Despite the growing importance of internet advertising, newspapers are still the most important advertising medium for many if not most small businesses. Few small businesses can afford to employ expensive advertising agencies, and it's all too easy to waste money on ineffective advertisements. Here are some tips on how to make your newspaper advertising more cost effective, by:
- Simple DIY market research on your target customers and their needs.
- Identifying which newspapers will best reach those customers.
- Planning a campaign and writing advertising to attract the target customers, and
- Measuring the results of your advertising to improve its cost effectiveness.
Market Research for a Small Business
A simple customer survey should provide the essential basis for an effective newspaper advertising campaign. The key information you need is:
- Who are your target customers?
- What do they want that you can provide?
- Where do they live? Postcodes can give lots of information.
- What advertising media are most likely to reach them, and specifically which are the best newspapers.
Other useful but less vital information includes their age, socio-economic group, spending habits etc.
Few small businesses can afford, or need, the luxury of a marketing agency to conduct a survey, but it's easy enough to conduct your own DIY customer survey.
Choosing the Best Newspaper for Your Advertising
Which is the best newspaper to advertise your business in, whether local or national, depends on the nature of your business and your customer profile.
Squeeze as much information as you can about the reader profile of any newspaper in which you consider advertising, then relate this to the results of your customer survey to find which is the best newspaper to reach your target customers.
The minimum information you need for effective customer targeting is the newspaper's catchment area and reader numbers by postcode. However, more detailed information, if available, on readers' age and socioeconomic profiles and interests may help to refine your advertising.
Planning and Mounting Your Newspaper Advertising Campaign
Having chosen which newspaper to advertise your business in, there are still important decisions to be made in relation to the size, prominence and number of advertisements to run.
At one extreme, a regular entry in the classified section of a local paper will promote your business on a long term basis for little cost , but is only likely to be read by "proactive" customers who are actively seeking a service of your type.
At the other extreme, a prominent full colour front page ad will attract most attention, but will naturally cost far more.
Unless your advertising budget will run to a regular high exposure advertisement, a useful compromise is to run a permanent classified ad, boosted by an occasional series of two or three of the largest and most prominent advertisements your budget will cover at busy times of year, or when you have a particular event or product to publicise.
However, which size and position to choose for your advertisement is very much a matter of judgment, but you can greatly improve the success of your advertising by steps to evaluate the results of individual ads. (See below)
Writing Your Advertisements
Despite the huge sums spent on creating sophisticated advertising for major national and international companies, effective advertising for most small businesses can be quite simple, but must be based on sound customer research. Simply tell your target customers:
- Who you are.
- Where you are.
- What you have that they want.
- Why (hopefully) you can provide better value or service than competitors.
Then design your advertisement and draft your copy to put this message over clearly and in an eye-catching way.
It's easy enough with the right software (e.g., Microsoft Publisher) to design your own advertisement, with all the necessary artwork, but any newspaper advertising department will produce the artwork for you if you sketch out the basic message and advertising idea.
Finally, check and re-check the copy. A wrong telephone number, web address or price can be disastrous.
Measuring Your Advertising Success
It's often difficult to tell how successful advertising is, but unless you try you're likely to waste a large slice of your advertising budget.
Simply asking customers where they hear about you is one simple way, but memories are often faulty. To include a promotional code or special offer voucher with your advertisements is a far more reliable measure of success. Although the returns will generally understate the actual results of the advertising campaign they will give a fairly reliable guide to the relative effectiveness of different advertisements.
More information about judging the success of newspaper advertising.
Conclusion
Newspaper advertising can be a very useful marketing tool for the small business, but it has both advantages and disadvantages, and these should always be considered before deciding which advertising medium is best for your business at any particular time.
Tony Allen - In 2004 I began my "fourth career" as a freelance writer. In my first career, after training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, I ...
