Headlines are key: Focus on the customer's needs, benefits, problems, or goals. Keep the headline
short—five words or less. Scan the mail order ads of your newspaper or magazines to see what attracts
your attention, and check the headlines of your competitors. Unless your company name is famous, its
name should not go in the headline.
Put the payoff up front: If the customer doesn’t see the payoff to them for using your product in the
first sentence or two, they will give up and look elsewhere.
Offer incentives: In the body of your ad, consider putting in a discount ("Save 20% if you mention this
ad!") or coupon to spur customers to action. Put an end date on the offer to move them along. A variation
of this is to register customers in a drawing for a prize. This helps keep promotion costs down.
Visuals: While adding pictures can be prohibitively expensive, check out lower-cost options such as different
font styles or sizes to make your ad distinctive. Sometimes line drawings are possible, and they are usually
less expensive than photos.
PLACING ADS
Newspaper ads: You can always place classified ads, but for ongoing sales, you will want to use column
ads in the regular sections of the paper. Think about what section of the paper is the one most likely to be
read by your customers. Also, think in terms of what days of the week make sense. If the big automotive
ads are in the Wednesday paper, that may be when you want to advertise your car repair service.
Finding magazines: In order to find the appropriate magazines in which to place your ads, consider the
following: Oxbridge Communications offers an online database of 75,000 magazines and newspapers
you can search by keyword or title. At your library, you can find hard copy magazine directories from
Burelle and Bacon.
Get the media kit: Contact the magazine or newspaper of interest and ask for its media kit. These kits tell
you about the types of ads, placement options, and costs. They’re a great way to get an understanding of
the basics of the ad business.
Monitor: Put a code in every ad, and ask customers for the code in their orders. That way you can
track which ads work best for you.
