Wahm Budget Ads

I picked up some pizza for dinner last night from a major pizza chain. It was delicious by the way. But it also reminded me of an important promotional strategy. On that pizza box (and each other one that I saw stacked up in there) was a little flyer for a gym along with a coupon for a reduced price on the gym membership fee. It was just glued right on the box.

What an ingenious idea. Whoever came up with it obviously knew that I (and probably at least 60% of the rest of the pizza customers), felt guilty about eating this calorie rich, fat-laden fair and were already thinking about how we could burn that fat off. Guess what I did this morning? Yep, I joined the gym. I have the best intentions of working out there each week, but we’ll see how it goes.

Back to what we can learn from this… The technique this pizza company used is called cross promotion and it’s something you can use right away, not matter what your home business is.

If you are selling and shipping physical products, find a few moms who are in complimentary, but not competing businesses. If you sell candles, find someone with bath or home spa products. If you sell cooking equipment, find someone who sells gourmet mixes or spices. You each make up small flyers introducing your products and including some sort of coupon, discount or gift with order offer. Swap those flyers and just stick them in with every order that goes out.

You don’t have to stick with just physical products though. There are plenty of ebooks and the likes that this would work with as well. I know a girl who works with a direct sales company that sells cookware and she promotes Menu Planning Central in flyers added to her orders. Not only do they promote her products to their own customers in exchange, she also gets a commission for every customer she sends their way.

If you are selling electronic products yourself, or you have a membership site, or maybe even free content site, you can still use this same basic idea. Find a few related websites and contact the owners about a thank you page exchange. With this each of you would simple add a small ad to your thank you pages promoting the other website. You can get a lot of new traffic, subscribers and customers this way.