B2B Local Newspaper Advertising

[KeithP]

We've been offered a deal to advertise our (B2B) service in the local paper - it's not something that I have much confidence in but at the price we've been offered, it may be worth a one-off punt.

Has anyone else had much success (or otherwise) selling B2B via their local paper?

 

[Talay]

As the people buying or freely receiving the newspaper are presumably consumers and not businesses, it would be a hard sell to convince me I could even marginally benefit from advertising in such a medium.

 

[PlymouthOnline.biz]

Hi Keith

I guess it depends on the price. Even business owners are consumers. If nothing else it will increase knowledge about your business.

What I may do is ask the paper if they could offer some editorial as well. This will help with their content as well and making sales.

Good luck

 

[compareyourcalls]

Completely agree, although papers are not as prominent as the web anymore, people do still pick up a paper to read on the way to work/at lunch etc. The only thing to consider, is the price justifiable to spend even if it had zero results from.

People spend 100's of pounds on SEO and marketing to get no return, i personally have not considered newspaper advertisement, but then again I have always known paper advertisement to be expensive.

I also know have food for thought.

Hope this helps,

Chris

Hi Keith

I guess it depends on the price. Even business owners are consumers. If nothing else it will increase knowledge about your business.

What I may do is ask the paper if they could offer some editorial as well. This will help with their content as well and making sales.

Good luck

 

[Steve@WMG]

I'm also going to say its price dependant, as I know first hand that you can advertise in national magazines for a reasonable rate. Plus they're more likely to get more impressions then a local paper

 

[S-Marketing]

I would say that if you are considering advertising a web design business, you are doing your marketing wrong.

 

[KeithP]

I would say that if you are considering advertising a web design business, you are doing your marketing wrong.

We've got a new small business website product that we've just launched and might spark some interest in the paper if we can get our advert amongst the trade classified ads - I can safely say that we are more than comfortable with our online marketing but it would be wrong to totally dismiss any offline marketing medium before doing some research; hence this thread.

 

[Bart Simpson]

You might want to consider the readership of the local paper and the price you will incur and then decide. If your potential customers are not the ones reading that paper then it is not of much use.

 

[KeithP]

You might want to consider the readership of the local paper and the price you will incur and then decide. If your potential customers are not the ones reading that paper then it is not of much use.

It's one of the free newspapers that gets delivered to around 70,000 homes - from that readership, there will almost certainly be a decent amount of small business owners who pick it up.

I'm probably going to give it a shot and measure the response through a unique URL and telephone number. I'll post the results on here in a couple of weeks.

 

[Anton-JandJ]

Good luck Keith,

As you said the offer was at a good price it might be worth a punt just to test the waters and see the results. I'll be interested to hear how it got on.