Print advertising

anyone know how to evuluate

[goldjake]

Ok so I am thinking about doing print advertising in a magazine car and driver. It has 2 million people a month buy the magazine. I did all of the math and it seems like if 3% buy and 1% go to my website i make a pretty good amount of money- does anyone have anything that can help me out. Anyone experienced in this? Please

[ClassyPete]

what kind of ad are your going to run? we did a small classifieds ad in the back with just about zero response after 2 runs.

[goldjake]

we are going to run a half page full ad in car and driver- i think it will get great exposure

[markwelch]

What is your GOAL for this advertising activity? What action do you want people to take?

There are many ways you can track print advertising:
- Unique web site address
- Unique telephone number
- unique mailing address
- Coupon code
- reply form

The key is to be able to specifically identify those customers who responded to the ad, as compared to those who found you through some other channel. It's never going to be perfect, because some folks may see the ad and then track you down some other way (Google search or 411 for your company name).

But all of this begs the original question: What do you want your ad to "do" for you? For nearly ALL of my marketing activity, the goal is simple: bring new customers to place orders, and/or bring back old customers to place new orders. Some folks have simpler goals: bring people to join a free web-site community, or bring folks to fill out a contest form or a lead form, or even "induce the consumer to recognize our brand" or "get the consumer to think positive thoughts about our company" -- the first two are easy to measure, while the latter two are very hard to measure.