The most important aspect of any promotion is the target market. So first, you need to consider which mediums are applicable to your business. If you have a restaurant in Town A, it would be unwise to advertise in any other region other than Town A. However, if you are able to service other regions, then these decisions are important.

Online businesses and nationwide operators should seriously consider advertising in newspapers, magazines, or phone directories in more than just their local area.

If you are looking to advertise in more than just your local area, be sure to consider your competitive advantage. In other words, if there is likely to be additional costs incurred by your potential customers as a result of travel costs, delivery charges and other costs associated with not being local, this may seriously impact on your conversion rate to sale. This guide will help you get the lion’s share of enquiries, but if, when you give a price or quote you are not price competitive with the local market, then it may all be for nothing. Sometimes is not worth getting too big too quick, if you do not have the infrastructure to cope the business that you will generate.

Start conservatively. If you have a big list of potential advertising options that you want to be listed in, take it slowly to start. Choose your local area first, gather those all important testimonials, and then maybe stretch to the two next best options if your budget can go that far.

Before you start booking any space or writing any copy, it is very important that you check out the competition. This is just commonsense really and forms part of your due diligence.

Don’t be under any illusion when it comes to outdoing your peers. You must realise that any similar business listed in your publication of choice, (e.g. Newspaper or phone directory), ARE YOUR COMPETITION!

The businesses with the best ads will be getting the majority of the calls.

If your ad is not good enough, or your competitor’s ad is better, then your competitors are literally taking money away from you before you have the chance to earn it. This is the nature of business; its dog eats dog, and often the make or break of many businesses depends on the success of their advertising.

Your goal is to do better than all of the competition. If someone has a really good guarantee, you must match it, or preferably do one step better. The same goes for all of the other criteria. Don’t worry if your budget won’t stretch to match your competitors’ full-page directory ad, or peak reading spot in a magazine or newspaper.

Without a purpose, your ad is just going be a name on the page with no set goal. You need to ask yourself – what am I trying to do here? What do I want to achieve by spending all this money on my ad?

If your answer is; ‘I just need to get my name out there’, then you are in big trouble from the start. You are talking about BRANDING – and that’s a whole different book (one I’m working on actually!). You are not going to get branded from your ad. Do you think Coca Cola or Pizza Hutt got branded from one ad? No. So forget about branding just for now, and read on.

If your answer is; ‘I do it every year, so I have to keep doing it’, then you need to seriously think about whether or not you even HAVE to keep advertising at all. For some businesses there are cheaper and more effective ways of getting new customers than spending money on expensive advertising. If you have been monitoring where your business is coming from, then you should know how much business your current ad generates. Do the maths. A well written ad should generate 7 times the cost of it in new business. E.g. If your ad costs $2000, then it should make you $14,000.00 in turn-over. This year your ads will be the best they can be, because you’re going to use this guide to write them! Use this as your test year. Test and measure carefully to ensure you know which advertising is right for your business.

Contact the sales rep of the publication/s you wish to advertise in, and find out which sizes are available. Make sure that you get the measurements in height and width. This information is probably also available on the internet.

Some publications only have a few size and colour options, and others such as phone directories have loads! So, which colours and size should you go for?

The answer to this question is simple – the biggest ad that you can afford.

Size is KING!

If your chosen publication has colour price options, then go for size over colour. White background is good; if you can afford it, however never compromise getting a bigger ad by getting white background or colours. Whatever your budget is, make sure you maximise size first. I repeat; size is the most important aspect when compared to colours and white background. The Biggest ads also get other benefits like free editorial space and preferential locations in most publications.

Prices and Negotiation

The bigger the ad the more it will cost you. Common sense really. The same goes for colours; the more colours you have the more money you pay.

There are far too many advertising avenues and different combinations of sizes / colours to list the prices in this guide. Larger catchment publications will generally be more expensive to advertise in. The best way to start this process is contact a sales rep for whichever publication you are thinking of going with. Good luck……………….read on!

Important! When dealing with advertising sales reps, I’d recommend contacting them by email as they are trained to sell advertising space and their skill should not be underestimated. In fact, this whole process can be done by email and I’d highly recommend that you use this method if you have the time. Plus, I’ve still got some money saving techniques for you to employ when dealing with them!

Tips Guaranteed to Save You Money When Dealing with Sales Reps!

Last word on price: Make sure you don’t just accept the price that you get quoted. ALWAYS try and negotiate a better deal. I’ve done this successfully many times before for my clients.

If it is the first time that you’ve advertised in a publication, then you are in the best position to save money – because they know that once they’ve nabbed you, that you’ll keep throwing money at them! So, find out the dead-line, and then muck them around. Chop and change. Go for mid-price, rethink, and tell them you think you’ll downsize. Keep them hanging till the very end! Then, tell them you really DO want to do lots of advertising with them, but you are still worried about the price and size. Hold back – and wait for the offers to come in! Sometimes they’ll get you a six week spot for the price of two weeks. Sometimes they’ll throw in a free advertorial! The key is to be cool. If you miss out one month, you can guarantee that they’ll contact you to be in the NEXT months’ publication for a deal. You’ll win – and you can test the effectiveness of their publication for an extended period of time! YAY!

With phone directories, If the reps won’t budge on price (don’t just fall for the mandatory 10% that they offer EVERYONE) try and get them to give you some colours or even WHITE BACKGROUND. Be cheeky, if you don’t ask you won’t get. If they say no, its no big deal, you’ve lost nothing by trying.

One technique I’ve used is to make them an offer and then if they say “no”, don’t accept their no, rather, say “o.k. I’ll go away and think about it, I’ve got some other options to look into”. Wait until they call you back and they may have come up with something to offer you. This technique works about 90% of the time, if your ad size is large, the success rate will be closer to 100%. However, don’t try this if you’re on a short timeline and if they don’t call you within a week, it hasn’t worked.

Once again, if you a first time advertiser in a phone directory, play the game and you WILL get freebies. Just this year I got my client a $14K ad for $7K. Here’s how!

I made enquiries about ¼ page ads and ¾ page ads, and had them draw up a ¾ page ad. I then had them draw up a ¼ page 2 colour ad. I then got them to draw up a ¾ page white background ad. I then didn’t contact the rep for over a week, ignoring their emails. Generally, the last day they say the ad needs to be booked, is one month short of the REAL time, so you can afford to muck around – but get confirmation of the final ‘mucking around’ date! Then, opt for the cheapest option and ask them to design it in two colour. It is at THIS point, that the offers will rock in! Play with them – and make sure you are getting FREE upgrades. Don’t spend over what you initially set out to. Just enjoy all of the EXTRAS you’ll get for FREE! Hopefully, the upgraded ad will make you enough money to pay FULL PRICE for it next year (after all, why do you think they gave you this deal in the first place!).