Alternate Methods of Advertising

Advertising isn’t just limited to Newspaper, TV and Radio. There are many other publications that you can put your advertising in to supplement your traditional advertising that can be just as, or even more effective than the traditional media.

Here are three advertising mediums that are often overlooked.

School Newsletters

The local school newsletter is a great way to gain local families as your residential clients. Schools send out newsletters every few weeks and they are usually happy to allow local businesses advertise in their newsletters because it helps offset their printing costs. I have personally used this method of advertising and I find that its best to advertise with them in the weeks leading up to the school holidays.

Parents often get computers fixed at the start of the school holidays so their child has something to do (instead of bugging them). They also get their computers fixed towards the end of the holidays because it was broken during the holidays and their children need it for their schoolwork when school starts back up.
Additionally, the school newsletters just before the school holidays tend to sit around the house for the duration of the holidays because they often contain important “back to school” information and the child isnt bringing home a new newsletter to replace it.

Shop-a-Dockets

Im not sure if they go by the same name in other countries, but here in Australia we have advertisements on the back of our supermarket receipts called “shop-a-dockets”.
The types of businesses that usually advertise in these are carpet cleaners, restaurants and car rental places and generally offer some significant saving like a “buy one, get one free” discount.

Advertising in the shop-a-dockets isn’t cheap and the last time I was offered to advertise with them I ended up negotiating them down to $550 USD for 12 weeks (it started out at around $800). You should aim for something similar.

To make shop-a-dockets work, you need to offer a really good discount, twenty percent off or more is a good choice. You could also offer something like a “Free PC Health Check” because in most cases you will be able to find something wrong that you can charge for.

Newspaper Inserts

Inserting your promotional material into the local newspaper is a great way to gain both residential and business clients. Most newspapers are happy to accept paper inserts into their publication and you are typically charged per thousand so you can tailor it to suit your budget.

Newspaper inserts tend to work well because when you do letterbox drops yourself and is separate from a newspaper, it will usually get thrown out with the rest of the junk mail. However, people generally keep a newspaper around the house for longer and thus, your advertisement says around longer too.

Another advantage of this method is that it gets around the “No Junk Mail” signs which are on many mailboxes because although they won’t accept junk mail, most of them still accept newspapers.