Even before the current COVID-19 virus the traditional large advertisers – supermarkets, furniture stores, department stores, automobile dealerships, building centers and even home owned women’s and men’s clothing and shoe stores were disappearing from the community.
Many of today’s boutique stores are too small to be able to invest much of their operating budget on traditional advertising. Additionally, many younger entrepreneurs establishing small shops in the marketplace have been lead to believe they can succeed using just their website, Facebook and Tweeter.
Newspaper and shopper publishers, in response, have to had offer lower priced community support promotions to a larger number of prospects to fill their lost display revenue.
That group should include local medical services, law offices, accounting firms, manufacturers and banks along with traditional advertisers.One community support package that has worked well for our firm for many years has been our Red Ribbon series. These five annual pages – promoting student safety during Homecoming (September), October’s Red Ribbon Day (SAMPLE ONE), Christmas/New Year vacation (December), Prom (March) and Graduation (May) – are sold to an interested groups of advertisers for the entire year early in the fall. But there is no reason it couldn’t be sold any time in the year for all five insertions. In our market the support spots are most easily sold when priced between $37.50 and $50.00 each.
We always ask the advertisers if they would like to be part of a valuable “support” page and never a “signature” page. The dollar goal for the page should be equal to or more than the paper’s price for a process color full page.
This year has been different since most public schools are closed before the school proms and potentially will be closed for graduation. We have had to come up with a more general “be safe” message for our high school and college age readers. (SAMPLES TWO AND THREE).
As always if you have questions or would like additional earlier sample pages you can contact me at pww@iowainformation.com or my cell at 712-358-3550.
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Get Real and Paper Dollars columns are available at no charge from your state newspaper association or directly from Peter W. Wagner at Creative House Print Media Consultants. Get Real provides informative ideas supporting the importance of newspapers and shoppers in the community and Paper Dollars features unique sales promotions. If you would like to be on the email list for the newsletters email Wagner at pww@iowainformation.com or call him at 712-348-3550.