Here's breakdown. You have a business. You have a business location. You have a neighborhood where that business is located. You provide a service or product that's truly valuable to right people. Great, now how do you find them? Or, maybe Question should be - Where? How Will Customers you Need EVER find You? Welcome to Business Marketing 101...

FACT "But Most Consumer Purchases are Made Within 12 City Blocks."

Think about it! Most Chains and Franchises (Burger King, Starbucks, Target, Wal-mart etc...there are now thousands!) can be found wherever there is enough Market Saturation. Most National Chains, Franchises, Grocery Outlets and Even Local Banks have figured this Equation out and are using it to reap HUGE sales by Region Count. (Census Tracts) They know 12-Block Rule and apply it vigorously in all of their Sales and Marketing Strategies!

They also know that Market Share is most Important Term in Advertising Game.

Let's review a few things about world of Business Advertising. There are more than 2 Million new businesses started every year. (Most are these are home based; this doesn't include MLM's or Affiliate programs) Over 500,000 of these will fail within 2 years. The average Successful ad campaign costs about $250,000 dollars. The average TV commercial is $10,000 for 60 seconds. The average radio commercial is $100.00 for 60 seconds. ($5000 to Produce!) To rent a Cab top billboard is about $300 a week. The average Freeway Billboard is between $2500-$5000 a month.

All of these fall under category of Blanket Advertising. (Expensive and mostly ineffective in short run, especially for small businesses. It works for Chains and Franchises simply because of number and convenience of locations.)

Can you even hope to compete with their Advertising Budgets or Reach?

What do you want for nuthin'? © 2002 by Dale Sexton

Sometimes you have to be willing to take trade offs or make sacrifices. I am using my experience as an example, and you may have a better way to achieve success I've been seeing.

I signed up for Tucats Ezine Ad Co-op to send free ads to a list of ezines accepting free ads. I knew what I was getting into because my newsletter is part of co-op.

http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?IM8301_coop

I knew I would be getting confirmation of subscriptions, solo ads, and monthly, weekly and twice weekly issues to my email address from over 100 newsletters and ezines. It is my trade off to getting my free ad out to over 500,000 readers.

Updates from Tucats Ad Co-op tell of people who have signed up to take advantage of free ads, then are mad about being spammed, or didn't realize they would get so much email. Keep in mind, when you sign up for something, you might want to do some reading first. You can't call it spam when you sign up for it.

You can get a free web based email address to use to sign up for multiple ezines, such as one at PageCrafters.net Free Email Service.

http://pagecrafters.net/services.html#mail

By doing this, you keep your personal or business address from being bombarded but two problems arise:

1) You have to constantly clean out mailbox, because some of ezines will drop you if your email address bounces.

2) You miss out on some good information by not reading ezines. Some of these ezines require you to read them as they contain ad code that must be used to get your weekly ads approved.

This is what I found that works best for me. I use OutLook, but OutLook Express and any other email client can be configured just as easily. Set up rules in OutLook or your favorite email client. In OutLook, go to tools, then rules. In most clients look for tools or options.

What you want to do is set your client up to filter words in subject or body of your emails. You can even filter by 'received from address'. Key words to filter may be 'newsletter', 'ezine' or 'issue'.

I've made a folder I call Mags (short for magazines) to place filtered ezines into. I now have option to read them later or look for ad codes when I'm ready to submit my free ads. Some of info I've collected is good stuff and I archive it for reference later.

All of newsletter and ezines you've just subscribed to offer at least one free ad. Most offer weekly ads. Drop newsletters you don't wish to continue receiving, but if you take one free ad, have enough netiquette to stay subscribed until your ad is shown. If you drop them before your ad is shown, it may never be shown.