Marketers trading and Businesses

1. First, use your ads for more than just space advertising. Ads are expensive to produce and expensive to run. But there are ways to get your advertising message in your prospect's hands at a fraction of the cost of space advertising.
2. If something works, stick with it. Too many marketers scrap their old promotions and create new ones because they're bored with their current campaign. That's a waste. You shouldn't create new ads or promotions if your existing ones are still accurate and effective. You should run your ads for as long as your customers read and react to them.

How long can ads continue to get results? The Ludlow Corp. ran an ad for its erosion-preventing Soil Saver mesh 41 times in the same journal. After 11 years it pulled more inquiries per issue than when it was first published in 1966.

If a concept still has selling power but the promotion contains dated information, update the existing copy--don't throw it out and start from scratch. This approach isn't fun for the ad manager or the agency, but it does save money.
3. Don't over present yourself. A strange thing happens to some entrepreneurs when they get a little extra money in the ad budget: they see fancy four-color brochures, gold embossed mailers and fat annual reports produced by Fortune 500 firms. Then they say, "This stuff sure looks great--why don't we do some brochures like this?"
4. Use "modular" product literature. One common advertising problem is how to promote a single product to many small, diverse markets. Each market has different needs and will buy the product for different reasons. But on your budget, you can't afford to create a separate brochure for each of these tiny market segments.
5. Use article reprints as supplementary sales literature. Marketing managers are constantly bombarded by requests for "incidental" pieces of product literature. Engineers want data sheets explaining some minor technical feature in great detail.
6. Explore inexpensive alternatives for lead generation, such as banner advertising, organic search and PR. Many smaller firms judge marketing effectiveness solely by the number of leads generated. They are not concerned with building image or recognition; they simply count bingo-card inquiries.
7. Do not overpay for outside creative talent. Hire freelancers and consultants whose credentials--and fees--fit the job and the budget.

Top advertising photographers, for example, get $1,000 a day or more. This may be worth the fee for a corporate ad running in Forbes or Business Week. But it's overkill for the employee newsletter or a publicity shot. Many competent photographers can shoot a good black-and-white publicity photo for $200 to $250.

When you hire consultants, writers, artists, or photographers, you should look for someone whose level of expertise and cost fits the task at hand.

8. Do it yourself. Tasks such as distributing press releases or creating simple squeeze pages can usually be done cheaper in-house than outside. Save the expensive agency or consultant for tasks that really require their expertise.

If you do not have a marketing manager or assistant, consider hiring a full-time or part-time administrative assistant to handle the detail work involved in managing your company's marketing. This is a more economical solution than farming administrative work out to the agency or doing it yourself.

9. Get maximum mileage out of existing content (text and images). Photos, illustrations, layouts and even copy created for one promotion can often be lifted and reused in other pieces to significantly reduce creative costs. For example, copy created for a corporate image ad can be used as the introduction to the annual report.

Also, you can save rough layouts, thumbnail sketches, headlines and concepts rejected for one project and use them in future ads, mailings and promotions.

10. Pay your vendors on time. Why? You'll save money by taking advantage of discounts and avoiding late charges when you pay vendor invoices on time. And, you'll gain goodwill that can result in better service and fairer prices on future projects. from book of