Is it worth the money to advertise a hosting company in a local newspaper?

What have your experiences been with it?

If I do it just once (not re-occuring ads) would it be a complete waste? Can you expect any immediate sales based off of this ad?

BTW, whats IMO stand for?

It depends completely on the market of the newspaper, the ad placement and your ad copy of course.

Actually, you will only want to run each ad once. Don't sign up for anything recurring yet because you will want to test your market. Your advertising, whether it be print, television, online or other should always be tested before making any commitments.

IMO means In My Opinion.

I should make a TV add, and get the most geekiet, nerdiest, ugliest, fattest guy I can find, and have him tell people what the benefits of hosting are.

Put that on FOX. :D

Serverbeach are advertising on TechTV apparently. *shrug*

I've seen their ad, it's very cheesy.

Re: Newspapers, I just started a month long campaign on thursday of this past week. So I can let you know how it did in a month :)

Realit Hosting,

I am interested in hearing how the campaign is going/went for you. I wish you the best of luck with it. :)

Depends on the market as does radio and tv advertising. If you can reach a reasonable local audience for a reasonable amount and not be lost in the clutter of a dozen competitors, do it. A few examples of my advice below:

Small town, weekly paper, 10,000 residents, cheap ads, but everyone in town checks the paper. Advertise away.

Or in my situation....Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Expensive, reach customers throughout a major metropolitan area, any small ad is completely lost in the paper. No way.

An old yellow page rule for small businesses....if you can be visible within a reasonably small number of businesses, buy a nice ad. If, however, your headiing goes for 30-50 pages (like Insurance here), if you can't afford at least a full page or more, don't waste your money, just take the free listing.

Radio's a good example. The top shows here are completely unaffordable. However, years ago, I was in a town of around 25-30,000 people, could get ads cheap. In fact, ran some remotes and had over 1,000 persons attend a couple of them.

You just have to examine the alternatives in your area. Also, if the daily newspaper is prohibitive, look at other print options. What about some of the "free" magazines, or specialized publications, or even smaller papers just covering your immediate area? Consider and evaluate all alternatives. Then test something which you can afford.

Also, although repetition is a key and very important, don't fall completely for the salesman's pitch. The first ad should still get some response. For example, I ran an ad for a service in a weekly paper with about 30,000 circulation and got over 200 phone calls the first time. I ran a similar ad in a bi-weekly of similar size, but one community over...couldn't prove by me anyone ever read the paper as the response was zero.

Tech TV actually has quite a few hosts advertising...OLM.net, ServerBeach, Towerhost, Rackspace and it seems like one other that I cannot think of right now.

I find that the majority of people read around the ads and only pay much attention to them if they're in search for it. (i.e. someone purchasing a new car, looking through the newspaper in attempt to discover a good deal.)

I also think that if you do decide to advertise in the newspaper, include some special/discount on your service.

Originally posted by Incognito
. . . In fact, ran some remotes and had over 1,000 persons attend a couple of them.
What are "remotes"? :)

We've tried classified ads in multiple newspapers with, well, ZERO, success.

However, a reseller of ours put out a larger ad, with a photo of himself, listing our hosting offer, and other services he provides. This has been one of his largest volume weeks, and he does give credit to the Sunday newspaper ad. (This was recent, last Sunday I believe in a newspaper near portland).

I'll give you guys an update at the end of the campaign :)

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
What are "remotes"? :) It's got something to do with radio stations broadcasting out of their studio, I believe.

That is when they broadcast from your location-usually anywhere from 2-4 hours. Generally, they have lots of give-aways, advance promotion, etc.

Originally posted by myg-
I should make a TV add, and get the most geekiet, nerdiest, ugliest, fattest guy I can find, and have him tell people what the benefits of hosting are.

Put that on FOX. :D

Hi, I am available for filming Wed, Thur and Fri next week.

Thanks.

I'm thinking of putting an ad on the papers website. $125 gets me 10,000 impressions on their front page.

I'm figuring it this way, those who read papers tend to be more educated (80% of newspaper reads have some college), those who are online reading the paper are more tech savy.

That's an idea for you.

What are "remotes"?

A remote is when a radio station is on location at a festival or event...possibly even the business itself. You'll often hear your local radio station broadcasting live from a parade or from a car dealership. That is a remote.

We do a lot of radio advertising and it does well for us. It can be tough to pick the market at a reasonable rate. We cater to small business hosting, and one of the stations we advertise on is an all news station. The other station that does well is a full service station (meaning they do music, sports, some talk, local and national news....full service meaning they cover everything).

Originally posted by Incognito
That is when they broadcast from your location-usually anywhere from 2-4 hours. Generally, they have lots of give-aways, advance promotion, etc.
Ahhhh, thanks. I get the drift. :)

Originally posted by Synthetic
I also think that if you do decide to advertise in the newspaper, include some special/discount on your service.

So your ad should have some special hosting plan on it.

So instead of just:
We are the best host ever. Call us here, email us here, our website is here.

Have a:
$10 a month
200 MB space
5 GB transfer

I know those are pitiful exampes, but its just for easier understanding.

Greetings:

Our local newspaper went into hosting <sigh and smile>.

Thank you.

Originally posted by PCplayground
Is it worth the money to advertise a hosting company in a local newspaper?

What have your experiences been with it?

If I do it just once (not re-occuring ads) would it be a complete waste? Can you expect any immediate sales based off of this ad?

BTW, whats IMO stand for?

We have been having good experiences in advertising in our local newspaper. Younger audience newspaper seemed to do better for us than any other types of newspaper so far.

Good luck

Originally posted by PCplayground
If I do it just once (not re-occuring ads) would it be a complete waste? Can you expect any immediate sales based off of this ad?


Repetition is a general principle in advertising. One ad will not be a fair evaluation of your campaign. If you can't afford more repetition, you'd probably be better off spending the same $ on a PPC campaign with highly targeted keywords.

Did you go through brokers to do advertising in the papers? just curious how it works out. Big papers are 1000+ per inch or 50,000 half page :)

yikes

I wouldn't mind doing a 4 inch spot or so but even then i'm looking at 800 or so a run in most papers??

i'll have to search around on google

Originally posted by turboweb
Did you go through brokers to do advertising in the papers? just curious how it works out. Big papers are 1000+ per inch or 50,000 half page :)

yikes

I wouldn't mind doing a 4 inch spot or so but even then i'm looking at 800 or so a run in most papers??

i'll have to search around on google


Sounds like here, In our paper od about 60k customers, they charge 12k cdn for a full page ad :(

where do you live?

Full page color, 20000 papers, is $825 CAD here :P

small town just west of Calgary, AB, and that paper is owned by one of the big guys (same guys that own the Sun papers in Calgary, etc)