Make the most of print ads to grow your business: the ins and outs of placing an ad and running a campaign

Home Office Computing, Sept, 1992 by Kim T. Gordon

The Ins and Outs of Placing an Ad and Running a Campaign

When faced with the choice between selling to thousands of your best prospects all at once or selling to them singly over a long period of time, which would you choose? If you're like most home-based business owners with limited time for selling and little in-office backup, you'd choose to reach thousands of prospects at once, hands down. This can be done through print advertising.

Print advertising helps you target your best prospects. More important, you control the content of your message and the context in which it appears, as well as the month, week, or even the day on which your prospects will be exposed to your message.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT PUBLICATION

Once you have produced effective print advertisements, you're ready to begin buying space. You must be careful to select the media that best target your audience. Where do your potential customers get information? Where can you afford to advertise with enough frequency to achieve effective reach?

Identify customers and markets. First, create a profile that approximates your best customer or client. Consider demographic factors such as age, sex, and household income. If you are marketing to other businesses, you may wish to target them by type or size of business.

Next, identify your market's geographic area. Is it local, regional, or national? This is vital, since in order to reduce overall waste and media costs, you will eventually choose only those publications that have the bulk of their circulation in your primary selling area.

Janice Leaman is president of Tender Loving Cat Care, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Leaman and the 12 people who work with her to provide in-home pet sitting serve a small suburban area near their homes. So the publications Leaman uses to generate leads must all have a local circulation.

Newspaper ads. Leaman depends on newspaper display and classified advertising. "I wouldn't have a business without it," she says. Your own city or town's daily or weekly paper may help you reach either consumers or businesses. Some papers even offer zoned editions for distribution in designated locales in order to provide a more efficient buy to advertisers with smaller market areas.

Major dailies provide something for everyone through special-interest sections. Select the section you believe your audience will look to as a source of information. Leaman knows her target audience is composed predominately of female, middle-income pet owners, so she advertises in the Living section of her daily newspaper.

Newspaper sections that regularly carry a particular type of display advertising are, like classified sections, considered search-corridor vehicles. Search-corridor media offer the opportunity to reach your best prospects--those who are looking for information when they have already made a decision to buy.

If you're selling a business product or service, consider advertising in a local business newspaper. These are generally weeklies with fewer readers and ad pages and, consequently, lower advertising costs than major metropolitan dailies. Business newspapers, of course, are the best way to reach certain businesses.

Don't overlook classified newspaper advertising as a part of your media mix. When she first began advertising, Leaman concentrated solely on display ads. But the number of responses improved dramatically when she began adding classified ads in the same issues. They are usually typeset by the publication, so you needn't spend money producing camera-ready art. However, some publications offer you the excellent option of running camera-ready artwork in the classifieds. By using logos and graphics as well as type in a larger point size than in other ads, your classified will have the impact of a display ad. And it will stand out on the page surrounded by a sea of smaller type.

Magazine ads. Stuart Smith, co-owner of the Churchtown Inn, uses a schedule of well-targeted magazines to reach potential guests for his historic Pennsylvania bed-and-breakfast. After some trial and error, Smith narrowed his basic media mix to two magazines, one regional and one national. He stopped advertising in local newspapers and magazines after achieving poor results. Says Smith, "Our business has increased 30 percent during the recession"; he attributes some of this to magazine advertising.

Magazines, like newspapers, can help you reach either consumer or business audiences. Since magazines exist to address the special interests of their own particular readers, there are national magazines for people who buy everything from model airplanes to organic fertilizer. Select magazines that carry advertising for products or services similar to yours and contain articles on topics of keen interest to your target audience. And look for annual "directory issues," which readers may save for as long as a year or more.

If you don't wish to reach business or consumer audiences across the nation, some national magazines offer regional editions or demographic buys to target specific buyers or narrow geographic markets. If you're selling a product or service locally, consider city magazines. Most are consumer oriented, although some major metropolitan markets have excellent business magazines devoted entirely to local business news.