Advertising is the best way to use Trade Dollars to attract cash business. Advertising media, including radio, television, magazines, newspapers, billboards, and direct mail, are all available on trade. After all, there’s no way to store advertising media and sell it later, so media companies welcome trade.
If a minute of available advertising time passes at a radio station without an advertiser buying it, that minute is lost forever. It can’t be put back on the shelf and sold tomorrow. The same is true in various ways for all other advertising media.
Bartered advertising is very affordable, particularly since your Trade Dollar income generally represents new business. This means the cost basis in your bartered advertising dollars is very low.
For example, a restaurant may have food costs representing 30 percent of the price of a meal. Since barter represents new business the restaurant would have been unlikely to attract, the actual cash cost of those Trade Dollars is 30 cents on the dollar. There is no additional cost in rent, electricity, insurance, payroll, etc. to service the additional business. The only expense is the incremental cost of the food.
Using Trade Dollars, the restaurant can buy advertising to bring in new cash business for less than a third of the regular cash cost. And advertising is a readily available barter commodity, one that represents an immediate opportunity to generate new cash business. In the example above, the restaurant has tripled the purchasing power of its actual cash cost.
Not everyone recognizes the opportunities barter represents, but anyone can learn. It just takes some creative minds and exposure to new ideas to fit barter into your every day way of doing business.
