For a small company buying an advert is a big step and one that can be stressful, especially if you are doing so in an attempt to try and buy your way out of a sales slump.
Before I get onto why it is stressful and what you should look out for, I will get the 10 Yetis plug out of the way. If you buy your advertising space via a public relations company like 10 Yetis the chances are you will get the space at a cheaper rate than if you negotiate yourself. This is not because we have a secret password, but because we use a combination of our negotiating skills and the fact that we buy a fair bit of space which means we can get bigger discounts. There, painless wasn’t it?
So ok. If you don’t want to go down the route of getting someone else to buy your ad space, lets give you some tips on what to look out for.
First up, where to advertise. You know much better than me where the majority of your customers come from. You can probably group them into a category? The idea is to look at the Where from to buy the advertisement space lifestyle of the category of people that makes up your current customer base and then try and find a place to advertise in the media that you know they would read.
For example, if I owned an online book-shop and had enough money to advertise I would use the data I gather during the sales process to construct a profile that would go a little something like this:
Financially secure (plenty of disposable income);
Fairly well educated (A-levels at least);
Age range of 35-75;
Married with dependants;
Internet savvy;
Most popular books sold are of a sporting origin.
I would also look to see where my past sales had predominantly come from, for this example we will say the majority have sales have come via the web site from a search engine optimisation campaign.
Using all the data I could collect to profile my customers I would then try to find out what that customer would usually read during a month, in terms of online or offline magazines.
Offline, I would think about placing an advert in either the review section of one of the broadsheet Sunday papers, or if I wanted to maybe trial something different then a focussed sports driven advert in a cricket or rugby magazine.
Once I had decided on the genre of the mag or the paper that I want to advertise in, what happens next? You go to its website and see if they have a "media pack" or “rate card” that you can download. This should contain all the technical data you will need such as the various ad sizes and the costs for both black and white and colour.
The rate card also gives you something called the "mechanical data" which is basically just posh jargon for, "how the advert should look" before you send it over.
Before we get onto designing the actual advert first you have to book it. The positioning of the advert is vital. If you have a non-prime space then far less people are going to look at it. Here are some of the basic best positions:
Front page (obvious);
Inside front cover;
Centre pages;
Inside back cover;
Back cover.
The selection above are all prime positions, for which you will pay extra. If you can’t afford a prime position then at the very least always try and get an advert on the right hand page. Right hand adverts have a much better response rate that left side adverts.
Always try to haggle with the advertising department, ask them if they have any discounts on late advertising space? You will also find that if you book a series of adverts, say one a month for 6 months, you will get the ads at a much reduced rate. The key thing is not to get seduced by the ad seller spiel. They will quote ABC readership stats and alike, and how a bigger advert will improve response rates. Just stick to your guns and don’t be up-sold into a bigger space.
If the ad team are driving a hard bargain and won’t reduce rates take an alternative angle such as, will they give you any advertorial to go with the advert? Advertorial is basically a piece of text about your business that is written and presented as though a journalist has prepared it. Magazines will often give you a few hundred words of advertorial to be placed elsewhere in the magazine. This will help your adverts performance. Another thing you could ask for if they won’t do advertorial or a good discount is if they will give you a selection of its subscription mailing list for you to write to about your products. This is rare, but I know many magazines now do this.
Once you have bought the ad we move onto actually designing it. Designing the advert is where it can get tricky. If possible and if you can afford it this is where you could benefit from getting professional help. The layout of your advert is vital as you can have an advert in the right place to get the best response but if the layout is rubbish you will go on to experience rubbish response rates.
In my experience it is always best to avoid letting the in-house magazine designers do the advert as they will not put as much time and effort into making the advert look right so as to ensure the best response rates.
The major rules of an advert are as follows…
Use a high impact image or product shot
Focus on the main selling points but using as little amount of text as possible
If you have the number one product on the market or the best service then say so
Make the reader response mechanism as clear and bold as possible. You need to make it really easy for the reader to engage with your business (in the marketing industry this is called the "call to action")
Have a look at other ads in the magazine and see how you could make yours differ
Have a promotion code that the reader needs to use in order to get some form of discount. This will help you track how successful the advert has been
Don’t make it too cluttered with pictures, people like Dell & ToysRus get away with it due to their brand size and recognition. Smaller brands will struggle to be noticed in cluttered ads
If you want to write a catchy slogan or something funny, test it on honest friends first. What makes sense to you, may not make sense to the reader
Once the advert has been put together you will need to send it to the magazine. Most magazines insist on 300dpi resolution advert or above, so emailing can be difficult to the extent that if you only have a dial-up internet connection you could actually die of old age before it finally gets through.
Before I get onto why it is stressful and what you should look out for, I will get the 10 Yetis plug out of the way. If you buy your advertising space via a public relations company like 10 Yetis the chances are you will get the space at a cheaper rate than if you negotiate yourself. This is not because we have a secret password, but because we use a combination of our negotiating skills and the fact that we buy a fair bit of space which means we can get bigger discounts. There, painless wasn’t it?
So ok. If you don’t want to go down the route of getting someone else to buy your ad space, lets give you some tips on what to look out for.
First up, where to advertise. You know much better than me where the majority of your customers come from. You can probably group them into a category? The idea is to look at the Where from to buy the advertisement space lifestyle of the category of people that makes up your current customer base and then try and find a place to advertise in the media that you know they would read.
For example, if I owned an online book-shop and had enough money to advertise I would use the data I gather during the sales process to construct a profile that would go a little something like this:
Financially secure (plenty of disposable income);
Fairly well educated (A-levels at least);
Age range of 35-75;
Married with dependants;
Internet savvy;
Most popular books sold are of a sporting origin.
I would also look to see where my past sales had predominantly come from, for this example we will say the majority have sales have come via the web site from a search engine optimisation campaign.
Using all the data I could collect to profile my customers I would then try to find out what that customer would usually read during a month, in terms of online or offline magazines.
Offline, I would think about placing an advert in either the review section of one of the broadsheet Sunday papers, or if I wanted to maybe trial something different then a focussed sports driven advert in a cricket or rugby magazine.
Once I had decided on the genre of the mag or the paper that I want to advertise in, what happens next? You go to its website and see if they have a "media pack" or “rate card” that you can download. This should contain all the technical data you will need such as the various ad sizes and the costs for both black and white and colour.
The rate card also gives you something called the "mechanical data" which is basically just posh jargon for, "how the advert should look" before you send it over.
Before we get onto designing the actual advert first you have to book it. The positioning of the advert is vital. If you have a non-prime space then far less people are going to look at it. Here are some of the basic best positions:
Front page (obvious);
Inside front cover;
Centre pages;
Inside back cover;
Back cover.
The selection above are all prime positions, for which you will pay extra. If you can’t afford a prime position then at the very least always try and get an advert on the right hand page. Right hand adverts have a much better response rate that left side adverts.
Always try to haggle with the advertising department, ask them if they have any discounts on late advertising space? You will also find that if you book a series of adverts, say one a month for 6 months, you will get the ads at a much reduced rate. The key thing is not to get seduced by the ad seller spiel. They will quote ABC readership stats and alike, and how a bigger advert will improve response rates. Just stick to your guns and don’t be up-sold into a bigger space.
If the ad team are driving a hard bargain and won’t reduce rates take an alternative angle such as, will they give you any advertorial to go with the advert? Advertorial is basically a piece of text about your business that is written and presented as though a journalist has prepared it. Magazines will often give you a few hundred words of advertorial to be placed elsewhere in the magazine. This will help your adverts performance. Another thing you could ask for if they won’t do advertorial or a good discount is if they will give you a selection of its subscription mailing list for you to write to about your products. This is rare, but I know many magazines now do this.
Once you have bought the ad we move onto actually designing it. Designing the advert is where it can get tricky. If possible and if you can afford it this is where you could benefit from getting professional help. The layout of your advert is vital as you can have an advert in the right place to get the best response but if the layout is rubbish you will go on to experience rubbish response rates.
In my experience it is always best to avoid letting the in-house magazine designers do the advert as they will not put as much time and effort into making the advert look right so as to ensure the best response rates.
The major rules of an advert are as follows…
Use a high impact image or product shot
Focus on the main selling points but using as little amount of text as possible
If you have the number one product on the market or the best service then say so
Make the reader response mechanism as clear and bold as possible. You need to make it really easy for the reader to engage with your business (in the marketing industry this is called the "call to action")
Have a look at other ads in the magazine and see how you could make yours differ
Have a promotion code that the reader needs to use in order to get some form of discount. This will help you track how successful the advert has been
Don’t make it too cluttered with pictures, people like Dell & ToysRus get away with it due to their brand size and recognition. Smaller brands will struggle to be noticed in cluttered ads
If you want to write a catchy slogan or something funny, test it on honest friends first. What makes sense to you, may not make sense to the reader
Once the advert has been put together you will need to send it to the magazine. Most magazines insist on 300dpi resolution advert or above, so emailing can be difficult to the extent that if you only have a dial-up internet connection you could actually die of old age before it finally gets through.
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