Advertising your goods or services does not have to cost you a huge some of money.  In fact,  you can do it yourself for free via Internet.  We know in order to advertise on T.V, radio, newspaper or even in a magazine it can be costly.  And if you don’t get the results, there is no money back guarantee.  So what it boils down to is the lets throw it a the wall and see if it sticks mentality.  But by just doing the following you can grow your business and make new friends along the way.

Step 1: Blog

Get a blog and talk about your goods or services.  Now the point is to be insightful, share you knowledge.  Talk about what it is that you do, tell why you feel your product is better than your competitors.  Don’t just list the pros, share some of the cons.  Don’t lie, because you will be found out and you credibility will be ruined and it will be tough to recover.   Post to your blog 2-3 times per week, even if no one is commenting continue to post.

Step two: Forums

Join forums that are related to your industry, post comments,  ask and answer questions.  You don’t know it all, so don’t pretend you do.  Don’t sell, pitch or market you product in the forum.  Once again by sharing your knowledge, people will seek you out.  Please don’t forget to post a link to your website in your profile, and don’t spam.

Seek out others in your industry and post comments to their blogs, once again do not spam.  By just doing these two steps you can position yourself as an expert or the go to guy or girl.

There are great deal of sales people who give advertising a bad name.  I’m not going to point fingers, but you know who you are.  They are the ones who take advantage of the “Ma & Pop shops,” selling them the dream that advertising is the cure all to all of their problems.

They are the ones who oversell their clients.   The know that advertiser only made a profit of $50,000 all of  last year after taxes, but sell them a $32,000 annual package.  Now, some of the responsibility does fall on the client, they just have to say “No.”  But, you have to rely on the sales person being ethical.   They should ask themselves if they would sell this to a family member, better yet their mother.  Maybe that is a bad example, because some of them would in order to make a buck.

Okay, enough of that, if it sounds to good to be true, then it is.  Remember this, when one of those Lying Liars try to sell you a dream, ask them to put it in writing.

I just read a great post about “The Death of The Rate Card.” The author feels that media outlets such as Newspapers and Magazines need to do away with the rate card and let the market determine the price.   I thrown in Radio & Television also. 

I think Google Adword started out the same way.  It was 5 cents per click if you wanted your ad to show-up in the paid search.  Now, there are some advertiser who pay $35-75 per click.  If these big media companies don’t get it together, they are going to go the way of the dinosaur quick.  I say lets start the bidding.

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The Death of the Rate Card