We recently decided to place an advertisement in a digital signage magazine and we decided to share what we’ve learnt from this experience with our readers. There are quite a number of advertising mediums (radio, television, newspaper, magazine, flyers, and digital out of home) available for most businesses but it all comes down to your marketing budget before you can decide which medium to use. Rule of thumb is that the more user reach the more expensive it get’s. Generally, advertising on TV is the most expensive and hence a reason why you don’t see every single business rushing in to advertise on TV – they are generally large retail businesses or corporations that have the advertising dollars.
Now, with any type of advertising you need to develop a marketing plan. This involves sitting down with your team and come up with a strategy on what you’re aim of the advertisement is? Is it to announce a sale, promote a service or the company? Depending on the company’s goals, the messages will be different.
For our advertisement, we wanted to send a message to the readers that we provide free quotes and free digital signage trials. This message was located at the top of the advertisement and it’s one of the first areas most people will read and notice. Now I’m not an expert in this area but by having the word FREE does it make the company look cheap?
At the bottom there’s the call to action which is to “Call Us”. Also, if you look at the image on the screen closely, you’ll notice there’s an example of an advertisement to “List a sale at squeak.com.au” – that’s our sister company. We call this the “double ads” strategy whereby you’re advertising within an advertisement.
Generally, in advertisements you only have a few seconds to capture the attention of the readers hence the reason why the messages should be short i.e “Simple & Affordable Digital Signage Advertisements”.
To conclude there are several points to consider that will influence the cost of the ad when advertising in a magazine and these are:
1. who is your target audience? Is that the right magazine your advertising in?
2. what is the volume of the magazine distribution? The larger the distribution the more it will cost.
3. what is the size of your advertisement – the bigger the ad the more it will cost.
4. location of your advertisement in the magazine – the front of the magazine will cost more than the back.
Is there anything that we’ve left out?
We’ll update everyone on how successful this advertisement was in the magazine.