Free call numbers are not expensive and are great way for businesses to advertise and generate new and existing customers. Specially for those businesses whose customers are spread out over large geographical areas.

If you thought customers who spend lots of money with your business are not worried about the price of a phone call, you’re wrong. Research has shown that customers are seven times more likely to call a company who have a free call number than ones who doesn’t.

The price of setting up a service like this varies between telecommunication companies so it pays to shop around. The benefit of such a service is you can have the number forwarded any existing number you choose and you can usually change the number as you wish.

You could argue that having this service is just another cost to your business and you are definatly right. However, along with the extra cost you also get seven more times the chance to reel in customers, so they pay off is pretty obvious.

Plus you can use it in your advertisements. “Call us for FREE Now”. Free is one of those magical words people love hearing and if used right can be a fantastic advertisement advantage.

This isn’t my advertising idea but I still think it’s a great concept.  Whether you know it or not the majority of taxis are actually owned by individual proprietors, not big companies.  And like all small business every cent counts.

Taxi owners have lots of bills.  In addition to taxi license fee’s, fuel and running costs, they also have cleaning and maintenance bills plus making sure their taxis look clean and tidy.  This includes making sure the paint on the exterior of the car looks professional.

Advertising on Taxis can be mutually beneficial to both you and the Taxi owner.

If you approached a Taxi owner and offered to pay for the paint and design of the taxi, which included your business advertisements and contact details, I bet they’d say yes.  Who wouldn’t want someone else paying for his or her car to be painted?

Taxi advertisements are a great idea.  If you make your design stand out it will be seen all over town day and night.  Imagine that!  Your billboard in front of many different people in hundreds of locations, all day every day!

This sort of advertisement is priceless and you get it for the price of a paint job.

OK, I know I’m risking life and limb by saying this and every woman in the world is going to hate me, specially my fiance, but why not sponsor a wedding dress?

I have just been sitting with my bride to be watching MTV’s Bridezillas and it occurred to me a lot of people spend way more than they can afford on their weddings.

A lot of the brides we watch simply want the wedding of their dreams, even though they can’t afford it.  The man in me thinks “Hmmm, how can I profit from this?”, while my girlfriend just screams, “buy it buy it buy it”.  Errr enough said…

So why not sponsor a wedding dress?

As predatory as this sounds, you could wait around the weddings dress shops and offer to purchase a brides dress in exchange for putting some signs up around her wedding.  If signs sound to tacky you could negotiate to put some of your branded stationary on all the wedding tables.

And if she’s really impressed with your offer you can ask if she’d mind thanking your business for providing her with the dress during her speech?

To tell you the truth I don’t personally know any woman that would say yes to this.  But I’m sure they’re out there.  If it was a choice for some lovely bride between an ordinary dress or a great dress, in exchange for some stationary and kind acknowledgment, she just might say yes.

You never know, we might be starting a whole new advertising industry here!

This is one I thought up the other day when I was stuck in traffic.  I have never actually done it so I can’t tell you how well it would work but I think the theory is sound.

Why not sponsor a tree?  I don’t mean you have to give it money or anything like that.  But find a great big tree that everyone can see on public ground and clean it up a little.

But why would you want to clean and maintain it you ask?

Once you have cleaned it up you can put a sign on it for everyone to see saying, “This beautiful tree is maintained by My Business and Phone Number“.

I don’t think your local council would really care because you’d be providing a public service and they’d be saving money in maintenance and you’d get some great free advertising.

Plus you might even make some waves in shock value, the old saying, “All publicity is ggood publicity” and people love things that are different and quirky.

In fact, imagine if had a whole bunch of trees stratigically place around your city in prime advertising sites.  You might be asked to take them down, you might now, but hey… thats all part of it!

The other day I was speaking to one of my friends who told me about one of his black hat methods he uses a couple of times a week.  I don’t recommend this to anyone.

What he does is go to a couple of newspaper agents/stands every week (altering them not to get caught) and buys a newspaper.  But before he buys the newspaper he takes in a whole bunch of his own advertising pamphlets and slips them into all the other newspapers under the one he buys.

Again I don’t recommend this type of behaviour, but you have to admit its pretty creative.

He no longer has to pay people to deliver his flyers and customers who receive his flyers in the newspaper are sure of the validity of his business because they find these massive flyers in the paper they’ve bought.

He insists this only works in the newspaper agents that are very big and have lots of traffic and claims he can get 400 pamphlets out every week.
Pretty naughty!