“I Never Advertise!”

If only I had a nickel… for every time I here those words. I always laugh on the inside when I meet someone at networking events and once they find out what I do for a living their first comment is “oh, I never advertise.”  That happened just the other day at a ribbon cutting event and my response was that they were advertising at that very moment.  After all, they had shown up at the event with a stack of business cards attached to a special limited time offer in the form of a coupon.  It’s advertising, just less expensive but more time consuming than other methods.

I certainly don’t think in this instance that the person was fibbing to me, as I had never heard of the store they were representing and I’ve lived in this area for 4 years.  And having worked in the same industry previously, I thought I knew most of the shops around.  So, no, they haven’t advertised.  Which is probably why they were at a ribbon cutting event, to gain some ground with the best method of advertising out there, word of mouth.

Word of mouth is why I go to all the networking events too, it works.  But it also requires the most amount time.  Social networking sites are shortening that amount of time, but they also work both ways.  In fact, people are more likely to complain about a bad experience than they are to endorse a good one.  If you put a price on your time while you were out advertising via word-of-mouth, I think you’d be surprised at how cost effective some media is in comparison.  Meanwhile, I think I’ll start putting a nickel in my jar every time I hear…