Try Ad Exchanges

By Steve Gillman

Arranging for ad exchanges is a way to lower the costs of advertising and--of course--to make more money from your business by getting new customers. There isn't anything terribly complicated about the basic idea. You just make a trade with non-competing complementary businesses. They put your ads in their mailings and you put theirs in yours.

Of course, in practice, ad exchanges can get a little more complicated that that. For example, suppose you are mailing out monthly bills to 2,200 customers and your exchange partner has only 350 mailings going out each month? In that case, to be fair, he should include your ads for six months for every month that you include his. The math will never be exact, but you should look for a reasonably equitable deal.

What if you don't do mailings to customers? There are other ways to trade ad distribution. A flower shop and a gift shop, for example, could each give the other a stack of 500 flyers to be put on the counter or given to each customer. A plumber and a handyman could each carry the business cards of the other and agree to hand them out to customers who might need those services.

Of course you want to do this only with non-competing businesses. You also will usually do it with those that have complementary products or services. It doesn't make much sense for the plumber to be handing out cards or ads for a comic book store. The point for both of you is to get the ads in the hands of people who are likely customers.

On the other hand, if the services or products are universal enough, they don't have to be in any way related. Almost everyone goes out to eat once in a while, for example, and almost everyone needs car repairs at times, so a stack of coupons for a sandwich shop at the auto repair garage, and some ads on the counter at a restaurant for auto repair, might not be such a bad idea. Of course exchanging the auto repair ads with an oil change company is probably better.

Finally, it should be noted that this is one of the most cost effective ways to advertise. You can print coupon flyers for about 5 cents each, but then it costs you another 55 cents to put them in an envelope and mail them, or perhaps 20 cents if you use one of those ad-package mailing services. But with an exchange you pay nothing beyond the 5 cents. Think of it this way: with some time and effort to arrange the exchanges, you can get your ads to four-to-ten times as many potential customers with the same budget.

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