Buying print advertising may be something that you want to experiment with as part of the marketing strategy for your business. Personally, I don’t think print advertising is worth the investment.
Results are difficult to quantify, demographics are too broad, and it takes a BIG budget to really see any benefit.
As a small business owner, I believe the best place for you to spend your advertising budget is online.
This is because:
(1) You can target your audience more specifically.
(2) You can quantify the results easily with free tools such as Google Analytics.
(3) You can optimise your marketing by testing different adverts to find out what works.
(4) People searching online are active, not passive. This means they are actually looking for you.
But, if you really want to invest in some print advertising, you will find the following tips very useful to avoid getting ripped off:
(1) ONLY buy advertising space in the classified section at the back of the magazine.
Classified advertising is broken down into sections. Anybody looking at your advert is doing so because they are actively looking for what you are offering. They are a warm lead.Unless you’re a huge multinational company with a marketing budget in the millions, never EVER buy advertising that appears within the body of the magazine, typically a quarter to full page spread.These are only useful for brand awareness campaigns. Such as the ubiquitous adverts for brands like Fairy washing-up liquid, or Pampers nappies.For branding adverts to work you need to plaster your ads in lots of publications. That way people see your brand over and over again and become familiar with it.
Brand advertising might work for mass-market products with multi-million budgets, but it’s probably not going to work for your home business.
(2) NEVER pay full price for advertising.
Find out when the deadlines are for advertising and wait until the very last minute.If there is space left, you can bet that the magazine will be desperate to fill it. After all, the square root of f*@k all is f*@k all, and advertising sales people know that.
(3) NEVER accept the first offer of a discount.
Play it cool. Decide beforehand what discount you would be happy with, and don’t accept anything less. You can always walk away and try again next month.
(4) Ignore comments like: “There’s not much space left so you’ll need to decide quickly”, or “We have someone else interested in that spot so you’ll need to act quickly”. It’s classic sales patter, and 9.9 times out of 10 it’s utter bull!
(5) Always start off with the smallest possible advert you can.
Usually this is 3 x 1 (advertising speak!). If the advert proves successful you can always increase the size.
(6) Include a clear call to action in the advert.
What is it that you want your potential customer to do? e.g. ‘Call now to save money’.
(7) Rather than advertise your paid products, advertise a free giveaway.
This incentivises people to come to your site and give you their contact details. You’ll then be able to build relationships with those potential customers, increasing your conversion rate and return on investment.
(8) Test, test, test.
Include a code in your adverts that customers have to tell you when they buy. This is crucial so that you know which adverts are working and which aren’t.
Now, go get that great deal!
