Forum Moderators: buckworks
In terms of cost efficiency, I think it could be a great deal because it only comes up to $0.0015 per copy. But then I am sure most viewers will not even notice the advertisment is there let alone visiting my website after they see the ad.
Please share your thoughts. Thanks!
Compared to other forms of advertising I think that magazine advertising has the lowest ROI. 1/6 of a page isn't very big for an ad. Depending on where this ad is placed it could be easily lost. You could buy a lot of online ads for $15k.
However, if you feel that you can afford an ad or a couple then do test one out. I would post a unique phone number and maybe a URL like companyname.com/promotionname to try and track how many people call or visit your site as a result of your ad.
The first time was a 1/6 page ad in a very small circulation magazine targeted specifically to my major group of customers. In the ad, I mentioned the rare items that I carry that are my good sellers for this group of customers and a free catalog. I got over 200 requests for the free catalog and ONE actual order through the catalog, so that was a bust. Some people who called in orders or emailed did mention the magazine ad. I talked to another online retailer bigger than me who had even worse results from advertising in this magazine (he used a discount-if-you-mention-the-ad thing and got exactly ONE response). I think the ad helped with familiarizing people with my business, but I didn't think it helped sales. I noticed that the magazine half the time was not there at Barnes & Noble because the publisher was not promoting it much. The cost was about $125/issue. I bought ads for a whole year, and I did not think it was worth it. On the basis of this experience, I also decided not to have a free catalog anymore.
In contrast, recently I placed a 1-inch ad in the classified section of a medium-sized magazine that is targeted to a much broader group than what I think of as my customers. I hesitated about doing this, because I thought it wasn't "professional" enough, even though I myself have often bought things from businesses mentioned in magazine classified ads. But I went ahead because I figured it could hardly be more of a bust than the display ad was. In this little ad, I mentioned more general-appeal items that are still hard to find. I didn't mention a catalog, only the url. The sales of one of the items mentioned in the ad have gone up noticeably, and I cannot find any other reason for that except the ad. This tiny ad costs the same as the bigger, "professional" ad in the small magazine, but already it has had a much bigger effect. I bought this ad for a year too, and this time I don't regret it.
So for me, a classified ad in a larger circulation magazine worked better than a display ad in a more targeted magazine. This experience also showed me that I had a much larger potential customer base than I had thought, and I am now working on having areas of focus in my shop instead of making it so singled-minded. I will also be putting ads in the classified section of other magazines.
This is of course on a way smaller scale than what you are talking about.
We have budgeted for around 6 issues on that magazine (considered the discount rate for advertising on more than 2 issues). I am not exactly sure how I should define if we can afford the ad. We can afford the ad if it is considered an investment rather than pure expense. If we receive virtually no response from doing this, then we'd rather spend the money else where. At the moment we do not have the budget to do it on a few popular magazines.
The reason why we are considering this advertisement is our statistics have been very stable over the past year. We decided it is about time we throw in a larger sum of money to generate the traffic to take advantage of our stats. We are already spending thousands on adwords a month and we can't seem to generate further traffic unless we sacrifice conversion rate.
It may be worth looking into, especially if you can offer a limited time special offer or something.
Advertorials are also something you should ask the magazine about. I would prefer an advertorial over an ad in a print magazine most of the time.
A magazine about blue widgets might be giving something away which will read something like:
"We've got 5 set's of Blue widgets to give away, courtesy of the kind folk at www.bluewidgets.com"
Has anyone ever tried this? Throwing a few products at a mag for them to give away? I notice it more with higher priced items. Computer mags for examples might be giving away 5 Laptops courtesy of laptop-manufacturer.com
We are also in a voucher book that goes out for 6 months.
Everything we have tried in print has been a waste of money so far. Currently we are only spending 100's not 1000's a month on adwords, so I think we'll be moving the spend there (and maybe trying Overture to).
