[terrymaloy]

Had a phone call from my local newspaper last week inviting me to a business seminar on how to promote my business.
Had my reservations to be honest but decided to go along.
Must admit, was a glossy affair, hosted by experts in media in a lavish location with one aim really...to spend my hard earned cash advertising with my local newspaper.

At the end of the seminar came the hard sell and boy were they determined 

In a nutshell:
Full colour 15 x 3  display ad once a week (slightly bigger once a quarter)
Online page impressions on their .com website

Price £130 per week

To me, that seems quite a lot. I've just bought the paper and in the classifieds at the back you've got the cheappie brigade.  Four of them advertising carpet and stairs for £30...erm, I'm considerably more than that !

Do people still use the newspaper to book a tradesman these days ?
Got to let her know tomorrow.

Cheers

[derikraven]

I think its a waste of money. If you are looking for something,
what's the first thing you do.....................Google it! Most people these days use the internet to find what they want.

[Mike Halliday]

People under 55 will use google but above that are still of the era that read hard copies of newspapers.

But I doubt a news paper would be better than the YPs if anyone was looking for a carpet cleaner and was not Internet savvy they would first think of YPs not the local paper.

I did a stint on the front page of our local free paper, 25k a week delivered, never paid for its self and it was a ciggerette box size advert

[Steve Gunn]

I did this with the Sunderland echo Terry save your money big event held at the Stadium of Light. You are relying on one advert a week and people going on their website. If you are looking for trades person do you use local paper.

It's also a 12 month contract or it was when I did it 10 weeks in I had one job from it for a one off window clean. I got out of contract as they never sent any paperwork explaining terms and conditions

[garry22]

Terry.

£ 500 + a month will get you some serious SEO work, let you drop a lot of targetted leaflets or get a good telesales person get you commercial leads.

I suspect that your returns from those will be far better.

[terrymaloy]

Thanks for the advice folks.
And Steve, you hit the nail right on the head...it was the Sunderland Echo. Same venue, same presentation and 12 month contract.
I've just rang her back and told her it's not for me.

The afternoon wasn't a total waste of time...got a £20 marksys voucher just for turning up and I won the champagne draw.

[Mike Halliday]

I would guess £130 spent on a adwords campaign would reap greater rewards than if the same amount was spend on newspapers.

I spend £78 a week on a part time leaflet deliverer , don't know the exact figure but I would guess I get over £500 from his work.

I think these newspaper people rely on companies not tracking their marketing, companies who have a marketing  budget and just spend it willy-nilly

[Ian Gourlay]

I think the successful Advertisers are selling high ticket price items  like replacement windows etc   

[jim mca]

It does work well if you are cheap look in every local paper and they are there

[terrymaloy]

Ian, it's funny you should mention that.
When watching the promotional video it showed clips of successful advertisers.
I nearly choked on my coffee...one of them was my good mate and what does he sell....replacement windows!

When I spoke to him he told me one successful phone call would pay for his 4 week ad (£600).

[Ian Gourlay]

Exactly 

[Susan Dean (1stclean)]

ive spent over 50k on paper advertisising in the last 20 years and it was great , it found work for 5 vans and it was mayhem I made loads of money from the papers

but see that word WAS started dyeing off around 2005 and was utter rubbish by 2009 we stopped it all when I retired late in 2009 as I was throwing 120 pounds aweek away

in 2013 I spent a quick 2k in the papers at Essex when we kicked off there got 690 pounds worth of work from it lol  .

so stay away from it it utter rubbish