Home Exchange and Glossy Advertising
Seldom a week passes without some glossy magazine or another calling up trying to sell us exorbitantly priced advertising. They just don’t get it when I patiently (well, almost always) explain to them that home exchange memberships never get sold via glitzy full page spreads. It simply doesn’t happen that way.
Just a few days ago a very persistent lady working for a New York magazine would not be deterred. At first she tried to sell me a
full page, full color advertisement at $18,000 per issue! In subsequent calls the published size diminished, but her practiced “hard sell” did not. She simply could not and would not accept that potential home exchange members don’t seek us out by flipping through the pages of her publication.
Home exchange members first and foremost need to trust and feel completely comfortable with the company(s) they list with. This trust comes first and foremost from personal recommendations and second from detailed write-ups in newspapers, supplements, magazines, etc., that they read regularly. NOT from hard advertising!
Not long ago I read a detailed presentation put out by yet another company brand new to home swapping. They explained why they should be considered Number One! They provided a whole list of reasons why potential members should join them rather than any of the other companies. And they stated that during the upcoming months they would be investing heavily in TV, radio and printed advertising!
I had to laugh. The way they worded their promotional appeared to pre-suppose that advertising on the TV or radio had never even occurred to any of their competition. Maybe before they wasted substantial amounts of money they should have wondered why ExchangeHomes.com, or HomeBase Holidays, or DigsVille don’t pop up between commercials for breakfast cereal and furniture stores. Many, many years of solid, combined experience has proved that it simply doesn’t work!
Oh, well - It’s their money.
© ExchangeHomes.com All rights reserved.
