The ad package payoff; Need more muscle in your market? Create a magazine ad package that will enhance your credibility and boost your sales

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August, 1989 by Daniel Ambrose

Now review the corporate package as it relates to overall corporate objectives. As a corporation, are you trying to build volume, at the expense of margin, in order to build market share? Does the package serve that purpose? Is it an established, mature magazine you are managing for higher margins? Is the unpredictability of revenue a significant business problem? Does the company plan to start many new magazines? Will each new magazine require a total revamp of your package? Or can magazines be added to the package easily, without major alterations?

Next, review what other incentives you can offer. Can you offer the advertiser a single insertion order service for a large number of magazines, saving your customers time and effectively saving them money? How about allowing them to submit single pieces of advertising material? Or combining merchandising clout?

Now, decide, in advance, how you will measure the success of your advertising package. How will you know that it is working? If it is bringing in new business, that should be obvious and easy to track. But if you have a corporate discount package, giving discounts to existing advertisers in hopes of solidifying their business, how will you know whether you are just giving away money or actually gaining business? Consider establishing a detailed share-of-markt tracking method. Compare share of market among advertisers using the corporate package, against advertisers not qualifying for package rates.

And don't forget to check on what your competition is doing with packages.

In summary, a package can be created that will help you solve a wide variety of problems. However, if you have separate packages for each different problem, the rate structure may become so complicated that salespeople stop using them, and advertisers stop considering the savings possibilities when they do their plans. For most purposes, advertisers look first at the magazines and second at the package discounts. So don't offer steep discounts to existing advertisers in the hope of increased business until you are sure you'll get it.

After a package has been sketched out, take a moment to step back and look at it fresh, as a business. Discounts are not a panacea. But they can contribute to the goals you share with other thoughtful business people; absolute growth, gaining market share, and revenue predictability.