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 $24.00, 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
20 cents 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!
