Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by Scott_AZ

import · February 18, 2002, 8:17am

Posted by JohnBoy on February 19, 2002 at 09:08:26:

If you had enough space to work with you could ad more to the ad by saying things like:

Realtors charge YOU commissions to sell your house!

We PAY YOU to sell your house to US!

We will PAY YOU $500 if you sell your house to US!

No Commissions! No Fees! No Bull! Ever!

Can YOUR realtor say that???

WE WILL SELL YOU A HOUSE! WE WILL FINANCE IT FOR YOU! WE WILL EVEN PUT UP THE FIRST $1,000 TOWARDS YOUR DOWN PAYMENT!

Will your local Realtor do that for you???

Will your Local BANK do that for you???

Cut through all the hype! Buy From US Today! Get Financed By US Today! Get $1,000 From US Towards Your Down Payment Today! Move In TOMORROW!!!

Don’t Wait Any Longer To Own A Home! Call US! XXX-XXXX

Using things like Val-Pak and Flyers would allow enough space to ad more to your ads.

import · February 18, 2002, 8:17am

Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by Scott_AZ

Posted by Scott_AZ on February 18, 2002 at 09:17:54:

The grocery stores in my town all use receipt tape with ads on the back. There are ads for auto repair shops, local carwashes, burger king, etc.
Has anyone used this to advertise for REI? If you could target specific stores in specific neghiborhoods, I would think that this would be a great way to reach your target neghiborhoods. Just wondering if anyone has used this, and how it has worked out.

Scott

import · February 18, 2002, 2:12pm

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by Tim Jensen

Posted by Tim Jensen on February 18, 2002 at 15:12:55:

Scott,

I do not think this type of ad will work well for real estate. I believe that if I had a business with repeat customers, it would work. I have no good reason why I don’t think it would work. It is just a feeling. I am sure given enough thought the reason will come to me.

With this being said, I would do some research. Get the names and numbers of the people who are running ads on these receipts. I would try and find a realtor that runs an ad and call them up. Tell them you own a lawn care company and were thinking of running an ad. I think the advertisers on those reciepts will be your best gauge of its effectiveness.

Good Luck,
Tim Jensen

PS- It has hit me. I think that for $300 you could get more bang for your buck. You could run an ad in the thrifty nickel for, 10 months for a around $300. Run a out of state owners letter campaign. I just think there are better more productive ways to spend $300.

import · February 18, 2002, 1:29pm

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by JohnBoy

Posted by JohnBoy on February 18, 2002 at 14:29:09:

As far as choosing the supermarket you want, yes, you can do that as long as that market has those tapes. Not all markets are involved with it.

It’s a separate company that sells the advertising to local businesses. They provide free register tape to the market in exchange for allowing their ads on the back of the tape. The company sells the ad space to businesses which how they make their money.

The cost varies depending on where you’re located. In CA. these were running as much as $700 per supermarket, per run. Other parts of the country you can get it for $350 - $400 per supermarket, per run.

They guarantee you at least 250,000 ads on all the tapes per market. That usually last on average up to 3 months per run. They usually only allow up to 13 different ads on the tape, which means every 13th ad would be yours. If they have less ads then your ad repeats more often since there is less space between the repeats.

I’ve even had one market where we were the ONLY ad on the tape. Every space was our ad! LOL Of course that’s rare that you will ever see that happen and if they can’t get enough advertisers then they would probably drop that market since it would be costing them money to keep supplying them with free register tape.

I’ve used these for about 14 years. This wasn’t for real estate though, it was for local businesses. They usually pull a great response for local businesses that offer good coupons. It also usually takes 2 - 3 runs before you start noticing a good response.

I use to buy up every supermarket in town that offered these just to keep my competitors off of them! LOL

Sometimes you might even get them to offer you two spaces for the price of one just to get your business. Then you could run two different ads, one for buying and one for selling. Of course it would depend on the market. If they have plenty of advertisers on the tape then they won’t offer that. If they only have a few then they may offer that to you just to space out their clients ads. So it all depends on the market you use.

You could go into all the markets that have this in the areas you want to target and walk up to one of the checkers and just ask them to pull out a length of the tape for you so you can see who is all advertising on the tape. Get a long enough piece until you see the same ads repeat themselves. That will tell you how many different businesses are the tape for that market. If there is less than 7 businesses then you can try to bargain to get a good rate to try them out since less than 7 means they are hurting for more businesses to buy advertising from them for that market. That’s where you might get them to give you two spaces for the price of one or get them to give you a good discount to try them out for 2 or 3 runs, which would last for 6 - 9 months.

Maybe you could try something like:

WE WILL PAY YOU $500 TO SELL US YOUR HOUSE!

Then structure it to where they get paid once you place a suitable tenant into the property. It would be the same as paying someone a birddog fee for referring you to that house that you made a deal on!

If you advertised for selling house you could offer something like:

BUY A HOUSE FROM US AND WE’LL PUT UP $1,000 TOWARDS YOUR DOWN PAYMENT! WE WILL EVEN FINANCE YOU!!!

Then you can just adjust the purchase price according and bump up the down payment required to offset the $1k.

You need $5k down? No Problem! Then say you need $6k down, but with the coupon special they will only need $5k now since you will put up the first $1,000!

How about that! It’s magic!!! LOL

You can find the company’s 800# on the back of the register tape that sells the ad spaces to get in touch with them and see what you can find out.

import · February 18, 2002, 10:28am

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by eric-fl

Posted by eric-fl on February 18, 2002 at 11:28:32:

Normally, when considering an avenue of marketing, I always try to put myself in the mind of my intended target audience. What do they watch? What do they read? Where do they go? Along these lines, I’m not sure grocery receipts would be the best avenue. I can’t remember the last time I looked at one of those ads. They’re on the back of a receipt, not exactly a captive audience. Most of the time, judging from my own experience, the only time I’ve ever kept one of those ads is if there was a coupon on it, like 2 bucks off a pizza or something. In other words, I need incentive to actually hang on to a receipt. I’ve toyed around with the idea of a couponing strategy, in relation to real estate, but I’ve not been able to come up with one yet. What would I offer, ten dollars off you’re next house? It’s not like people buy houses every day. Anyway, I guess the point of my rambling (or am I thinking out loud?) is that this would work best if you could marry it to a value proposition.

import · February 18, 2002, 10:22am

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by David H

Posted by David H on February 18, 2002 at 11:22:10:

This is just like any other advertising medium, whether it be TV, radio, newspaper, gas pump ads, or billboards.

The first step is to understand who you are trying to reach. High net worth individuals? renters? blue collar workers? people that buy a lot of frozen dinners?

Once you’ve figure that out, then you need to ask media supplier about the demographics of who they reach. Anyone offering an advertising medium must have some qualification of the type of people they are addressing. If these don’t match your target audience, you’ll likely have little success.

If they can’t/won’t give you such demographics, then you really have to consider the cost of advertising simply to “people” in a very general sense. Do you just want to reach “everybody”? If that’s the case, then one medium is as good as any other, and it just boils down to cost.

import · February 18, 2002, 7:59pm

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by Heidi W

Posted by Heidi W on February 18, 2002 at 20:59:30:

I actually sat through the ‘pitch’ on Grocery Store Receipt Advertising just last week. I’m still ‘thinking about it.’

I did contact a Realtor/Mortgage Broker who ran an ad (which by the way was HORRIBLY DESIGNED IN MY OPINION) and he went 12 weeks (one run) in one store and got 3 calls (and made one Mortgage Loan) so he just broke even (geez these guys work cheap!). I think that they would’ve done better if they had a better ad. It was too wordy, had small text and he tried to be a Real Estate Agent and Mortgage Broker on same coupon.

Also - the salesman did say that GSRAs take awhile before they have impact. Kind of like direct mail - you’ll start getting the real response on the 7th mailing. Anotherwords, one run isn’t a good measure of effectiveness.

Still - the point about how else you can spend your $300 per month should be taken into consideration. The coupons are best for car washes and the like - because people are looking on their receipts for that type of coupon.

Ah - ha, but isn’t that the point. If you’re ad is on every 5th coupon - someone’s going to see it, and if they know someone that needs to sell a house (including themselves) they might just call.

The part I like is that if you design the coupon right - MY OPINION - to look more like a bandit sign than a mini commercial and say something like:

WE BUY HOUSES IN 7 DAYS OR LESS.
CASH - ANY CONDITION - ANY AREA
CALL - 888-XXX-XXXX

$500 REFERRAL FEE
Company Name

and designed the add so it JUMPED OUT AT YOU then you might just get a better response (than my brkr example)

Another thing I like is that you can pick your stores. If you have a farm and you’re really trying to get your name out - this will only ad to your name recognition.

They also discount the run down to $500 (instead of $750) if you do two stores at once. You could hit both major grocery stores in your farm area this way.

We’d be lumped in with Realtors - so if you wanted exclusivity (extra $200 per run, if they don’t discount) other Realtors would be knocked out as well.

At least it’s not ‘breaking the law’ like bandit signs. (LOL.)

P.S. - My equivelant of a Thrifty Nickle (Penny Saver)ad was $70 bucks for two weeks. I guess San Diego market is just high. It only runs once a week, and comes with the other ‘junk mail.’ so lots of it is trashed. So the same 10 months would cost me $1487 (10 months = 42.5 weeks / 2 = 21.25 two week periods X $70 = 1487.)

The GSRAs would be $750 for 12 weeks. Obviously not as long a period, but I could do two runs for the cost of the above Penny Saver. Not everyone reads the Thrifty Nickle/Penny Savers. Everyone eats (granted all shoppers don’t look at their coupons.)

It’s like all marketing - it’s a crap shoot.
Still debating…what to do (analysis is my paralysis)

Heidi

import · February 18, 2002, 1:30pm

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by JohnBoy

Posted by JohnBoy on February 18, 2002 at 14:30:10:

Eric, Eric, Eric!

Come on man! Get a little creative here, will ya?

$10 off your next house??? LOL

What about this?

BUY A HOUSE FROM US AND WE WILL PUT UP THE FIRST $1,000 TOWARDS YOUR DOWN PAYMENT WITH THIS AD! WE WILL EVEN FINANCE YOU!!!

Then just ad $1k to the purchase price price and to whatever amount you originally wanted as a down payment! You need $5k down? Then say you need $6k down, but with their coupon from the ad they only need $5k since you will be paying their first $1k for them!

Or if you’re advertising to buy houses,

WE WILL PAY YOU $500 TO SELL US YOUR HOUSE!

Then structure it to where they get paid the $500 once you place a tenant into the property and then use your buyer’s down payment money to pay them their $500 with! Pretty much the same as paying a finders fee to a birddog, only in this case the seller is your birddog!

Dang! I’m good! LOL

Heck, I’m going to have to try something like this myself! LOL

import · February 18, 2002, 11:01am

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by Brian (Northern NJ)

Posted by Brian (Northern NJ) on February 18, 2002 at 12:01:27:

One thought I have had is that “motivated sellers” are usually in financial duress so maybe Paycheck Advance places would be a good place to advertise. Just a thought.

import · February 18, 2002, 10:33pm

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by Tim Jensen

Posted by Tim Jensen on February 18, 2002 at 23:33:34:

Heidi,

You make some good points.

I still think that the money would be better spent on a more tried and true method though.

Good Luck,
Tim

import · February 18, 2002, 8:29pm

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by JohnBoy

Posted by JohnBoy on February 18, 2002 at 21:29:50:

I’m betting this company is Ad Resources out of CA.

That $200 for exclusivity is a first that I’ve heard on that one! They use to always give exclusives automatically! Now they try to soak you for an extra $200 to get it??? LOL

Don’t fall for it! If you decide to try it then just tell them you would be interested in giving it a try, BUT ONLY IF THEY GIVE YOU AN EXCLUSIVE FOR THE SAME PRICE! Otherwise you’ll use another form of advertising! My guess is they’ll jump on it unless they have more customers they can handle to get on that particular market!

Their prices haven’t changed much since I used them when I was in CA back in the 80’s. They were charging $700 then and we paid $500 because of running on more than one store.

Where I’m at now we can get it for $400 and it’s the same company based out of CA. doing it here. Only I never heard of paying the extra $200 for getting an exclusive. They always gave that automatically! Once you were on they couldn’t allow another competitor on until you stopped using them. That was one of their main sales gimmicks to keep businesses renewing with them! If you drop the ad for a run then another competitor could get on and you couldn’t get back on until they quit advertising! It was a nice gimmick to keep a business renewing every run! Now they say they want an extra $200 for that, huh??? LOL I think that’s just an up sell to make more money on their part. Don’t fall for it! Tell them you get the exclusive at the $500 price or you won’t advertise with them! See what they say about it then? I’m betting they’ll give it to you to get your business. Those salespeople are working on commissions! And if they have at least 5 - 7 ads running on one market then everything over that is pure profit for their company anyway! Did they tell you what the maximum limit is for number of different ads per market is? It use to be 13.

import · February 19, 2002, 7:13am

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by eric-fl

Posted by eric-fl on February 19, 2002 at 08:13:32:

See? There ya go. Now, I think we can add, “Conducted a collaborative marketing planning workshop for a real-estate industry Internet startup” to our resumes, LOL.

That was the part I couldn’t quite get my head around, the actual “offer” to be incorporated with marketing mediums that lend themselves to couponing strategies. In addition to grocery store receipts, other places I can think of where I see coupons for other things: Val-Paks (plenty on those in the archives), coupon sections in the newspaper, door hangers, t.v. papers, local “ads” paper (they call it the Flyer in my area).

import · February 18, 2002, 5:09pm

Pretty persuasive! - Posted by Jesse (CO)

Posted by Jesse (CO) on February 18, 2002 at 18:09:50:

Hey JohnBoy!

I recently checked out a church bulletin agency that offered me a space on the back of 3 churches’ weekly bulletins for a full year for $800.00 or so…
The price is pretty good…

The only downside I see is that your ad’s wording would detract attention from the preaching of the Minister, Padre, etc. LOL

import · February 19, 2002, 7:22am

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by eric-fl

Posted by eric-fl on February 19, 2002 at 08:22:11:

That’s good thinking, and goes in line with what I was saying about thinking like my target audience. I think that’s right, people under duress DO go to those places. Along these lines, pawn shops would probably be another such place.

import · February 18, 2002, 1:41pm

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by John G (NNJ)

Posted by John G (NNJ) on February 18, 2002 at 14:41:40:

Thanks for the Idea Brian. Going to the one around the corner this afternoon. I mainly have been leaving stacks of business cards on all the bulliten boards. Haven’t had a call yet, but I’ll give it some time.

import · February 18, 2002, 10:43pm

Re: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising - Posted by Heidi W

Posted by Heidi W on February 18, 2002 at 23:43:44:

Thanks for the bargaining tips. I probably won’t do this (yet.) Can’t afford to gamble right now. I NEED MY FIRST DEAL - FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

Regarding your question about maximum - it’s currently 9 - if I’m recalling correctly.