When advertising in any kind of print publication, it’s always important to consider placement. I talked about position on specific pages previously, and I wanted to make sure you understand the possibilities that WHERE your ad appears may help your efforts.
First, you know your business better than anyone. You know your customer base and who uses your services most. Specifically consider these factors:
Male, female or fairly balanced
Age – are they 40’s, 50’s, 60+ or even youth
Money – lower, middle or upper income brackets, and consider retirees
Is your product or service a need or a want?
Is your product or service a small expenditure or a big one?
I can go on and on with factors to consider, but we’ll leave it at this for the sake of a post vs. a novel.
So let’s say you have a financial advisory firm and you think your potential customers are predominantly male (we’re pretending here). Your first thought is to put your ad in the Financial section, which would be correct. But what about the SPORTS section that is read predominantly by men? Change it up a bit and hit other sections where you might attract potential customers. There are an awful lot of people who are invested that do not read the Financial section of the newspaper. Also, what about the rise in female decision-makers – in this scenario investors? So let’s consider that women invest much more than they used to 20 years ago, and WOW you could get even more clients if you hit women. Perhaps general placement, meaning no specific section might be better than the Financial section, if you want to grow that segment of your client base. Women don’t just read the clothing ads and horoscopes you know.
Another consideration is longevity. Newspapers are typically daily or weekly publications. That means you need to decide if you can afford daily, weekly or monthly insertions. Newspapers are usually thrown away or used to line the bird cage each day. So how do you show up less frequently and gain retention value?
Think about a TV section which people keep for a week because of the television programming guide. When it comes to the TV section, more retirees keep and use them nowadays because they’re the ones who are of an age to appreciate the printed word. Everyone else scrolls through the 5,000 channels in the guide on their screens, which if I may say on a personal note, drives me nuts! I could spend an entire show length looking for the show that just aired while I was looking for it! Then there are inserts. Inserts merit an entirely separate post, but for our purposes here, they are another “keeper” form of advertising in your local paper, and one that you should explore.
I hope some of this information is helpful and causes you to think about the effectiveness of advertising the same way over and over again. Don’t be afraid to try a new section. You may be surprised at the results!
Success to you!
Kathy Wells