jeudi 28 mai 2009

Reaping the Benefits of Co-Op Advertising For Your Business

00:36 Posted by: Marokko Suche 0 comments

By Dwayne Whiting Senior Writer - Queen City Creations Publishing Group

A powerful marketing and advertising tool is within your reach. It's co-op advertising, and it's a solid benefit to any business owner who deals with customers.

In its simplest form, co-op advertising means a cost-sharing arrangement between a retailer, and the manufacturer of a product. The manufacturer pays for part of the retailer's advertising budget. If you've bought a computer recently, you've probably seen the Intel Inside sticker that's a very pervasive example of one type of co-op advertising. From a manufacturer's perspective, this has the potential to boost sales volume and profit margins considerably.

While it's got plenty of benefits, co-op advertising is astonishingly underused, and is critical to growth in a lot of business sectors. Mostly this is because of a lack of education. A lot of retailers have almost no knowledge of co-op advertising opportunities and how they work. Having the manufacturer pay some part of their advertising costs can make a huge difference in driving business to their shop or web site, while cutting their overhead expenses.

This is a venue for tapping into a lot of advertising money that manufacturers already allocate sometimes it can be as much as billions of dollars in a program. The typical co-op campaign is there to help you reach the widest audience possible; it's geared towards first time buyers and brand awareness more than pulling in pre-qualified sales leads.

From a retailer's perspective, this is like found money and found traffic for their business. It does have a drawback the manufacturer will want to have a fair bit of input into how the ad is structured and run and when and where it's run, to maximize their brand potential. It's understandable ? they want to make their business grow too.

Co-op Advertising Benefits For Your Business.:

1. Co-op advertising dramatically reduces the cost of your advertising or at least extends the amount you can use for the promotion of your business.

2. More avenues for advertising creativity, albeit within some bounds.

3. Frees up advertising dollars for other advertising venues, such as telephone directories, or television ads or billboards. Since the costs are shared, more options can be explored..

4. The concept of co-op advertising offers a win-win situation for both the manufacturer and the retailer. Both parties can double their advertising exposure without the need for an increase in advertising costs.

Tips to consider when utilizing co-op advertising:

1. When considering co-op advertising, be sure to coordinate your overall marketing plan. Make sure it is something that will suit your needs before jumping in.

2. If you're doing co-op advertising from multiple manufacturers (not uncommon in electronics and automotive industries), keep good records for each program.

3. Coordinate with your co-op advertising partner. A new avenue of promotion should get their approval before you spend their money or dilute their brand. 4. While it's a co-op ad, don't forget to promote your business name. Make it prominent in the ad; the goal is to get people into your store, not promote the manufacturer at your own expense.

4. While it's a co-op ad, don't forget to promote your business name. Make it prominent in the ad; the goal is to get people into your store, not promote the manufacturer at your own expense.

5. Don't be afraid to pitch a co-op ad campaign to a manufacturer who doesn't already have one. You've got nothing to lose.

6. Make sure that the manufacturer is playing by the same rules you are; they should be fronting or reimbursing you advertising money to promote their product. Don't be afraid to walk away from a co op advertising deal that doesn't work for you.

In conclusion, co-op advertising is an important tool to utilize in any business both brick and mortar or even an online business. Co-op advertising is essential for both the manufacturer and the retailer as it saves them money and allows them to expand on the promotion of their businesses. The whole purpose of this type of program is to help develop and plan strategies that will improve the effectiveness of advertising by allowing the business owner to purchase more for less, create larger and more attractive ads and even venture out in promotional methods they wouldn't have even dreamed about before on a tighter budget. Same goes for the manufacturer.

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