Advertising is a tricky thing, especially if you find your business in a very competitive market. Perhaps the single biggest thing to keep in mind is that whatever the potential customer perceives to be true will be true for them. You may have the absolute best product with simply sensational customer service, but if all they see is a poorly designed website and any ads that you run look kitchy, cheap, and unreliable, that’s exactly how the potential customer will view your business. If they think you’re a scam, you might as well be one.

Perception is reality. Near the end of September, I put up a post on my blog exclaiming that I would be offering paid reviews for 90% off. People saw a substantial savings opportunity and jumped all over it. Instead of paying $400 for a sponsored review at John Chow dot Com, they could pay 10% of that — $40 — to get a review on Beyond the Rhetoric. The kicker is that the actual review would probably be written by the same person anyways: me.

While I still believe that it is a great deal, in truth, it is only $10 off of my regular paid review price of $50. At the $50 price point, I’d receive one or two paid review requests a month. After launching the promotion, I’ve received 10 review requests and the month isn’t even over yet. Some people may say that it’s a little deceptive, and it might be, but really, that’s the power of perception.