Not only did Bill write an excellent article, he also shows you 2 effective sample ads...
Nine ways to make your newspaper/magazine advertising make you more money
By Bill Fryer
World-renown creative director and advertising guru
As children we are not taught to look for and read advertising.
So when we pick up a newspaper we are conditioned to mentally screen out the advertising and look for the information we actually bought the newspaper or magazine for.
Here are some tips to help you overcome the conditioning to screen out ads and dramatically increase the response from your advertising.
1. Spend time on the headline - it is about the most important part of the ad. It needs to convey a benefit, most especially it needs to promise something to the reader that they want. I have seen better headlines increase response by 2 to 6 times.
Do not spend time thinking up witty puns unless you are determined to be poor. If you have difficulty writing headlines, think about those that start with Who, What, How and Why, e.g. "How you can make $1000 a week working 2 hours a day" or "Why I am able to get the lowest prices anywhere for new XYZs".
Think about the product/service you offer and why customers need to come to you and not the other guy.
2. If you are going to use a picture make it intriguing. And make it convey the same benefit you are talking about. For example, were you advertising car polish you might want to show the different results achieved by your polish and your three biggest competitors.
Not so long ago we tested two different pictures for a mail order client. One showed an attractive woman, the other a strange looking man in a white coat (in fact he was the media buyer). The strange looking man pulled in more response because it was not the kind of picture you would expect to see on an ad - the attractive woman was.
Avoid stock photography of wonderful smiling people - people don't believe it.
3. Give them an irresistible offer. Ideally one with a time deadline. If your reader does not respond today there is a good chance they will never respond. Test different offers; offers have a huge impact on response rates.
4. Have a clear call to action. Actually ask for the order. For example, "only 100 products are available at this price so please call us on 1 800-123-4567 to place your order today."
And finally, remember that off the page advertising is more about recruitment than actually making a profit. Very few people make money out of advertising in the short-term. I once worked with a London tailor who spent £5000 ($10,000) and sold four suits (to four people) with a total value of £6000 ($12,000), hardly worth it. Five years later and those four people had purchased £32,000 ($64,000) worth of suits from him.
NOW...
One of the most important things to do when you advertise is select the right media.
In fact you will almost certainly make more money by focusing your efforts on correct media selection than you will with the creative work. So here are some more tips.
5. Select the right publications. Look at the people you want to sell to and find out what they are likely to read. Then work out a cost per thousand circulation for each publication you are interested in. Ignore the publication's readership figures and only ask about circulation.
Buy the publications and read through them. Are there a lot of mail order ads? If the publication has a lot of mail order ads it tends to indicate that it is a good, responsive publication. Otherwise those advertisers would not be in it. Then you need to negotiate a price.
6. How to get a good price. Do not book a series of ads - ad sales reps always say you need to buy a series of three ads to build response. This is complete garbage. Tell them you are a small business that does not do a lot of advertising and you want to test one ad to see how it goes. Tell them your budget is tiny and you really need help with this one. Get them to waste a lot of time selling to you - it makes them keener to get the sale. Tell them you might be interested if they have any last minute space - but make sure you have the ad ready to go in.
7. Think about the position you want. Generally speaking the positions nearer the extremities of the publication are the best - e.g. cover positions, etc. (Remember that people read newspapers and magazines both from front to back and back to front but never starting in the middle.) NB. you can end up paying a premium for these special positions. So you need to test whether it is actually worth the extra money. Generally right hand page is better than left, but not hugely. And a half page generally gets 80% of the response of a full page. Colour is sometimes more responsive than black and white but not always and it is worth testing the difference.
8. Think about how this is going to build your business. Often small specialist publications get a very high return on investment but the actual volume of orders created is not enough to create a big volume of sales. Market share is an issue.
For example, a seed manufacturer (see ads below) had us test a small grow-your-own vegetables magazine against a large national daily. The small magazine created 50 orders with a huge return on investment, the national pulled 2,500 orders and just about broke even. Going forward both justified further expenditure but the large national is the one that will build the business long-term, especially as they have a huge back-catalo.
Generally speaking the most successful businesses tend to get everything right. The same goes for success in advertising. If you have the right creative selling the right product in the right publication at the right time you should make money. Get any one of these wrong and you probably won't make money.
9. Ask a professional for help. I work with David Fowler both in the UK and USA territories. Generally speaking, if you use the right agency, it won't cost you a lot more but you should get much more effective advertising and you run the risk of losing less money.
Go visit http://www.billfryer.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment