The cost of maintaining a billboard advertising company is huge. Costs include machinery, maintenance, sign-writing, equipment, advertising and administrative costs plus the costs of wages for employees and casual labor alike. It requires entrepreneurs to have a creative team to design the ads, a disciplined staff to keep the budgets and the hardworking labor to do the final job of erecting the billboards. All these are essentials and cannot be parted with. On the plus side: using a billboards unsold space to pay for these ongoing costs can provide a way for the business to meet its needs while capitalizing on its existing resources.
Every business needs advertising. This includes the businesses who you buy the tools and machinery for your business from.
Reaching an agreement where you erect billboards for them in trade for the equipments and machinery you need will save you the cash that you can then spend on other areas.
Even billboard advertising companies need advertising. Barter can be especially helpful offsetting the cost of advertising. TV and radio stations use a lot of billboard advertising. If you can cut a deal with them wherein you give them some percentage discount on the work you do for them, along with the most creative billboards especially rotating digital ones in turn for free advertising on their airtime, you can save yourself a lot of cash investment.
Barter can also be used to get other assets for your business. Have you ever considered direct or indirect barter for real-estate upon which to erect your billboards? High rise buildings are generally considered good locations for erecting billboards. Hence, you can rent this space for free by trading, or discounting, services with building owners.
Being creative and innovative is necessary in the advertising industry. However, using the same innovative approach to plan the financial end of your enterprise can help you get an edge over others in the same line of business.
Small business generally can’t afford huge billboards but if you plan carefully and arrange deals between two or four such businesses which compliment each other you can make even better use of existing space and achieve greater returns. You will be able to get customers who would otherwise not be able to afford a full advertising campaign and, in turn, receive smaller quantities of those “still essential” items that you would normally pay cash for.
When you use barter you get customers guaranteed. When you spend cash with a business today there is no surety that they, in turn, will make a purchase from you. When you barter with someone both parties win [provided they need one anothers product or service]. If you can structure direct deals with suppliers you have a great way to save cash. Even when this is not possible you can employ a Commerce Network to develop a three, four or multi-way transaction which will let all parties involved acquire the product or service that they require out of the deal, thereby making everyone happy – and saving everyone cash.
Brought to you by Neha Gupta
Marketing Department
Ormita Australia Limited
http://www.ormita.com.au
