Small Business Marketing with Newspaper Ads

Are you currently running Newspaper Ads? Have you seen that the cost of your ads in print have risen while the results are falling? In the modern era, print mediums are losing millions (some groups billions) of dollars to entrepreneurs moving to marketing their businesses online. Is print media dead?

Walk by any coffee shop, airport lounge, or newsstand and you will see that print media isn’t dead. Yes, print is struggling, but they still command millions of eyeballs. Millions of people still pick up newspapers daily. The big question is how are you transforming those eyeballs into customers? How are you piquing their interest and getting them to take action?

Should you fall victim to the ad salesman and be told you need to “run the ad longer” or “buy a bigger ad” you will just be throwing away money. Newspaper ads can work for your business, when you can avoid key mistakes.

1.Change Them Quickly – The benefit of newspaper ads is they are printed daily. Don’t get sucked in to running the same ad for an entire month. Be nimble and get the ability to change your ad quickly. If your ad doesn’t generate a single call, you don’t have to scrap the entire ad; you might just need a headline change. Remember, when you run internet ads you can change them every hour if you need to, push your newspaper advertising and change as often as you can to find the ad that works.

2.Don’t Forget About the 7% Rule – Tragically the newspaper ad salesman isn’t your friend. They will try to use logic like “Just 1 customer and the ad pays for itself”. Last time I checked you aren’t in business to invest $ 1 and get $ 1 back, you might as well keep the dollar in your pocket. To keep your marketing and advertising costs down for your business, my 7% rule states that you can only invest 7% in marketing to get a customer. That means that if your average customer is worth $ 3,000 to you, then you can invest $ 210 to get that customer. Watch your numbers to keep your costs in-line.

When you want to get more out of your newspaper ads, you can’t do what everyone else is doing. To get results, your ad needs to be different and needs to stick within your marketing budget.