How you can improve ROI when running ads in your local community newspaper.
Suppose you want to market locally to people in your community. Why not try advertising in your local community paper?
Advertising in ancient newspapers? Are you nuts?
Yes, we’ve all heard about how newspaper subscriptions are dwindling compared to online. But they aren’t completely dead, nor are they obsolete like the telegraph and slide rule.
I currently work in the newspaper industry, where I design pages for newspapers, magazines and special tabloid publications. It’s true that subscriptions in many markets are diminishing, but you can still effectively market to local people using those “ancient” forms of communication called newspapers.
Comparing print ads to online ads
In case you balk when you find out how much an ad in newsprint costs, keep in mind that the amount you spend in print can be comparable to how much you spend online.
- When you advertise in newsprint or a magazine, you pay for space.
- When you advertise online, you pay each time someone sees your ad, or per impression upon a viewer. Another popular option is to pay per click.
Print or online: Which is better?
- $100 for a 2 column x 5″ ad for one week in the local paper with distribution of 5,000 or
- $100 for a 300 x 250 ad for 5,000 impressions
For each of these advertising channels, you’re spending the same amount of money to reach roughly the same number of people. It’s not that print ads cost more than online ads, it’s just that you can notice it more upfront if you’re spending $1,000 on an ineffective print ad versus quietly bleeding $20 per day on a poorly designed online ad. Either way, your advertising dollars can wasted if not planned and designed in a way that leads to you connecting with more potential customers.
How to improve ROI in newspaper advertising
So here’s my five tips on how to improve your ROI when it comes to newspaper advertising.
Tip 1: Know thy audience
Your newspaper sales representative should know the audience of all their publications. They should be able to guide you to use your money wisely for a sound ROI, even saying no if they believe it’s in your best interest.
Three questions to ask your newspaper sales rep:
- How many subscribers does your paper currently have and what zip codes are they primarily located?
- What is your paper’s demographic profile? What’s the age, gender, income, home ownership, etc?
- What special publications do you produce and how do you promote them throughout the year?
Tip 2: Clarity, coupon and code
For your print ad campaign to work, it needs:
- Clarity: Offer one deal and only one so that your target audience clearly sees a benefit for choosing your business’ products or services.
- Coupon: Provide a physical coupon that can be clipped out. This way you can track “conversions” from people who saw your ad and took action to buy.
- Code: For those who don’t like clipping coupons to stash in their purse or wallet, provide a unique code for customers to use. Like the coupon, this is another way of tracking conversions.
Tip 3: Tie your print ad to a campaign-specific landing page
Don’t tell people to visit your website. Yes, you read me correctly: Do not tell people to just go to your website home page.
Instead, create a landing page specific to this campaign and mention it in the ad. Make sure it’s a URL that’s not mentioned anywhere else, and preferably hidden from search engines, so that nobody would visit it unless they saw the address in your ad. That way your online analytics can be used to track how many people visited your landing page based on your ad.
Tip 4: Less is more
Don’t shove in so much crap in your ad that reader can barely read it. Newspapers are already cluttered with text and space is at a premium price. Use less content that’s clean, concise and clear to stand out.
Tip 5: Make your ads like fried chicken – bright and extra crispy
Newsprint tends to look muddy compared to other print media because of the combination of cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) on recycled newsprint. If the printing press is misaligned by even a hair, the colors can incorrectly overlap, resulting in a muddy image. To remedy this, stick to colors in your ad that use only one or two of the CMYK colors at a time.
Sometimes graphic designers create ads in Adobe Photoshop and make a critical mistake when it comes to text. If the ad isn’t exported correctly, the text can become pixelated, which may look fine on the computer screen, but then appear blurry when printed. Your text should never become pixelated, otherwise people will struggle with reading your ad and likely not bother doing business with you.
That’s my five tips for improving print ads in your local paper. Have you advertised is your local paper lately? Please let me know in the comments below.