Stop Wasting Money: Make Your Newspaper Ads Work

Many people spend so much on newspaper advertising without getting results. Owing to this lack of results, they usually conclude that newspaper advertising does not work. In most cases, the ads do not work because they do not know how to make it work. If you know how to make newspaper ads work, you will see amazing results.

In our previous article, we discussed the pros and cons of choosing newspaper advertising over, or to complement, digital advertising. We made a very objective case for advertising in newspapers in this age where everything, including advertising, is digitalized. If you haven’t read the article yet, you can read it here.

This article serves as a guide, call it a manual maybe, on how to make newspaper advertising work for you. So, let’s dig in. How can you make your newspaper ads work?

Define Your Goal

Defining your goal is a very important step if you want to get all the value you can from newspaper advertising. What do you want to achieve with your ads?

Some of the common goals include lead generation, website traffic, revenue increase, brand awareness, customer acquisition and engagement.

Define Your Target Audience

Who are you making the ad for? Who will be interested in the ad?

The data to consider, which is necessary to create an accurate customer persona, includes demographics, psychographics, behaviour, needs and wants, goals, pain points and motivations.

Creating a customer persona helps you better understand your customers and their needs, develop more targeted marketing and sales messages, create products and services that are more likely to appeal to your customers, create messaging, branding, and product offerings tailored to the needs and wants of your customers, improve your customer service experience, etc.

You can read more about customer personas here.

Select the right publication and placement

Having a clear understanding of your goal and target audience will help you select the newspaper that will be most effective for your campaign.

Look for newspapers in the geographic location of your target audience and make a list of them.

After making the list, ask the following questions:

What is the reach and circulation of the newspaper? Reach is the number of individuals that read the newspaper while circulation is the number of copies distributed or sold within a specific period. Do they reach your target audience better or have better reach on weekdays than weekends?

Is the newspaper printed in colour or black and white? Will this affect your designs and the message you would like to pass across?

Is the publication the right fit for your brand, product or service? For example, a religious newspaper may not be a good fit for a brand that sells alcoholic drinks.

What’s the readership of the newspaper? Are they similar to your customer persona?

Select the newspaper that best aligns with your goal and caters to your target audience.

Once you have decided on the newspaper, the next thing to think about is the placement.

How large should your ad be to make maximum impact? Please note that larger sizes don’t necessarily mean higher conversions so, just select what works best for you.

What location or section should it be published in the newspaper? The front page, back page and centre spread are fantastic. However, if you do not have the budget for any of those locations, go for a good placement. If the publication is divided into sections, choose a section that best aligns with your product but as much as you can, avoid having your ads beside or too close to a competitor’s ad.

Selecting the right publication will boost the chances of your newspaper ads and may determine if it will work or not

Craft a gripping headline

Your headline is the most prominent part of your advert. It should be good enough to pique the reader’s interest at first glance.

Ensure your copy communicates the value of your product or service instead of just describing the product. What do the people stand to gain? How does it help them or affect their lives positively?

Include shocking facts, especially facts about the geographic location, interesting questions, etc.

Your headline should not be long, a maximum of 8 words, so that readers can easily assimilate it and it should also be concise. Use strong verbs and an active voice to communicate your message effectively and get the readers to take action.

Write compelling copy

Your ad copy, like your headline, should be short, concise, persuasive, interesting and loaded with the values you are offering.

Write your copy in a language your target audience will understand. Keep it simple, use simple, easy-to-understand words and word forms/construction. You know your target audience, so, communicate with them.

Instead of listing the features of your products or services, state precisely how it will benefit them, Don’t forget that you have defined your target audience earlier and you possibly have a customer persona. So, you already know their pain points, needs and wants, etc. This will help you to craft a message that highlights the benefits or values that your product or services offer them.

You should use strong verbs and active voice here as well and ensure there are no grammatical or typographical errors.

Call to Action (CTA)

What action do you want your readers to perform after seeing the ad: Visit the store, the website, or call a number? Ensure your copy clearly states the action to be taken and should encourage the readers to take the action.

A clearly stated CTA gets more results than an ambiguous or non-existent one.

Include Incentives

Including incentives in your copy can make the readers spend more time on the ad and take the requisite action.

Incentives could include:

Discounts: “Cut out this ad and present it at our store to enjoy a 20% discount”

Promo codes and coupons: “Use the promo code xxx when you shop online and get a free gift”

Limited-time offers: “Get a special gift when you make a purchase of X amount or more this weekend only”

Design for Readability & Visual Appeal

Regardless of how compelling and interesting your copy is, it will amount to nothing if it is not well laid out on the page. Your design should be done in such a way that the message is immediately clear and enticing.

Visuals are important when creating your design. This is because the human brain interprets visuals faster than text so visuals help you tell a more intriguing story faster. Include clean, high-quality images (ensure images are well attributed or purchase a license to avoid legal battles) and illustrations to complement your message.

Pay attention to the arrangement of your ad components, headline, copy, CTA, images, etc, They should be arranged well for easy visual flow and appeal. The most important message in your content, headline and CTA, must stand out clearly among the other components. Use colours that will stand out in the publication and go with your brand identity.

It’s important to include white space. It improves the readability and flow of your content, and gives room for your content to breathe.

Track and Analyze Your Results

To understand if your newspaper ads work or not, you need to track and analyze performance. By analyzing your results, you can tweak your strategy to get better results in future campaigns.

However, Newspaper ads are not quite easy to track and it takes considerable ingenuity to be able to track them.

Here are some ways you can track your ads:

UTM & QR Codes

If you want customers to visit your website for an offer, include a shortened URL that will be easy to memorize and ensure you include UTM codes in the initial URL before shortening to be able to track every visit from the shortened URL.

You can also include a QR code for readers to scan. Of course, this should also be tracked using your UTM code.

Coupons and Ad Clippings

If you want them to visit the physical store, include a coupon or provide a discount if the ad is clipped and brought to the store. You can track the number of persons who used the coupon or brought the clipping to your store to claim a discount.

Phone Calls

If you want to know the number of people that called your business based strictly on the newspaper adverts, you should set up an entirely separate phone line to include in your ad copy. That way, you know that every call received on that phone line, is directly connected to the advert.

You must think of the best way to track your ads before creating the ad and include everything you need to track your ad in the copy.

Use the data gathered while tracking your ads to redefine your target audience and target people who were not in your initial target audience but eventually got interested in your offer. If you can track and analyze results, you can keep refining and optimizing your ads till you have clear insights into what works for your products or services.

When does a newspaper advert work best?

When targeting a local audience

Newspaper ads are a perfect fit for you if you are advertising a local brand, product or service because the local audience in the geographic location will get to see the ad and they are the ones that will patronize you most frequently.

Also, if the majority of the readers within a geographic location the selected publication caters to fit your customer persona, you should consider advertising in the newspaper.

When you have events, discount offers or promotions

You should consider advertising limited time offers, discount offers and promotions in newspapers. It is also a good platform to advertise the grand opening of local businesses, fun events, etc

When you are targeting the older generation

Statistics show that the older generation still depends more on newspapers for news and information so if your ad targets the older generation, you should consider newspaper advertising

When you want to build credibility

Most readers associate newspapers with credibility, especially because there is so much misinformation and disinformation on the internet so if you’re in an industry that relies on trust, you can gain a measure of credibility by advertising in print.