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Exchanging services for advertising

Written by: John Jantsch

Article Overview: Large advertisers have been doing it for years - buy our product and get a free t-shirt to wear around and help spread the word about our company.

Exchanging services for advertising

Large advertisers have been doing it for years - buy our product and get a free t-shirt to wear around and help spread the word about our company.

I love this type of grass roots promotion and I think small businesses underestimate how a well run promotion involving every customer can turn into a flood of buzz and referrals. I’m not talking about some of the once trendy “paid to drive” type of schemes, I’m talking about ways that small business owners can get their customers to spread the word.

Here’s an example I witnessed this week.

An auto dealer offers car buyers free oil changes on a schedule for as long as they keep a simple web site address decal on their back windshield.

This is just a twist on the age old endorsement tactic, but by doing all the work for your customer, creating the bumper sticker and offering an incentive, you get immediate benefit. Cars are a great vehicle (I know) because they move around like mini billboards, but so do pizza boxes, flower arrangements, real estate signs, backpacks and bikes.

The key is to offer an incentive that makes people talk - free oil changes for life might do that and is in line with your overall brand (it’s pretty easy to go overboard and actually turn people off - know you customer!). Make the incentive about your products and services so you can continue the relationship with your client and highlight a feature of your business that they may not be as familiar with.

So, what creative exchanging advertising for services have you seen, offered or experienced?

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Article Tags: auto dealer, backpacks, bikes, billboards, bumper sticker, car buyers, decal, endorsement, flood, flower arrangements, free oil changes, free t shirt, grass roots promotion, pizza boxes, real estate signs, small business owners, small businesses, tactic, well run, windshield



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What are the basic requirements - I’m certainly interested and like to know about your services. What are the requirements to qualify for free site advertising? What happens after the promotional offer?
Re: Mobile Marketing - Top 10 trends in the mobile application in 2012 What is most interesting to us mobile marketers is what lands at # 2 and # 3 spots on his list. "Mobile Search", "location-based services," and also, the place n. # 8 is our favorite of my "mobile advertising." last round after this morning's location based on 1020 funding Placecast poster supports the thesis that when it comes to phones, people expect to be able to discover things around them. That makes sense - after all, what good is a mobile device if you can not access the information you need right now? Gartner reports that location services will be "one of the most disturbing in the coming years." Gartner predicts that the LBS user base of 96 million global growth in 2009 to more than 526 million by 2012. "His value to the user high is the result of its ability to meet a variety of needs, ranging from productivity and fullfillment target social networking and entertainment." Mobile Search, which Gartner says is a fundamental purpose "to drive sales and marketing opportunities in the mobile phone," now just need the user experience. Once "the industry improves the user experience of mobile search to get people back again," Gartner predicts it will be the third most popular application in 2012. Getting to # 8, mobile advertising is no joke. Total spending on mobile advertising in 2008 was $ 530.2 million, which Gartner expects to grow to $ 7.5 billion in 2012. "Mobile advertising is an important way to monetize the mobile Internet content, applications and offering free services to end users. The mobile channel will be used as part of the largest advertising campaigns in various media, including television, radio, print and outdoor, "says Gartner. Here's the full top 10 types of future mobile applications, according to Gartner: 1. Money transfer 2. Location Based Services 3. Mobile Search 4. Mobile Browsing 5. Mobile health monitoring 6. Mobile Payment 7. Near field communication services 8. Mobile Advertising 9. Mobile Instant Messaging
Re: Prospects in animation business in coming years. - Yes the Animation Industry is growing and it needs cost effectiveness, more employees producing quality work. Whether you make a 2d or a 3d animation it requires lots of money, concentration, patience and it sometimes become painful too. Half of the job is done once you have developed the storyboarding. As video advertising is growing, it would adversely affect the television advertising. Recent trends have shown that advertising budgets for online advertising is rapidly growing against television advertising all over across the world. Gaming industry is on its peak these days and animation is in huge demand.
Is Your Advert Really Worth It? - I have several times and read about the power of advertising. When you don't advertise your product and services is like you are beholding your image in a mirror. But many do advertise today without results. I come to think about why some advert will never generate good returns while some will generate good returns. What I know about advertising is that if you don't advertise to the right market. That is you must define the group of people your advert should target. Because I have seen alot of advert everywhere today that I did tell myself that this company should not advertise in such a way. Is your advert really worth it?
Re: looking for experienced affiliate feedback - A good trick is to buy advertising space on a potential affiliates site, and then let the ad run. Then show the site owner how well it converted for you, and show they'd earn more as an affiliate, than if you just bought advertising from them. Sounds stupid because you end up paying more for each sale, but the site owner will then be keen to further promote your product and will start posting about it, sending it to their mailing list, adding other advertising, advertising it on other sites they own etc.


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