Today, many new products are becoming obsolete even before they reach the consumer. And no one cares to wait around in the hopes that time will cure such marketing failures.

But as American business moves forward, what is probably the oldest form of commerce in the world—barter—has become a widely accepted solution to vexing financial and marketing challenges.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the “brand building” arena, where smart marketing people know they have to make every dollar count and maximize the marketplace exposure of their lucrative core brands.

Barter, more specifically corporate barter, can be an important weapon in the marketing executive’s arsenal.

Almost everyone knows what barter is in its simplest terms: the exchange of products or services for other products or services. However, corporate barter is somewhat different. It’s a process by which a manufacturer or provider of services can take unwanted products or underutilized capacity and turn it into valuable trade credits, by selling to a corporate barter company.

Corporate barter offers a great value to businesses…an attractive alternative to the “pennies on the dollar” that liquidators offer for their unwanted goods. (A list of barter companies worldwide is found on the BarterNews.com web site, under “Barter Contacts.”)

What does the company do with the trade credits? It uses them to acquire things normally purchased with cash. In most cases these trade credits are equal to the regular wholesale price of goods, helping conserve cash.

Virtually every corporation has products or services that seemed like great idea when they were conceived, but failed to pay out quickly in the real-world marketplace. And the trouble is that most companies can’t afford the cost of owning products of offering services that “aren’t quite right, right now.”

That’s a luxury that is growing increasingly scarce—and expensive—as marketers seek to expand the reach and sales of their most important items. Corporate barter is a solution for clearing out what’s not working, while allowing a company’s top-notch marketing and sales people to concentrate on what is working.

Instead of reverting to discounting and incentives on lines with good profit margins, and diverting time and attention from the core business, corporate barter can help…by stanching the hemorrhaging and cleaning out the non-profitable products before they put a further drain on a company’s cash flow.

To be continued…For corporate barter companies, see top of page “Site Sponsors.”

This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 11:24 am and is filed under Marketing, Purchasing & Financing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.