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Chapter 46—Print Advertisements

Social media and web 2.0 have officially been embraced by
B2B companies. That said, there is still a place for traditional
media.

As with everything in B2B marketing, the key is strategic
thinking and quality content. Well-constructed, thoughtful
pieces will still be effective, and in many industries, traditional
media still plays an important role in the overall marketing
plan.

With magazines and newspapers in decline, many companies
have stopped or greatly reduced their print ad spending. In
many cases, this makes sense—companies often used
print advertising when they didn’t know how else to market
themselves.

But if they didn’t have a goal for advertising and didn’t have
a well-crafted plan for achieving that goal, they very rarely
accomplished anything. Print advertising works as long as ads
are well designed with a specific purpose in mind. An important
rule in advertising is “frequency over reach”. It’s better to run
four quarter page ads in a publication that is focused on your
target market than it is to place a single full page ad in a
national newspaper. In fact, if you only have enough budget
to run an ad once, I would say don’t bother—put that spend
elsewhere. People need to see something five to seven times
before it registers. This means that if you can’t get on the
radar of your target market five to seven times in a three to six
month period, your message is falling on deaf ears.

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© 2012 Lisa Shepherd