Adverising Questions

[Mwebb]

Ok i am looking to do some launch advertising.....But i cannot decide whether to put my money into local print advertising, or local radio advertising.....your opinions are appreciated.

Also Rather than sending out a sales letters to prospects..business prospects not private...Would it be beter to send an A4 brocher/leaflet showing what we can do, with some screen shots from the website etc on it?
Pricing on this would be good from some of the printes on here.

( What i want i a small leaflet A4 folded in 3 sort of thing, both sides printed obviously)

Michael :lol:

[Alpha]

<<moved to PR and Marketing>>

[directmarketingadvice]

Ok i am looking to do some launch advertising.....But i cannot decide whether to put my money into local print advertising, or local radio advertising.....your opinions are appreciated.

Surely the answer to this question would be based, in no small way on what message you want to deliver and who you want to deliver it to.

If you don't believe me, what would happen if you had a print ad in a magazine that none of your prospects read?

It may be that you have a very clear idea of what you want to say and who you want to say it to, but you're asking us to just guess at an answer to your question which won't give you a meaningful and helpful answer.

Also Rather than sending out a sales letters to prospects..business prospects not private...Would it be beter to send an A4 brocher/leaflet showing what we can do, with some screen shots from the website etc on it?

Which of these 2 options best explains the benefits of using your service?

Steve

[Mwebb]

I want to raise general public awareness within my region...East Anglia and Essex of the service we provide. I am looking to do this to the general public, rather than businesses.

We are an online search engine function for used cars. Both trade and private advertisers are allowed to list.

We will be marketing to dealers in a different way, IE through the Mail outs and actually going to see them in person.

With regards the mailouts, the brocher would give us a better way of showing our company, and if e could include screen shots would help the prospect visualise what we can do. So i suppose this has answered this question??!!

Hope this helps a bit

[directmarketingadvice]

I want to raise general public awareness within my region...East Anglia and Essex of the service we provide. I am looking to do this to the general public, rather than businesses.

So, is it going to be like most ads, just "hey, we exist"?

If so, the chances of your ad paying for itself are minimal. The average person is bombarded by hundreds of these messages every day and, unless there's either some perceived need for the service or massive repitition, is almost certain to forget all about it.

If I were you, I'd forget about "awareness" and target those with a want/need and make them an offer to respond to.

Steve

[YEM]

I want to raise general public awareness within my region...East Anglia and Essex of the service we provide. I am looking to do this to the general public, rather than businesses.

Why not try your local Auto Trader - and if your local rag has a motor section - try that

[/quote]With regards the mailouts, the brocher would give us a better way of showing our company, and if e could include screen shots would help the prospect visualise what we can do. So i suppose this has answered this question??!![/quote]

Think what happens when you receive sales letters - what works, in the sense that you take time out to read it and what goes straight in the bin. We send a brochure accompanied by a good sales letter.

A top tip though - handwrite your envelopes in blue ink and put a real stamp on the envelope (opposed to franking) - this improves your chances of getting to the right person, as it looks like a personal letter (or something important if you took the trouble to handwrite the envelope)

[WakingDragon]

In a previous incarnation I did some retail sales across East Anglian papers and found the response rate fairly poor. The Essex Chronicle especially was expensive per conversion.

Given the nature of your business I would suggest the following as a course of action...

1. Do some serious market research (in Colchester town centre perhaps) on where people look for motors. Lots of people use free papers because they get them every week and (apart from houses) the motor section is the only other thing worth looking at.

2. Properly price up your different options in each of the papers. Most of them will have circulation figures, but obviously the free ones do not accurately portray their readership as they just stick em through your door.

3. Define your audiences particularly clearly. You might have general 2nd hand and new and used for retail. For businesses you are probably looking to be more of a vendor but also selling trade vehicles. Whatever, just be clear about who is going to buy what.

4. Work out the most cost effective way of reaching them. I think for trade advertisers you will have to offer them some amount of time for free to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of the product. Also give due consideration to travelling distances: start working e.g. in Colchester and surrounding villages so that all of your buyers and sellers are close to each other. It also means your promotional and advertising costs will be much lower. You could hand out flyers in the town for a few weekends on the trot and during a couple of rush hours - these would cost you less per conversion than posting flyers. For your smaller number of higher-value clients you should contact them directly by phone and then perhaps send through a pack if there are a enough of them to justify it.

Look into digital as well as litho printing. If you only have 10-20 high-value customers needing packs then it is better to spend £10 each for 25 of them than to spend £1 each for 1000 which will then spend the next year kicking round your office!

[gapgb]

With regards the mailouts, the brocher would give us a better way of showing our company, and if e could include screen shots would help the prospect visualise what we can do. So i suppose this has answered this question??!!

Dont just send a brochure unless it includes a clear indication of what action you want them to take when they read it. As YEM said a well written sales letter with the brochure would help direct them do whatever it is you want to achieve with the mailing

[Mwebb]

Thanks for all your advice. The chat i had with my account before going ahead with the business brought up a few things mentioned here.

Mainly that to make this a good resource people will use means that we will have to give away a lot of advertising to dealers. They will obviously have the bulk of the cars on the site.

They will get a free unlimited adverts acount password.

At the end of the 3 months i will assess whether we are in a position to charge dealers yet. It has been mentioned that to beat the competition maybe we never will?? We will make money from private adverts, valeting adverts, and affiliate links on the site.

With regards another point made we will be starting in colchester and working our way out over the first few months into east Anglia and Essex. AT first i wanted to launch to the Uk but realised i didn't have a £1m advertising budget. Shame....

Thanks for all the excellent advice, you guys really know yor stuff, some forums on the net would nothave thrown up the answers like these.