There have been a few threads about print advertising on the Irish Webmaster Forum over the last year or so and if you look at the most recent one you can spot a trend.
A lot of web professionals are unfamiliar with print media and those that are doing print advertising probably aren’t too comfortable sharing details of pricing etc.,
Up until 2003 I had never bought print advertising in my life.
I’d been involved in negotiations about it in a previous job, but I’d never been the one making the decision and spending their own money.
Print media advertising is very different to online advertising.
It’s a completely different world.
A few things I have learnt over the years:
- Don’t expect your first ad to have a huge impact
- Rate cards are open to negotiation
- Don’t let them design the ad for you
- Don’t take their stats at face value
- If the price isn’t right walk away
- If you’ve never heard of the publication or seen it be careful
If you buy banner advertising or PPC you’re probably used to dealing with relatively tangible figures.
If someone clicks on your advert you can track that click all the way to the checkout and see how much it earned you (or didn’t).
When you do print advertising it’s not that easy.
Even if you ask every single person who rings up where they heard about your services / goods you will always find that a lot of them won’t actually remember. (I’ve been told that we ran ads in publications we’ve never dealt with more than once!)
You can, however, use things like custom landing pagers or coupon codes.
Rate cards are always an interesting one.
When I first started out I actually thought that people were semi-serious about them, but you soon discover that you can simply treat them as a guideline – though if you’re a shy wallflower you may not be able to negotiate as good a price as someone tougher.
Like anything – the more you buy the cheaper it becomes.
If you buy a series of ads the cost per unit will drop the longer the series is.
So the list price for a single ad could be a hell of a lot more than the price of a series of ads!
Our first adverts were naive.
We didn’t have a lot of money to throw around and we thought it would be a good idea to let the magazines design the ads for us inhouse.
Bad idea!
Every time your company / business name is used in public – especially in an advert – it is a direct reflection on your business’ perception.
If the ad looks cheap and tacky, what kind of impression are you going to give? (there is a cynical counter-argument to that of course – just because the ad is slick doesn’t mean that the service / product is going to be as slick as promised!)
It may seem expensive to hire a professional designer, but it will pay dividends!
Don’t forget – you can reuse an ad.
Readership statistics can be abused by a good sales person quite easily. You can either waste a lot of time trying to analyse the data they’re giving you, or go with your gut.
After you’ve spoken to a few advertising sales people you’ll probably realise that they ALL consider their publication to be the best in its niche and that their readership is worth a fortune.
Things to watch out for – actual sales vs. freebies
One Irish publication I know of has a circulation of thousands, but only actually sells about a 100 copies per issue.
Maybe a fraction of the people who get free copies are actually interested in the publication, but since none of them asked for it I’d have to wonder….
Choosing the correct publication for your ads is not going to be easy, but try to put yourself in the mind of the reader. If you buy a magazine specialising in making model cars you’re probably not that interested in an advert for eye liner…
Don’t be afraid to say no.
Sales people succeed, in most cases, by building up a rapport with their clients and prospects. By charming them to some degree.
If they’re doing their job you may feel slightly guilty when you don’t buy.
Don’t.
If the price isn’t right or the product doesn’t fit your market, walk away.
Don’t be afraid to ask for sample copies of publications that you aren’t familiar with. If the content style doesn’t seem to fit then you probably shouldn’t be buying advertising space with it.
Good points Michele. I never realised that the rates cards were felxible to some degree.
Do you track enquiries from the printed material to your web site by publising a unique URL. For example, your-website-address.com/offer1 etc
Thanks for the invaluable info Michele!
Peter – Unique URLs are one way of doing it, but I tend to use offer codes more.
Tom – hope you found it useful 🙂
Michele
abc-ireland.ie has a list of all ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations) certified publications with circulation figures and a breakdown of how this circulation figure is achieved. Within this ‘non-controlled free circulation’ is the main one to look out for – if the circulation is made up primarily of this figure then I’d have some serious questions to ask, it basically means that the reader didn’t ask for the publication, didn’t pay for it and more importantly the publication has no idea who the reader is, no demographic information (except maybe geographical, eg Herald AM / Metro). If a title is not ABC certified don’t be afraid to ask why not – is the title not prepared to stand over their circulation and readership figures? If they quote you demographics, question where they got these details and if the details were acquired independently. If it is ABC certified the main influencers should be:
1. Newstrade and Other Single Copy Sales: At full cover price or normal trade terms.
2. Single Copies Sold on Subscription: At full published rates.
3. Controlled Free Circulation by Individual Written Requests or Individual Electronic Requests.
If some or all of these figures make up the vast majority of the circulation then the title has at least a genuine, qualified circulation to stand over.
Hope this helps.
BTW – I do work in ad sales but I don’t feel the above info is in any way biased (I hope!).
Mark
Thanks for the explanation!
It’s really hard to make sense of some of the figures people throw at you when they are trying to sell you ads!
Michele
No worries. I think most of the confusion kicks in when talking to ad sales people is when they start talking about the social class of their readership, which is also ‘ABC1, AB etc etc’. Important not to get the two confused.
True.
Maybe I need to write a bluffer’s guide to cover the demographics 🙂