Marketing or Advertising Marketing or advertising your business is one of the most important things you can do to make your business successful. You may have the best product in the world, but if no one knows about it, your business will not grow. Advertising your business can be very expensive. Especially if you don’t understand advertising. Lots of big company waste money on advertising but they have money to throw out there to get “brand recognition”. Small businesses don’t have the money to waste. So, small businesses have to be as efficient as possible with their advertising dollars. Many advertising agencies talk about the 3 M’s ---Market, Message, and Media. It is important to get the combination right. If you have the right market and the wrong message, your advertising dollars will be wasted. It sounds a little complicated to get all of these things right but once you understand it, you can make the most of your advertising budget. Market = Who Your market is the ‘who’. Who is going to buy your product or service? Who is your customer? Message = What Your message is the what. What do they want? What is the problem you are going to solve for them? What are you offering them? Media = How The Media is the how. How are you going to get your message to your market? Do they watch TV, listen to radio, read the newspaper, or read a trade publication?