Our Local Newspaper Advertising Experiment
We were recently contacted by a sales rep from our local newspaper “The Northern Star” explaining that they were running a full page feature highlighting local businesses that offer Internet related services. I have always been very sceptical about the success of newspaper advertising but figured that this was highly targeted, and a lot of local businesses are still very naive when it comes to the Internet.
As part of the feature we were offered a 5cm x 7.3cm colour ad, which is about the size of a business card (see below). The total cost of the ad will be $52.32 (inc GST).
When it comes to the Internet we offer a whole range of services but decided to focus the ad on what we believe most sets us apart from the majority of our competition — Search Engine Marketing. The other reason for targeting search engine marketing, and in particular using the names of the major search engines in the ad copy, is that most people are extremely curious about how to get to the top of the search engine results ( in particular Google).
In regards to measuring success, at this stage the only thing that we can do is be vigilant about monitoring phone calls, and/or hope that if somebody fills out our quote form they select newspaper advertising from the drop-down menu. I guess the good thing is that if we manage to secure any new customers we should see a fantastic ROI.
I will keep you posted on the results
September 5th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I’ll be interested to hear how it goes.
One way to track is to put a landing page URL rather than the homepage. That way you could also customise the message for the target audience.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Hi Sophie,
We had thought of a unique landing page, and I agree that it is definitely a good way to go, but felt that with the size of the ad and the lack of time we had to set up the landing page that we wouldn’t worry on this occasion.
Have you had any positive/negative experience with offline advertising?