Does Newspaper Advertising Work?

Whether you’re a small business or a Fortune 500, every dollar you spend for your operations, especially for your marketing campaign, should be money well spent. It doesn’t matter if you have a limited budget or not, as a rule, you do not spend your hard earned money just for advertising. The purpose of your marketing campaign is always to get the most out of your investment.

That’s why choosing the right advertising medium for your business is crucial to your success. The right media vehicle can get you a greater increase in sales and steady profits. It is therefore your duty as a marketer to learn all there is to know with the medium you’re going to use – whether a full color printing method is appropriate or not; or what kind of print ad would be most appropriate for your needs?

Newspapers are one of the most effective marketing mediums for business promotion. Learning its benefits and drawbacks can help you choose the best medium to accomplish the goals you’ve set for your marketing campaign:

The Benefits
The most traditional advertising vehicle, the newspaper has been considered for both local and urban cities all over the world to be an effective means of reaching out to your target clients.

For one thing, having your ads in newspapers give you the opportunity to reach a much wider set and a larger number of people. Depending on the readership size – which is of course very large if it happens to be one of the most circulated – you can have consistent exposure every time. This means that your target readers can read your ad again and again whenever he or she wants to.

Second, since you have the flexibility to adjust the size of your ad as well as where you want it placed, you can have as large an ad as you need that can tell as much of your message you would want to tell your target readers.

For the most part, newspaper ads are well accepted because of their fast turn around. You don’t have to wait a few days before you can even see your ad printed. Since newspapers are run daily, your ad can be read by your target clients the next day.

The Drawbacks

Newspaper advertising can also be difficult to have because it can be expensive. If you have a limited budget, that could be a real problem indeed.

In addition, because many businesses use this particular medium, you would have to vie for your target readers’ attention with the other ads printed in the same newspaper. And it’s going to be tough because not only do you have to compete with the small ones, but you also have the ads run by big franchisers which often dominate the pages of any newspaper.

You also have to consider that your ad’s life is short – as short as the life of the newspaper because it can only be read once and then discarded after.

While newspaper advertising can be a well-paid investment, you need to weigh the pros and cons first before you decide to run your ad. Depending on your needs, understanding these factors can help you maximize your investment to get the most results.