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Direct Response Print Advertising

By admin | June 9, 2007

Next to word of mouth, direct response print advertisements are perhaps the oldest means of marketing a business. They used to be the most effective, too. Not anymore, though.

“I am an avid newspaper reader — three papers every morning with my coffee,” Bailey says. “Yet, I believe the historic form of newspapers are d-e-a-d.”

Denise Patrick, senior marketing counsel for Houston-based Pierpont Communications, agrees. A former small business owner herself, she says that many entrepreneurs chase advertisements in major daily newspapers, which are expensive and seldom read in their entirety. Instead, she says, try buying ads in community newspapers.

“People read their community newspaper cover to cover,” Patrick says. “The grandkid that won the softball game, that’s where his name is. That’s where the church news is and that’s where the pictures of the ladies in the garden club are.”

The key is reaching your target audience — and only your target audience. That’s why community papers are better than city papers, she says — because the readership is more targeted — and why advertisements in BtoB publications or trade magazines are often more effective than those in national consumer titles.

Even more effective, however, is another tool entirely, according to Patrick — public relations. That’s because the modern equivalent to a printed ad is printed news coverage. The former costs money, but the latter is free, and only one benefits from the credibility of a legitimate journalist’s byline. Before buying an ad in your favorite publication, therefore, consider doing something newsworthy — organizing an event, donating to a charity or launching a notable new service — and sending it a press release, instead.

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