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The quality of content is the biggest edge of all in print publications,
just as it is on the internet. If you provide what readers want to
read and see in their paper, then you have the basis for a long lasting
publication. But you still have to pay your bills, so be careful
how you sell your ads.
Make
the Numbers Work
You cannot afford to undercut yourself for anyone. If you figure
that you must have $12 per column inch to cover all the basic costs and
some tiny margin of profit, then the very lowest price you can ever
afford to give any advertiser is $12 per column inch.
Working with that number ($12/column inch), if you have a tabloid paper
with 11x17 pages, then you will have about 64 (maximum) column inches to
sell. So if an advertiser buys a whole page, you must charge him
or her at least $768 for that page. And even if they want to buy
the page every issue for a whole year (and pay you for the whole thing
up front!), you must still charge them at least $768 per insertion (that
is, for each issue).
So then, if the
local bank wants to buy a full page ad for only 3 issues, you can't get
all excited and give away the pages for the same price you'd have charged
them for a whole year of the same size ad. You can't allow your
gratitude or enthusiasm to make the sale put you out of business.
Know your bottom line, and work hard to stay away from it, or at least
on the top side of it at all times.
You want to build a base for long-term success.
On the other hand, be careful not to go to the other extreme.
Pricing is by no means the only important factor, as noted at the
beginning of this section. But pricing is where most of us live,
both in business and in our personal decisions. So you need to be
able to offer a fair price to the guy who only wants to buy a small ad
and run it just one time.
In fact, lot's of smaller businesses start advertising this way, especially if
they're not in the habit of advertising. They'll only see the
price of the ad, and it scares them. They want to try it out, but
they can't see how they'll ever afford it. So they only
commit to one or two ads at a time. If you blow them out of the
water with a huge price, you'll probably run them off without ever
seeing that first ad.
Bonus
Help for the Local Businesses
One thing you can do to help
such advertisers, is to have a business column in your paper that
features new advertisers (but you may not want to say that right out
loud), and you can offer to feature a new advertiser in your column, or
to at least make some mention of the business. I've had business
owners contact me and become advertisers in a paper just to get into the
business column, without any selling effort on my part at all.
A powerful help for new advertisers is a rate sheet that shows them just how
much they will save on their ads by committing to 3 or 5 or 6 at a time.
Once you figure your bottom price (the price you must never go below)
then you can begin to work your way backwards to the one-time-only ad,
and also price the smallest ad size.
Price
Your Way Backwards, by Size & Frequency
This will take you some time. Don't try to cheat by taking the
rates from another publication. You don't know how they may have
arrived at those ridiculous prices. Many publications, for
instance, have other charges that also get added to the final bill for
any ad, such as the cost of building the ad, the addition of graphics or
photos, and copywriting, etc.
Or the guy who figured the pricing may have been drunk, or on some
mood-altering medication for all you know. I'm more serious than
you may think.
Step 1
If you can afford to sell a full page for one whole year at $12 per
column inch (that is, if you sold all the available pages in your entire
paper for that price and you could still pay all your bills), then you
make that figure your rock bottom price for the customer who buys the whole
thing. That's your give-away price, where you simply cover your
costs. And no one — not even your mother —should ever get that very special rate.
Step 2 What if you can sell
only half of your ad space? With that thought in mind, pick an arbitrary figure, a figure for the smallest ad, for a
one-time-only buyer. Maybe it will be the price you were quoted
when you called the nearest competitor to your market and asked them how
much for a 1inch ad for just one issue.
Now you need to work within these two numbers — the very lowest and the
very highest. You'll probably adjust your pricing several times
before you finish all the figuring, but you need to have a general idea
of where you want to go, and what the guidelines should be.
To see an example of a rate sheet, click
HERE
The easiest way to keep track of what you're doing is to offer a set
percentage discount for each increase in both size and frequency of
appearance. But it cannot be some huge amount, or you will
run out of room before you reach the end.
You may want to set specific levels, such as
all ads from 1 col. inch up to 5 col. inches will be $18 per col. inch.
And then the ads from 5.5 col. inches up to 8 col. inches will be $17
per col. inch, ad so on. Keep it simple as possible, but make sure
it works.
Feel Lost? It'll Pass
Even if this whole idea is brand new to you,
it'll start making sense as you keep working with it. Before long,
you'll have a very good idea of what you need to do. And as you
face your first customers, you'll be able to make refining adjustments,
if needed. But be close before you face anyone, and be firm,
because some folks will test your resolve simply because that's how they
do business. If you cave in at every challenge, you'll soon be
holding an auction to scrap your business.
Some papers will sell certain kinds of ads
at specific rates in certain sections of the paper, such as trade ads
(for plumbers, TV repair, etc) in a "Local Services" section. But
be careful. You do want to help out the little guy (why force him
to advertise with someone else?), but you do not want business that can
afford better ads to hang out in the "economy" section. So be sure
to set rules, or better yet, use rewards of some kind to entice the
bigger advertisers to do more. |
