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What's the difference between one x 160,000 and four x 40,000?
Give up? Alright: what's the difference between four x 1/4 and one x one?
The answer to both questions is the same: in pure arithmetical terms it's nothing, of course. But when it comes to print advertising, the difference is of crucial importance to your business.
I'm talking about bang for buck here. Say you've got a choice between placing an ad once only in a 160,000 circulation publication or, for a similar cost, inserting a similar sized ad four times in a 40,000 circulation publication.
Now let's assume both publications have similar audience profiles (like the cost issue, a big assumption, but let's go with it). In that case, repetition is the key.
Repetition? I mean the number of times an ad is exposed to a reader.
It's well established that we consumers need to have our attention drawn to a product or service more than once before we'll take action on it. In fact a rule-of-thumb is: once for awareness; twice for interest; three times for desire and four times for action.
But this rule-of-thumb is backed up by solid research that proves more impressions equals more action. (But only up to a point. Three to four impressions is usually the optimum for one ad execution. After that the ad becomes wallpaper; response plateaus or even drops.)
So, about your one ad going to that big audience: don't be surprised if it doesn't pull well, and now you see why it's a mistake to blame either the publication or the ad. Give the ad and the publication a chance ‑ three times is the bare minimum.
Which is why I asked the second question. Remember? Four x 1/4 and one x one?
I'm talking about ad size. Your full page beauty of an ad might look impressive, but if you blow your budget on that one ad, you're consigning your campaign to failure.
To ensure you get the repeat impressions which you need for your ad to take effect, choose the ad size that ensures you can do at least three insertions. Even a series of 1/8 pages will generally work better for you than a single insertion, without breaking the bank. (But hey, if you've got the budget for a series of full page ads, bring 'em on!)
And there's another aspect to the repetition thing. Readers generally don't read every issue of a publication anyway ‑ so your single ad, no matter how good it is, will in fact be missed by a chunk of your target audience. Can you afford this?
And get real. Even if someone reads every issue of their favourite magazine, do you think he or she is searching out your ad and ticking it off from their list of must-see ads? That's another reason why I suggest that you're better off with more than just three insertions of an ad.
By the way, there may be other benefits to increased frequency as well, depending on the publisher?
Now you may be wondering about the two big assumptions I made early on about audience profiles and cost. I could discuss them here, and what I think about full page ads, but the editor won't give me the space. Maybe that can be the topic of another article. What d'you say, ed?
First published in Business to Business magazine.
