powerful tool to attract attention. Of course, you may not know what your ROI is from each billboard campaign, but you can be sure to track the results using virtual phone numbers (see below) in conjunction with your billboards. When callers dial your unique virtual phone number (bonus points if you use a vanity number), you can adequately assess who saw your billboard by dialing the virtual phone number specific to the advertisement.

[Follow this link for a complete guide to the cost and setup of billboards in the United Kingdom.]

UK Virtual Phone Numbers

One cost-effective (and little-known) method to advertise your business in the United Kingdom is to use UK virtual phone numbers. For inbound marketing, you can simply add your UK virtual phone number on your marketing materials to give customers in the UK the ability to reach your business — even if your organization is located in another country. It’s this power that gives you the ability to avoid a brick & mortar presence in the UK (something which can be prohibitive to many startups and small businesses, especially ones located outside of the UK).

Further, UK Toll Free Numbers are available to give your business a professional appeal and a cost-free way of enabling UK-based customers and businesses a solid method to reach you. Available from qualified service providers, such as Global Call Forwarding, your business can gain an advertising presence in the United Kingdom that can reach new customers and large markets.