Advertise for FREE!

October 16, 2009

Hope your short week after a long weekend wasn’t too short… was a little for Reaxion! 🙂

You’ll find a lot of what I pass on is food for thought – designers and marketers have a lot of thoughts! You never know when they’ll come in handy!

A few weeks ago I mentioned a bang for your buck strategy is to direct your advertising to your core past customers rather than a shotgun public advertising campaign. Now twist that idea around and look at YOUR suppliers! Do they have a stake in your success? Any of them fall over themselves to schmooze you for next year’s account? Now you have someone to help pay your ad bill!

So how does this work? A tried and true user of this method is our local chamber of commerce. At least once a month they mail 800+ newsletters and give the option for members to insert a brochure into the same envelope for a fee MUCH MORE REASONABLE than a Canada Post direct mailing. The chamber pays for their distribution and advertisers penetrate their chamber members’ offices- win win!

So how do you implement this? Well, I won’t dissect any possible politics involved, for instance, you don’t want an advertiser duplicating or providing your service, but if you have a “links” section on your site you might have your call list.

What’s a good advertising medium? Start with your website. If any of my hosted clients charged only $10 PER MONTH for an ad, the annual hosting budget would be covered! Add a couple bucks and you can put in for the company Christmas party!

Think of this idea every time you advertise to the public, you might be able to do it for free!

About Scott Kasprick

Scott Kasprick is a graphic designer in Brandon, Manitoba and owns and operates Reaxion Graphics while helping his wife raise three lively daughters!