Join Forces to Slash Ad Costs and Make More ImpactLower your advertising costs by finding key allies in several different categories (geographical, product-specific, or trade associations). (Shel Horowitz's Frugal Marketing Tip, October, 1999) You can have greater impact with lower cost in any advertising program if you join forces with others. Here are a few of the many ways to do this: Geographical. Band together with stores in your shopping center, on your block, or in your neighborhood, and chip in for a quarter-page or larger display ad. Run a promotion involving validated parking, getting stamps from all the participating merchants to be entered in a drawing, or discounts for patronizing a certain number of businesses on the same day. Our local Chamber does this annually. Some 40 stores list themselves on a shopping bag, and anyone bringing in the bag on the appointed day gets a 20% discount on any one item. Main Street is mobbed that day. Product-Specific. Join up with the other outlets for one manufacturer's product, and advertise together in a large regional paper that covers all your locations. Car dealers do this all the time. Trade Association Members. It's to your advantage to tout your group as the certified experts, the qualified problem solvers. So create visibility-advertise the organization and list all the participating members. This could include general organizations, such as Chamber-of-Commerce or Better Business Bureau, as well as groups that are tied to one kind of product or service. Thank you reading this back issue of Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips, published every month since May, 1997; please click here to view the complete archives, grouped by subject. Shel is an internationally known copywriter and marketing consultant, author of Grassroots Marketing Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and several other books, and creator of the Frugal Marketing web site. Please click here to contact Shel.
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