James Alperin (alpjewel@aol.com) owns James Alperin Jewelers in Pepper Pike, Ohio.

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You have made it through the holiday season and now you can take a minute to relax and look over your books from last year. Now is the time to take stock of where you stand after another difficult financial year for many retailers. Finally, you can sit back and enjoy the fruits of last year’s labors before you crank it back up again for Valentine’s Day which is just around the corner. Although you may not yet be fully recovered from the holiday season, this is a great time of year to advertise. Take advantage of this slow sales period to build your business.

With close to half of all  Americans now owning some stocks in their portfolios, we have become a society that is quite used to looking for a “ return on investment,” or ROI. ROI may be easily ascertained when looking at your diamond inventory. But in advertising, this is very hard to establish. It seems that we spend our money sending our message out through the airwaves or in print, and business may not have improved or perhaps even got a little worse during the past year. What, however, would business have been like, had you not advertised?

Conversely, if you didn’t advertise last year, what would your business have been like had you advertised? It’s a very difficult question to answer, and perhaps discovering an answer is impossible. One can do point-specific advertising, where you advertise a trunk show or a special with a limited time offer and then count the number of people that come in for that special event. That is one way to measure the success of your advertising.  But what about the people who saw your ad but weren’t in the market for the specific item that you were promoting at that specific time? They may come in six months later because they had become familiar with your name, your brand.

Advertising is tough to get one’s head around, especially in tough economic times. But now may be exactly the time to increase your exposure. With a down economy, the first place businesses usually cut back is on their advertising budgets. This allows the smaller store to stand out more than during good economic times. This is true of advertising in January as well. January is when most businesses have finished their big retail season and have cut back on their ads. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, now is a great time to get a head start on the competition. While others are waiting for Valentine’s Day, you can start planning to get your store's name out there now.

You may think that advertising is just a waste of hard-earned good money. But remember this: companies like G.M., Ford, Coca-Cola and thousands of others have spent millions and millions of dollars to put their products in front of you. These companies obviously feel that the expense is worth it. If it’s good enough for them, it can’t be too terribly wrong for you.

This year, while you are sitting back on your couch watching The Super Bowl, take a moment to think about who is advertising and the amount of money they spent to have thirty seconds in your living room. Was it worth it to them? If they didn’t think so, believe me they wouldn’t be on your T.V. screen.  So, before your competition contacts your local paper, radio station or cable provider, make the call and advertise now.