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Market Yourself On A Budget

Several years ago I was arriving to a networking event a bit late.  I parked my vehicle near the back of the lot and walked past all of the other attendees' cars with their wraps and sign magnets. I noticed a few realtors had attached business card holders to their cars. For some reason I kept thinking about how smart it was to let people grab a card while I could be doing other things, like shop.

A few years later I bought one of these card holders from a local office supply store. I measured out how much room I had on the back of my car as well as the size of the card holder. Next I went to Vistaprint and designed a sign magnet with enough room for the card holder to stick on without blocking my message. You can see the results below. 


I quickly realized that the sun and rain would make my cards look "weathered" after a while so I learned to only leave 2 cards in there at a time. (Cards costs too much to throw out a dozen at a time because they got soggy.) This also made it easier to notice if someone actually took my card while I was away from my vehicle. Even though it hasn't garnered a lot of results I have returned to my car after shopping or walking to see that a card is missing. 

But the most interesting thing regarding this happened a couple of weeks ago. I was driving to a nearby town for a business meeting and came to a stop at a red light. In my rearview mirror I could see a man jump out of the van in back of me. He saw me in the mirror and waved and grabbed a card. He jumped back into the van as the light turned green. 

A few minutes later my phone rang. It was the guy in back of me wanting to know about dental insurance. We spoke briefly and I called him a few hours later with the information he needed. 

The best part of a sign magnet is that it's a one-time cost. The magnet was about $15 and the card holder was about $5. You aren't going to find many marketing tools that you can continue to use for $20. And if I get just one guy wanting dental, life or any other kind of insurance from my magnetic card holder it has more than paid for itself.

The old adage that says you have to spend money to make money can be true, but no one says you have to spend too much, and the less you invest (while still getting a return on that investment) will increase your profits and bottom line. 

Chris Castanes is a professional speaker who helps sales people succeed through workshops and humorous presentations. He's also the author of "You're Going To Be Great At This!", a humorous look at sales. For booking information, click here. He's also the president of Surf Financial Brokers selling life and disability insurance in several states.

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