No Big Budget Also Can Do Print Advertisement!

Those who know me would know that I believe in building wealth through smart marketing with limited budget. Even if you say you don’t have a single cent in your marketing war chest, I will still say you can market, advertise and promote yourself, your product and your services. Email marketing, viral marketing, referral marketing, word-of-mouth marketing are just some great methods that you can “DIY”. If you don’t know, there are plenty of websites offering good and free advice that works. “But you can’t do print advertisement!”

Print advertisement is easily the most expensive after TV and radio commercials in among traditional media. A quarter page full colour advert in the news section of The Straits Times (in Singapore) during the weekend is S$16,600 (or USD11,900). A full page, full colour right-hand page ad in the leading periodical, Her Word, is S$5300 (or USD3800). That’s a lot of money for small business owners. And that’s exactly why many of them give print advertising a miss.

Print advertising, comprising largely of press advertising and magazine advertising, are extremely important to create and shape, or even to change and correct the perceived values of your target audience. They are even more important if your products/services are targeted at a niche that sees internet and multimedia stuff as unreliable. Not incorporating print advertising within your marketing campaign will be a bad idea.

Barter trade is not big in Singapore and very, very rarely do we even hear from the grapevine that a publication is willing to barter advertising pages. Folks in the United States are more fortunate in the sense that they can actually bid for advertising space in print media. In other words, they don’t pay the standard rate card rates. They bid and if successful, can save as much as 90% off rate-card rates. This is something I wish we can have in Singapore. But I honestly don’t see how it can be feasible due to our small collection of local publications. USA is big and size does matters. Because the many media will be vying and fighting aggressively for a slice of the advertising pie. As an advertiser, you will stand to gain somehow. If you doubt what I have just shared, go visit this media paradise call Mediabids (www.mediabids.com). It is a big market place offering close to 5000 newspapers, journals, magazines, trade magazines, etc. Whether you opt for magazine advertising or newspaper advertising, you can enjoy saving as high as 75% or more.

Why so cheap? I honestly have no idea, and so I went Googling for answers. Someone said in a forum that these are leftover space. So rather than waste them, might as well put it up for sales. Hmmm… whatever, more importantly, it is a win-win for everybody.

Interestingly, the Mediabid folks also have what they call an advertising auction. Essentially, an advertiser puts their ad budget out to bid, and publications submit bids of ad space for the dollar amount they wish to spend in their publication. That’s creative media buying.