How To Advertise In Newspapers With Classified Ads

With so many places for free and paid classified ads online, why use newspaper classified advertising?

It sounds a little old school to some new marketers, but no matter what your opinion on the newspaper ads, they are still a powerful form of print media. As such, they allow you to really target your marketing campaigns for maximum return on your investment. A master marketer is always an expert at targeted marketing.

Why the classified ad?

Consider AdSense ads and Google, I am sure you have heard of Google, you know.....the multi billion dollar company?! Think about the format of an AdSense ad. You get a headline and three lines of text. Google have simply used the already successful classified ad format and translated it the online medium.

Newspaper Classified Ad Benefits

Newspapers have a mass media reach. A little research allows you to target market penetration and target specific lifestyle just to name a few characteristics.

By design, newspapers segment demographics, and geographic locations with wide audience reach.

Almost immediate results from ad request to ad publication. Newspapers truly are the fastest print vehicle with a quick turn-around time. Classified ads can often run the next day or within the same week of your request being received.

Inexpensive – reach a large group of people for the lowest cost. When you consider CPM rates being charged for online email and ezine advertising, newspapers give you a much larger bang for your buck.

Permanence - readers can clip ads and refer back to them later. Plus when the reader is not sitting in front of a computer with instant access to the internet, there is much less comparative 'shopping' - of course that is not to say that people who read newspapers aren't going to do their homework on you and your opportunity!

Repeated exposure – 50% of professional adults read a newspaper as part of their daily routines and by doing so offer consistent exposure to your advertisement.

• Profile and target your market

• Select a newspaper specific to your target

• Write powerful ad copy

• Submit your ad for publication

If you do not profile the kind of person you wish to attract, you may as well try and find the proverbial needle in a haystack. A hit and miss classified newspaper advertising campaign is only going to leave you disappointed.

Take time to detail the outcome you would also like to achieve from your newspaper classified ad. Like anything in life, without a goal how to you hope to be able to achieve it? If you object is lead generation, try not to focus on number of leads to cost factor, after all it is the end sales that are the true measure of successful targeting.

Your targeting and profile should include, but are not limited to the following;

Lifestyle

Profession, interests, hobbies.

Demographic

Income, home value, net worth, gender and age.

Geographic

Neighbourhood, zip code, city, state, country.

• Avoid going for the big name newspaper hoping for 'the big score.' Smaller targeted papers are what you should be looking for. Newspapers with broad reach and large circulation are not always the most effective. It doesn't matter if the newspaper is the 'Times' or 'Hicksville Community Times' if you know you can reach the audience that your are targeting that is all that matters.

• Do your research - Request a copy of the newspaper and check out it’s editorial content and classified section prior to advertising. After all you want to know what the competition is, if any, and what techniques have worked for them.

• Avoid free papers – free papers attract a lower quality audience, inconsistent readership. newspapers with a paid circulation are best cause if someone is paying for that paper you know they are regular readers. Often those with a subscription will keep the paper for a longer period of time allowing you more chance of you ad being read.

• Avoid wasted circulation – pay close attention to the circulation number of the paper and how it relates to the area population. A newspaper that isn't being read is not worth your money.

• Budget for longevity – look for an cost rate that you can afford and afford to run for at least 6 weeks consecutively. Run your ad on prime days only at first. Prime days are Wednesday and Sunday issues.

The key to effective newspaper advertising, as with any paid advertising, is to create a profile of your target audience, locate exactly where you can reach this audience, then advertise in specific newspapers in that are read by your target deomographic.

Use ad copy that is proven and you know works for you and your business. There is no point spending money on placing an ad that has not been tested.

How to Write A Newspaper Classified Ad

Now a whole hub could be written just on the topic of 'how to write successful ad copy, online copy and web copy'! In fact you will find some here.

How to Write Effective Online Copy for Your Website - By Sabah Karimi

How To Write Better Ad Copy For Your Google Adwords Ads - By perfumer

10 Little-known Secrets to Writing Your Own Powerful Web Copy! - By Scribe

So instead of talking technical ad formats, power words and all that, let's just look at the general principals.

Your newspaper classified ad should always aim to create curiosity and inspire action or inquiries. Design you ad with the intent of generating qualified inquiries only. Do NOT try and sell your product. Remember the ad is being place to generate interest and action which will result in a sale, but the ad itself is never going to close a sale - so don't even try.

Focus on giving free information, reports, coupons or even samples, whatever you can offer. Always mention free information this in your ad. The direct the inquiry to your website. Provide an address to your website in your ad. If you are directing people to a capture pages, be sure to promote any offer's you may have on there.

Now if you have done your targeting and selected a newspaper that you want to use for your classified ad you need to do some comparison. You need to check out the competition to see how you can differentiate yourself. Look at what everyone else is doing/writing do something different. Try to stand out from the crowd and be noticed. Be sure to place your ad in the most appropriate category to what you are offering.

When you can afford it and if the service is offered use special text formatting. Consider framing your ad in a box or use bold and coloured fonts. Create curiosity with your headline format eg. asterisks, dashes, underlines but always avoid caps and excessive punctuation.

Use text classified ads instead of display ads. They are more cost effective for lead generation if that is your aim. While print ads give you a chance to brand and get image recognition, it shoud not be your first option when using newspaper advertising.

Test your ad first, commit to longer runs after you experience success. From that point on you can negotiate a discounted rate for longer advertising terms.

Place your test ads close to deadline and give yourself more bargaining power to negotiate better rates.

Ruthlessly edit your ad, use only powerful words and eliminate the unnecessary language. Keep it short and action driven.

Gather and familiarise yourself with the newspapers advertising policy, guidelines and deadlines.

You must present a legitimate company both through your submission and all dealings with the newspaper representative. As newspapers are liable for anything they put in print they may be cautious if you are a first time user placing an ad for a business opportunity or online product.

Often the simplest thing is to speak or email the representative about your enquiry and that you are looking to run your ad for 6 full weeks with a view of re-newal based on results. At the moment alot of classifieds a pretty empty. We know they are not filled with jobs right now that's for sure. So that being said, most newspapers would be very happy to accept a 6 week submission.

Find out how submissions are acepted and offer to send it all by fax.

Business Trade Journals

These are often an overlook resource, but probably in a price point to consider only after your are in profit mode.

Business trade journals reach a highly qualified professional audience, that are focused on business and improving their skills. Reach entrepreneurs, sales professionals, investors, any audience in any industry trade journal or association website. Reach entrepreneurs in magazines such as Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Inc. , Fortune, Forbes, Business Week.

1st ad placement is always best. Alphabetize your ad copy so you ad goes first, or at least in the top 5! It's just like real estate, location, location, location.

Use your online advertising skills and experience to get the best ad copy that you know is producing results! If you don't already have good ad copy you can use consider the following. Search google for you main keywords and review the sponsored ads. Sponsored ad are the ads on the right had side of your search results. Googles AdSense program is set up so that the ads with the best click through rate (CTR) get best ranking. Similar to page rank where the best websites are listed first in the search results - same thing with the ads only the measurement is CTR. These ads are producing results so review them and see what you can learn, then translate that to your own campaign testing.

Circulation— # copies of a publication sold or distributed each issue.

Classified Ad— A brief text listing of objects for sale and/or services offered.

Daily— A newspaper is published daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly.

Deadline— last possible time to get your ad to the media centre.

Demographics— Common characteristics used for population segmentation, including age, income, postal code, and gender.

Display Ad— An advertisement that uses graphics, not just text as per the classified ad.

Mass Media— Mass media refers to those media that are designed to be accessed by a large audience through technology mediums.

Rate— charge or payment as it relates to the newspaper you want to advertise in.

Sunday Edition— Highest circulation & readership, most effective Advertising day.

Trade Journal— A publication focusing on a particular industry or group of industries.

Weekly— A weekly newspaper is usually a smaller publication than a larger, daily newspaper (generally one that covers a metropolitan area). Unlike these metropolitan newspapers, a weekly newspaper will cover a smaller township.