HOW TO WRITE PROFITABLE CLASSIFIED ADS
1) What's the most profitable way to use classifieds?
Classifieds are best used to build your mailing list of qualified
prospects. Use classifieds to offer a free catalogue, booklet or
report relative to your product line.
2) What can you sell "directly" from classifieds?
Generally, anything and everything, so long as it doesn't cost
more than about $25, which is about the most people will pay in
response to an offer in the classifieds. These types of ads are
great for pulling inquiries such as: Write for further
information; send $6, get two for the price of one; Dealers
wanted, send for product info and a real money maker's title.
3) What are the best months of the year to advertise?
All twelve months of the year!
Responses to your ads during some months will be slower in
accumulating, but by keying your ads according to the month they
appear, and a careful tabulation of your returns from each keyed
ad, you'll see that steady year round advertising will continue to
pull orders for you, regardless of the month it's published.
I've personally received inquiries and orders from ads placed as
long as 2 years previous to the date of the response!
4) Are mail order publications good advertising buys?
The least effective are the ad sheets.
Most of the ads in these publications are "exchange ads", meaning
that the publisher of ad sheet "A" runs the ads of publisher "B"
without charge, because publisher "B" is running the ads of
publisher "A" without charge.
The "claimed" circulation figures of these publications are almost
always based on "wishes, hopes and wants" while the "true"
circulation goes out to similar, small, part time mail order
dealers.
Very poor medium for investing advertising money because everyone
receiving a copy of a seller, and nobody is buying.
When an ad sheet is received by someone not involved in mail
order, its usually given a cursory glance and then discarded as
"junk mail".
Tabloid newspapers are slightly better than the ad sheets, but not
by much!
The important difference with the tabloids is in the "helpful
information" articles they try to carry for the mail order
beginner.
A "fair media" for recruiting dealers or independent sales reps
for mail order products, and for renting mailing lists, but still
circulated amongst "sellers" with very few buyers.
Besides that, the life of a mail order tab sheet is about the same
as that of your daily newspaper.
With mail order magazines, it depends on the quality of the
publication and its business concepts.
Some mail order magazines are nothing more than expanded ad
sheets, while others strive to help the opportunity seekers with
on-going advice and tips he can use in the development and growth
of his own wealth-building projects.
5) How can I decide where to advertise my product?
First of all, you have to determine who your prospective buyers
are.
Then you do a little bit of market research.
Talk to your friends, neighbours, and people at random who might
fit this profile. Ask them if they would be interested in a
product such as yours, and then ask them which publications they
read.
Next, go to your public library for a listing of the publications
of this type from the Standard Rate and Data Service catalogues.
Make a list of the addresses, circulation figures, reader
demographs and advertising rates.
To determine the true costs of your advertising and decide which
is the better buy, divide the total audited circulation figure for
a one inch ad: $20 per inch with a publication showing 10,000
circulation would be 10,000 into $20 or $2 per thousand.
Write and ask for sample copies of the magazines you've
tentatively chosen to place your advertising in.
Look over their advertising - be sure that they don't or won't put
your ad in the "gutter" which is the inside column next to the
binding.
How many other mail order type ads are they carrying - you want to
go with a publication that's busy, not one that has only a few
ads.
The more ads in the publication, the better the response the
advertisers are getting, or else they wouldn't be investing their
money in that publication.
To "properly" test your ad, you should let it run through at least
three consecutive issues of any publication.
If your responses are small, try a different publication. Then,
if your responses are still small, look at your ad and think about
re-writing it for greater appeal, and pulling power.
In a great many instances, it'd the ad and not the publication's
pulling power that's at fault!
