Newspaper Advertisement - What It Costs You If You Get It Wrong

So after 20 plus years of working in the advertising and marketing business I've had to figure out a few things about people. I've also had to come to terms with the right way and the wrong way to approach coaching them. I had a client who really wanted to go with newspaper adverting for his health club. I didn't have a problem with that because after I explained to him about the business model-marketing model matrix I created, he felt that he had a good handle on the situation. Boy was I wrong.

I got a call from my client not long after. He had contacted the local paper and got into one of those 12 month programs and into month two, he wasn't seeing squat in the way of results.

I gave him my best disappointed parent look and gave him a list. The proper way to plan for newspaper advertisements.

Luckily he had a flexible and caring rep at the newspaper office. She sat with us and reworked his campaign and with a little help from yours truly, we were able to get him back on the profitable track.

So first, please be sure that your business model and your target market fit the medium. If you're a plumber who works only on commercial buildings, please don't put an ad in the local paper.

Generally, local newspapers work best with business to consumer business models; there are some exceptions.

When you're planning newspaper advertising follow these guidelines.

1. Establish your message. decide what message you're trying to convey to the buyers.

2. Use the KISS principle; keep your ad simple and easy to read. Clarity and brevity are good things.

3. Make your ad stand out by using strong graphics and bold words. Use bullet points.

4. The placement of your ad in the newspaper is critical. You don't want your ad on the back of coupons for another ad.

5. What's best for your ad? Can you get away with black and white, or do you need to go with color?

6. Pay close attention to where the ad is placed to ensure that your target market reads that section of the paper. If you're target males who are sports fanatics, you don't want your ad in the cooking section unless you want men who love to cook and love to watch football.

7. In print advertising, the size of your ad is important. Size does count in this case. Just be sure that the size is appropriate for your message.

8. You will pay for circulation, the more readers you get the more you pay. A word of caution, don't fall for the distribution story that some reps give you where you get 60,000 circulation and they confuse circulation with subscription. Circulation can easily be the number of papers that get distributed not what gets read.

9. If you go with newspaper inserts, watch the timing of your inserts, some days are better than others for different markets. Ask about your particular situation first. Don't go for the biggest circulation if your business won't benefit from the extra circulation if they are outside of your area.

10. Keep your image out there for a while to establish your reputation. Let the market who read the papers get a chance to see you and trust your presence.

11. Sometimes you can test a new idea or market with a classified ad. You may want to give it a try before you launch your main program.

Take the newspaper game one step at a time and don't jump into a big campaign without testing the effectiveness of the paper first. You can be conservative with newspapers and for heaven sake, do a Return On Investment spreadsheet to calculate your return before dumping your life savings in any advertising program.

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