Is your business a secret?

If your business is selling to the sailing market, you have a big problem.  How do you reach that market?  How do you keep the good news about your product or service from being a secret? After all if no one knows about you or what you offer how can they buy what you have to sell? So how do you get the word out?

Word of mouth, of course, is the best way to get your message out, but that method gives you no control of what your potential buyer hears. The other issue is geographic. There are sailors up and down both coasts and sprinkled in all of the 50 states. At Good Old Boat we know a lot about the sailors who read our magazine, they are readers for one thing.  They aren’t watchers or web surfers or twitters or bloggers. They do have and use computers but they like the feel of paper in their hands and they don’t want to need electricity to do their reading. They also read our magazine in every U.S. state and several other countries.  This means the best way for our readers to find you is with an ad in Good Old Boat.  Need more convincing?

A recent article from the Magazine Publishers of America, entitled “Ad Impact: What you don’t know could hurt your bottom line” sited several interesting myths related to magazine advertising.  I will cite two of the seven myths and provide a link to the rest on our website.

Myth One: Magazines help me build my brand, but are not key to drive purchase intent.

Reality: Client commissioned studies show magazine ads are the most effective and efficient in boosting purchase intent.  

Myth Two: New media lead in driving web behavior.

Reality: Magazines excel at influencing consumers to start a search online.

You can read more at: http://www.goodoldboat.com/pdfs/mythbusters.pdf

Michael Facius 612-605-8319 or
Michael@GoodOldBoat.com
Advertising Sales 

Bonita's Metamorphosis
Chrysler caterpllar turns into 22-foot butterfly

by Penn Wallace

Now came the hard part. The fiberglass was dull and gray. I spent several weekends buffing it out and waxing it, using 3M Marine Fiberglass Restorer and Wax. I used the 09012 version, which is the heavy-duty oxidation remover. Rather than use a buffer, I rubbed it out by hand. I didn’t know what kind of condition the gelcoat was in and didn’t want to wear through it. That would have entailed an expensive refinishing project. The final result was that it looked like new.…We had a boat-Christmas that year. On my list were a boathook, mooring lines, an air horn, a fl are gun, and all sorts of other nautical paraphernalia. Santa was good to me. Everyone in the family got a life jacket too…We still needed an outboard. I found an ad in the newspaper for a 20-yearold Mercury 10-hp motor for $500. Libby and I painted and cleaned and scrubbed and prepped our boat all spring. In late May we were ready to launch her.

Read the entire article from the January 2007 issue