HA!! It does work. The news stations in this area use what I would call “appeal to mortality” advertising. You know, “Your tap water is slowly killing you”, story at 6, or my favorite (we get this one every week) “The second ice age is coming tonight, buy some candles and prepare for the worst storm EVER”, story at 10. The horrid economy has apparently sent many companies down a similar path, although with a bit more subtlety. I now get about 5-10 emails a week with a “your business is doomed UNLESS….UNLESS you use us” message. I don’t mind these, because I get it. It makes sense. Fear is an unbelievably powerful motivator. But once you get past the fear and loathing, what do you do? How do you actually do the same with a smaller budget? Here’s a couple ideas:

1. If you have an established brand, search engine marketing should be working for you, at least with brand terms. If it is not, talk to your agency! Brand terms are the equivalent of someone stopping on the street, and asking someone if they know where your store is. Don’t you want as many of these people as possible? Consider maxing out your potential on brand keywords as a first step to get more out of your budget.

2. So, you know your customer goes to People.com and local news sites. Congrats. But what else are they doing? What blogs do they read? What social apps do they use. You have to know this. The good news is you can find out on the cheap. Set up google alerts for your brand and your competitors, check out technorati, use the Google blog search tool. Or…ask them. Run a survey on your site and ask your customers what blogs they visit and what social apps they use. The information could be invaluable. Find five blogs that your audience reads, work to build a long-term relationship with them, and watch the results. I don’t mean to infer that this is easy, you may have to start with 50-100 blogs that look right, and hope to come out with 5 that might work with you.