Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2011 during the economic crisis; Google’s attempt to buy Groupon for more than 6 billion (reported in late 2010) and the claim that advertising is unaffected by the crisis reflect that moment.
One sector that the crisis is clearly not hurting is the advertising business, which you could say is booming for a very simple reason. When a business loses profitability or market share, it needs to invest in advertising. If you want to make yourself known, you need advertising. If you want to reach new markets… advertising. If you want to get your best offers in front of more customers, advertising.
That’s why all the companies that started out mainly in advertising brokerage have managed to increase their profitability by astonishing percentages. Perhaps the two best-known cases are Google, with its AdWords-AdSense advertising system, and its biggest rival, Groupon. Groupon has been so successful that the giant Google tried to buy it for more than 6 billion (no small sum).
By the way, Groupon is looking to fill 20 jobs in Spain, in case anyone is interested.
As I was saying, business ideas based on advertising are not complicated at all. All you need is an advertiser as your client and someone willing to lend space for the ad, and you can charge both of them a brokerage fee.
You can start with something simple, such as leaflet distribution, for which there is constant demand, above all from large retailers, as you’ll have noticed every time you open your mailbox.
Charles Denney gave us other ideas with advertising on pizza boxes, which you can see in the video in that article.
Still, where the “big business” is really happening is online. And although there are several giants and it may look as if they leave no market for you, quite the opposite is true: the little guy can always offer something those big computerized companies never can, which is a personal or personalized service. Even though it is gradually disappearing as the internet takes over, people still value it above automated systems and robotic receptionists.
Another way to “live” off advertising is to produce a local newspaper or magazine. You may have noticed those free newspapers they hand out in your city. Well, inside those pages there are ads, and those ads are what pay for the paper.
It is much easier, though, not to produce the paper yourself and instead go after these publications as clients, along with home decor magazines or titles in specific sectors. In this business, if you manage to land one big client (a key account), the rest will follow, like the sheep we are.
The business of the millennium isn’t renewables, it isn’t alternative energy and it isn’t nanotechnology. The most profitable business is advertising, because those multimillion-dollar companies will have to advertise somewhere to make themselves known. Advertising keeps TV channels, football clubs, radio stations and so on going. It’s a matter of grabbing a slice of the pie, and if you can take that slice from cyberspace, so much the better.
So there you have it: all you need is a good, innovative idea. Once you have that, the rest is what we’ve talked about so many times: passion, a good business plan and a market study. Once you’ve weighed up the pros and cons, if you’ve confirmed the profitability and viability of the business project, put your heart and soul into it.
Further reading
- More business ideas for this year
- How to structure a good business plan
- How to start a business with no money
- How to lose your fear of starting a business
- The entrepreneurial mindset: Donald Trump
Featured image: Captain Galaxy, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
