Get an Ad, Get Free Stuff!
If you’ve been running a small business with a store front that caters to your local community, odds are the word “advertising” makes you cringe. You think of endless cold calls, pushy sales people and hard earned dollars turning to vapor, and all for what? A few clicks from google, a couple radio ads and a huge stack of promotional balloons collecting dust in your closet, all of which that never turned into anything?
Business owners everywhere rejoice because the world of local small business advertising is changing for the better. On the heels of Groupon.com, LivingSocial.com and some other really amazing new advertising concepts comes Ad My Auto. This new service combines the loss leader marketing concepts of Groupon with the highly effective nature of word of mouth, direct marketing and mobile billboard impressions to create something entirely new but oddly familiar.
For a low fee of $985 per year and an astoundingly attractive $50 per ad, Ad My Auto will place an ad for your business on a minimum of 50 consumer vehicles in the zip code of your choice. In return, your business provides free and discounted services to the “Ad Partners” (the persons hosting your ads). This system will be highly attractive to small business owners with 1 or more brick and mortar locations (ie., restaurants, grocery stores, spas, salons, liquor stores, dentists offices, etc, etc, etc..). Amazingly, Ad My Auto works on multiple levels of market saturation beginning by providing the micro level of loss leader marketing to groupon’s macro share. But I fear I’m getting ahead of myself.
Ad My Auto works on 4 levels:
1) Grouponesque loss leader marketing.
Your “perk program” will directly incentivize each and every Ad Partner who hosts your ad to purchase your products and services, resulting in the guaranteed acquisition of every person who hosts your ad. For only $50 per ad, that’s an unbelievable deal (We expect that price to go up when Ad My Auto launches on a larger scale.)
A great impression in rush hour traffic!
2) Mobile billboard advertising.
As your Ad Partner drives around, your business gets local impressions. Use your ads with a call to action message (mention this ad for $2 off any menu item!) or pure branding (Joe’s plumbing – The most trusted in town!) and prepare for more business. People who need a repair are quick to pick up their mobile phone when prompted by an ad in their face offering a free service call. Folks tired of eating Pizza Hut every week are looking for excuses to try something new and your Ad My Auto ad is the excuse they’re looking for.
3) Direct marketing.
Ad My Auto has a herd of Ad Partners on their waiting list who are ready and willing to put your ad on their car. For most advertising companies, this would be an inexpensive, sure fire way to meet their client’s ad quota, but it just wasn’t enough for Ad My Auto. In addition to placing your ad with local vehicles on their waiting list, they’ll go door to door in the zip code(s) of your choice asking your local, potential customers if they’d like some free and discounted services from your business in exchange for an ad placement on their vehicle. Even if the ad gets turned down, they Ad My Auto street team has still created awareness of your business as well as an opportunity to give out a coupon, menu or any other literature that you provide them with.
4) Word of mouth.
We weren’t initially sure if it was fair to include “word of mouth” as a service Ad My Auto provides, but when we really thought through it, it really made sense. Hosting an ad on one’s car leads to an array of guaranteed questions from friends and family, “what’s Joe’s Plumbing, and why do you have that ad on your car?”. People will be forced to talk about why they’re hosting your ad, and when they do, they’ll brag about the free stuff you’ve given them.
There are different levels of local penetration you can opt in to. The most inexpensive being their trial penetration. At only $985 per year and $50 per ad, Ad My Auto costs as little as $300 per month for a one-stop, all you can eat, marketing smorgasbord. You’d be crazy to not try it out (again, while it’s so cheap!). Just remember to factor in your hard costs for providing your perk program.
We’ll be watching Ad My Auto closely from here out, waiting to get in on an investment with them when they go public.
