If nobody knows about your products and services... how are they going to buy them?

Which Publications?

Frequency

Size

Color

Which Publications?

Every industrial market has a number of publications covering the market such as trade journals and society newsletters. Each publication is designed to reach either a specific segment of the market or provide a general overview. Each publication will have a particular circulation, and a certain level of respect for editorial content in the industry.

Frequency

Is the publication weekly, monthly, quarterly? You need to decide how frequently you need to run your advertisement. Every market is a little different, but generally you will achieve a higher response rate by running at least three ads per year in a monthly publication, more frequently in a weekly. Many factors such as the amount of competition, how widely your product can be used, how frequently your product is used, the price of your product, and any seasonality must be considered when deciding on the frequency of advertising.

Depending on your products and the market you are trying to reach, you may want to run ads in several publications to reach all appropriate potential customers. Running ads in multiple publications can reinforce your message to your audience and/or reach additional people that might not see it otherwise.

Size

A larger ad will almost always get more response than a smaller ad. A larger ad always costs more than a smaller ad. If your competition doesn't advertise very much, you can often get by with a smaller ad. Another consideration is the type of product or service you are advertising. If the concept is highly technical or requires a lot of explanation, you will probably need a larger ad space to fully explain it. You should also thumb through several issues of the publication you are planning to advertise in to see what sizes are most frequently used. A quarter-page ad might tend to get lost in a publication where the majority of ads are full-pages. Also smaller ads are usually run further back in the publication. In many cases readers will assign a greater worth and credibility to a larger ad (again depending on the type of product or service).

Color

As printing technology improves, the use of color in advertising is increasing and becoming more affordable. Numerous tests have been conducted showing that using color in your advertising will significantly increase the amount of attention your ad captures which generally improves the response rate.

You can use one or more of the publications spot colors, a specific PMS spot color (for a little higher price), or go with a full color (four-color) ad. Color is billed as a seperate charge and is the same for a full-page or fractional-page ad. Color also can give a greater sense of worth and credibility.