 Placing Your Offline Advert One of the difficult parts of advertising a small business is choosing where to advertise. There are many different places to choose from; local newspapers, national newspapers, consumer magazines and trade magazines can all be effective forms of advertising for different types of small business. The two key things to consider are who will see the advert, and is this worth the cost? Who Will See the Advert? Your offline advert must be seen by the right people to work successfully; if your advert does not get seen by potential customers (I.e.: Your target market) then it will have little effect. Some of the key pieces of information (usually known as demographics) that will help are the following:
Age – Does your product appeal to all ages or to a specific age group? Ages are normally split into 4 or 5 categories.
Gender – Does your product appeal to men, women or both?
Status – Is your product something that only more wealthy customers can afford? Status is traditionally split into 6 categories (in order); A (highest status), B, C1, C2, D, E (least status).
The majority of publications (newspapers and magazines) will provide you with information on how many readers they have, as well as detailed demographic data to encourage relevant advertisers. You can ensure that your advert hits your target customers by using all the available data to choose the most appropriate location.
For Example: Your product is only targeted at status groups A and B.
Newspaper A has 50,000 readers (10,000 of which are A or B status) for £300 per advert.
Newspaper B has 100,000 readers (5,000 of which are A or B status) for £200 per advert.
Although Newspaper B offers double the number of total readers for less money, it only offers half the number of relevant status readers. As the product is only targeted at A and B readers, the higher relevant readers in newspaper A make it much more likely to be effective.
Note: If your product was only loosely targeted at those status groups then Newspaper B may work out a better option.
Many publications will also include details such as the amount of time the average reader spend with it, and the percentage of adverts within. The more time a reader spends with the publication, the more likely they are to see your advert; and the less adverts there are, the more yours will stand out.
Cost
Before placing an advert you need to look at whether you can expect to get your money’s worth from it. Are there enough relevant customers viewing it, and how much are you paying per relevant reader? You can work this out quickly by simply dividing the cost of the advert by the number of relevant customers you expect to see it.
For Example: If you advertised with Newspaper A (as shown above) then the cost would work out as follows:
£300 divided by 10,000 relevant readers = 3p per relevant customer.
Remember that the cost of an advert depends on its size; a larger advert will cost more per relevant customer, but will be more noticeable to readers.
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