Interesting Way to Negotiate Excellent Advertising Discounts With Magazines & Newspapers

Posted on January 10th, 2008.

Hi Everyone,

Here’s a very simple, yet clever way to potentially get HUGE discounts off advertising space in your local newspaper or magazines. Actually, this applies to any advertising space.

I was reading a very good book about business, and it covered the topic of negotiating advertising rates. The technique is simple, and in a nutshell comes down to this: Put the money in the editors hand first, and then start negotiating a better advertising rate. Here’s how it works:

Step 1) Lets say you want to advertise a half page advertisement in any given magazine/newspaper that relates to your business. Ring up the magazine and find out the going rate for your requirement in both black & white, and color, and also find out the cut off time to submit your ad before they go to print.

Step 2) Once you know the rack rate, deduct 40% off that amount and write out a cheque to the company and send it in to them At this point you haven’t even been approved for that price, nor do they know the money is on the way.

Step 3) Get your ad prepared and ready to send to the editor (or appropriate department).

Step 4) Call the editor 2 days out from cut off and tell them they have the money, and you’ve got the ad ready to go. The chances are they would have called you to find out why you sent them money without having an advert booked, but that’s ok… just tell them that you want to take out any ‘distress’ space (that’s what they call it when someone pulls out at the last minute and need a replacement… or they need to fill up unbooked space).

Can you see how this simple negotiation method could get you some great advertising deals? Do you really think their going to send the money back to you? I don’t think so! You can be almost guaranteed they’ll find a spot for your advert.

This idea can be used for anything you’re buying of simular nature.

What if you wanted a car that costed $20,000? Why not send a cheque to the dealer for $17,000 for that exact car only. Can you really see a car dealer sending a $17,000 cheque back to you? No way!

I’ll be using this idea from now on… it totally makes sense. Some companies might sell you the item just above costs so you don’t go with a competitor!

Try it out!! The book I read about this idea in can be found here www.fourhourworkweek.com

Have you got any negotiation techniques you would like to share here? Just write in the comments box below… we’d love to hear from you!

Dean

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