That said, small businesses tend to see advertising as an unnecessary, or overly risky, cost to their business. Indeed, many have survived well doing no advertising at all.
Whilst that is of course true, those business might have performed even better if they had advertised. Also, as the economic conditions in the UK put continued pressure on the small business world, it is worth asking whether a small business can afford to not advertise? Protecting ongoing business health might require adopting new customer-attracting tools like advertising.
It is interesting to compare how small businesses think about different parts of their marketing spend.
They usually have no issue with a continuous monthly fee to have their website maintained and hosted. But they often do not spend anything on advertising to let people know that their business or their website even exist.
Similarly, they might pay an ongoing fee to a freelancer to create social media posts for organic posting (that very few people will ever see), but they do not spend any money to show those ads to thousands of potential customers.
We shall return later to how this money spent on advertising can payback when it is used correctly.