Small Business Marketing Kit For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Placing Newspaper Ads

There are more opinions about what works in newspaper advertising than there are newspapers, and that adds up to a lot of differing ideas. Some advisers tell you to avoid the Sunday edition and the day that the grocery store ads appear because those papers are crammed with ads and your ad will get lost in the chaos. Others counter with the fact that those big and busy issues are crammed with ads because they’re the best-read papers of the week. Some people tell you to place clever, small-space ads with high frequency, and others advocate dominating the paper with big-format ads, even if you can afford to run them only on a few carefully chosen dates.

Most of the advice you hear is absolutely right — but only some of the time. So how do you proceed?

Know your target prospect so that you can make an educated guess about which days and sections of the paper that person is likely to read.

Know your objectives (see Chapter 8) so that you can select and time your ad placements accordingly.

Know how newspaper advertising works so that you can prepare a schedule that takes advantage of media discounts. That’s what the upcoming sections are about.

Scheduling your placements ...