How long should I advertise my business in the magazines?
This question is the question we feel that determines the relative success of any advertising you might do with us. We really hate getting an advert booked in for just one month to see if it works. The reason for that is, is we don’t believe you can see if it works in one month based on how local advertising works and the observations we’ve made over the years of what works best and what doesn’t really work.
The frailty of advertising for one month is that not everyone is going to need your services in the first month. They’re not going to be used to seeing your adverts. I mean, you may well get a good result, but you may not. If you don’t, you will then tick off this publication or any of your publications as not having worked and no longer use them as a way of marketing your business, which would be a shame, because we know if done in the right way, you can get amazing results.
An evidence of that is the fact that 70% of our advertisers already knew they’re advertising all the time. Many, many have been in over 10 years and many have been in since our first edition, which was over 14 years ago. So all those guys get great results from their local advertising. What we’ve observed over the years is it works something along these lines. So, a resident gets a magazine through the door. We make sure it has relevant and interesting content in it, so they look forward to getting it and they read it.
So, in month one, they may flip through the magazine with a cup of tea, and maybe they see your advert. Let’s say you’re a plumber. The first month, they might not even register it, but subconsciously somewhere your impression of your advert is registered somewhere in their mind. Month two, maybe they do spot it and think, “There’s a plumber there.” Month three, again, they see your advert again. So month four, perhaps something happens in the household and they need a plumber. They’ve seen your advert now a few times, so they give you a call and let’s say you get the job.
You do a great job with that particular resident. So good in fact they tell their neighbor about it. Now, the neighbor’s been going through the same process of subconsciously noticing your advert and then consciously noticing it, et cetera. They don’t need a plumber right now, but maybe in a couple of months’ time they do. When they do, they’ll think about your advert. They’ll think about the word-of-mouth they got from your neighbor, and you’ll have another customer in the area.
In this way, month to month, gradually, you build up a reputation and a client base in any of the communities where you consistently advertise. For that reason, and I know this sounds like a sales pitch, but honestly it isn’t. We recommend that you do advertise for 12 months, because that gives you a proper test of a magazine. And also, it’s the absolute best way you can guarantee some kind of return on investment of your advertising.
We’re here to help make that process work. If we have 12 months, then we can tweak the advert. We can work with you to get the best possible results. Nothing as a company gives us more joy really than seeing a customer do really well at their advertising and for it to become an absolute marketing pillar within their business.
