Succeeding with newspaper advertising

Building trust is a key component of successful advertising. Consumers buy services from companies they trust and products in which they believe. To advertise successfully, you need patience and persistence to keep your advertising in front of the consumer long enough to build that trust.

Your business’ newspaper ad should be published a minimum of once a week for the duration of your campaign. If a business is just starting, expect to run advertising for at least two months before seeing any significant increase in sales. This first two months makes up the trust building stage.

Advertising strategies differ from business to business. A company needs to determine when it should advertise… what day of the week, what time of the year, etc.; and where it should advertise; what medium, what area of the newspaper, etc. Here are some general guidelines for businesses to follow:
1. If a choice must be made between running a smaller ad repeatedly or a larger ad less often, choose frequency over size.
2. Consumers look to the issue of the paper closest to the weekend to plan their weekend shopping. In the case where a Sunday newspaper is offered, the Sunday issue will likely have larger readership.
3. Newspapers sometimes offer special focuses on different days of the week…business on Monday, travel on Sunday, etc. This can help you determine when to advertise.

Advertisers spend more on newspaper advertising than on any other medium. Almost 22 percent of all ad dollars go to newspapers. Over 85 percent of that revenue is spent by local advertisers.

Once a company’s ad has been designed to catch the eyes of the readers, it needs to motivate them to respond now. A direct response ad is designed to get the readers’ attention, interest, and most importantly, immediate action. The advertiser’s goal is to get the reader to clip the ad, get in their car, drive to the business and buy the advertised product or service. A direct response advertisement does the following:
1. Gets attention through design, ad size, placement and timing.
2. Stimulates interest by touching on human emotions, desires and needs.
3. Creates desire by offering a solution to a problem or an answer to a need.
4. Stimulates action by making the solution highly desirable, yet affordable and easy.

Fifty-seven percent of adults in the U.S. read a daily newspaper. Sixty-seven percent read a Sunday paper. These readers spend almost 45 minutes each day reading at least one paper, and over an hour on Sunday. There are over 1,600 daily newspapers in the United States with a circulation approaching 58 million and there are over 7,000 weekly papers with a circulation of over 50 million. Advertising in the newspaper is a sure way to reach your target audience and help our business succeed.

Resource:
*My Professional Advertising 2006

This monthly newsletter is a service provided by Customized Newspaper Advertising. For more information on the newspaper advertising industry, please contact Leslie Earp, CNA Marketing & Research Manager at learp@cnaads.com.

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