Why just open their eyes, when you could raise their eyebrows as well?
So, you have a business and are thinking, "Where do I start? I have an ad budget in dollars, but how do I break that down?" Well, first of all, you could always hire a professional to do it for you, such as me. But, if you insist on doing it in-house, here are a couple of hints that I have learned over the years... Newspaper advertisements are an essential part of most business' marketing plan. The key is to target your audience with specific ads placed where they would be most likely to read.
For example, are you selling herb plants? Then a prime place for your ad would be not only in the weekly "gardening" section of the paper, but the weekly "food" section as well. It is here that the people who love to cook with fresh herbs will most likely be reading. Likewise, if you are selling real estate, it is obvious that you wouldn't miss being in the "real estate" section. It is crucial to remember that people aren't looking for your ad. They are reading the newspaper and may just be looking for your product. It is up to you to get it in front of them where they will most likely be reading.
The next step for developing a successful newspaper marketing campaign is to remember "WIIFM". WIIFM is an acronym for "What's In It For Me?", the underlying for most purchases. We live in a very fast-paced society, and unless your advertisement appeals to that sense of WIIFM, your ad will most likely be overlooked. So, you know how to write a good newspaper ad already, but now you're thinking, "How exactly is a newspaper ad sold?" Let us help...
The cost of your advertisement will depend on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, the size of your ad, where it is placed, the number of times it is run etc... Newspaper companies have media kits readily available and you can even take this information from the newspaper's website. If you plan on running for an extended period of time, make sure you get a discount, whether it be on a 'number of inches run' or 'number of consecutive weeks run' contract. Newspaper companies will offer discounted rates if you agree to run for "x" amount of weeks in a row or you agree to buy "x" amount of inches in a period.
HELPFUL TIP: Always see if the newspaper you are buying space in offers "Standby" ad rates. A standby ad is an ad that is run any day the newspaper wants it to at a fraction of the cost had the ad run on a day that you specified. You must set a cut off date for the ad and most of the time, the newspaper requires that the ad be run a certain amount of times. If the paper is zoned, then each zone counts as one time run. Standby ads can be an effective way to increase your reach at a fraction of the cost.
Ad budgets, noone likes them. They are sometimes restrictive and sometimes just plain painful to figure. The first step in ad budgeting is figuring out which ads to run when. This is best done in your business's "down" time. Your advertising budget is broken down into different categories (ie. newspaper, radio, internet, direct mail, etc.). First, you need to figure out which media are best for your business and how many ad dollars you would like spent on each. For the newspaper ad budget, once you have that broken down, you will need to break it down further into the number of weeks you would like to run, so that you can get an estimate of the ad size. The tricky part is that you will most likely not want to run the same size ad every week.
To help, the best thing to do is figure out each month's sales as a percentage of gross sales. Take that percentage and use it as the percentage you will spend of your newspaper budget each month. This is getting nitty gritty now, so here's another example: January, February and March make up 3%, 3% and 7% of your yearly sales, and your newspaper budget is $50,000. You would spend $50,000 x 3% for January, the same for February and $50,000 x 7% for March. Get the idea? You could opt to do no advertising in January and spread that amount out equally over the time you do want to advertise or just lump it into another month that needs an extra push. Once you figure out your monthly budget, then break that down into each newspaper and go from there.
As mentioned before, newspaper ads are sold in column inches, meaning that you buy so many columns wide by so many inches tall to get your number of column inches. This is a big one, so here's an example: A newspaper's 3 column ad is 6.5 inches wide. Your ad is 5 inches tall. The amount of column inches used is figured by multiplying the columns by the inches, (3x5). You would have bought 15 column inches for that one ad.
Newspapers also sell color and this can be a very useful tool when building an ad campaign. First you need to ask yourself if the money is in the budget. Then a clean crisp photo that tells your story must be taken or found in mass clip art packages that are for sale everywhere. The thing to understand here is the difference between "processed color" and "spot color". I will make it easy. Processed color is used when you have a photograph that you would like reproduced in the ad. Spot color is color used throughout say in your headings, or body. It is a single color that you choose. You can choose more than one spot color per ad, but you will pay for each accordingly.
As you can see, there is alot to learn about how newspaper ads are bought, sold and designed. As always, Advisions is here to help you with the design and implementation of your marketing campaign.
