3 Qualified Leads for a Dollar AKA Making Money With Magazine Advertising (+SMS)

I've had two customers (not coaching clients) ask me about print advertising in the past week - which has got me wondering if some of you had tried this sort of advertising. Part of the reason is I also did some consulting on a niche trade mag with a list of 7000 people and there seems to be a lot of confusion.

Anywho...

Why advertise in Print?

First things first, - why on earth would you want to advertise in print? Well, right now there is a whole world of hurt in print. This means low prices, and assuming you know how much you can spend to acquire a customer then you can quickly see if things are going to work out.

Traditionally, I would say that you should expect lower conversion rates from print - but to be honest, recently I have seen things that make me question the traditional bias a lot of online marketers have against print media.

The key is simply to get into a targeted niche publication. Small, but highly responsive circulation. Theses type of publications tend to fall into one of two categories:

1 - Business to business publications
2 - Niche consumer interest

The circulations of these magazines (in the UK at least), can be sub 100,000 - but don't write them off! There is a huge amount of cash in these publication's readerships...

I'm not going to lie. Direct Response in magazines isn't easy, it can be very tricky and risky for people just starting out. So, if you've not mastered basic marketing, maybe bookmark and print this for later?

Things you need to be good at:

1) Copywriting
2) Structuring your offer towards one aim (getting a call, optin, order whatever)
3) Having your payment processing system.
4) Knowing your market
5) Having a way to monitor in print

Anyway, getting your first advert in - here are some of my top tips.

1) Most likely you are going to have to approach them. This is the tease - ask questions / maybe ask for a rate card. Profess some interest, but be vague - make sure you leave contact details. Then end the conversation. Actually, make sure that you find out the publishing deadline. Don't mention your budget though.

2) Hopefully, they will call you (this usually works for me) just before the deadline going to print. Ask them for their best deal, for instance on a full page spread.Ask for circulation figures and testimonials sending through before you can go ahead.

3) When they give you a price, ask if they offer discounts for:
paying earlier than terms require
paying in advance (be careful here)

4) Whatever price they ask if they can give you anything more? end the conversation - the reason being you need to work out the figures, and talk to your business partner (they have to work extra hard to get you to persuade your partner). Also, express concern over the circulation figures - ask for a demographic breakdown - make clear it is a deal breaker to moving forward.

5) It's up to you if you call back, or wait for them. To be honest, at this point they are usually so keen (commission!) that it is fair to call back.

6) Ask for a discount as you are testing (you are testing - to judge response rates), after all, you need to see if your message fits the market.

7) Once you are happy with all your price discounts, now you want to get more for your money! Something that works real well for me, is to say you want to go ahead, but you need better value - ask for two full page spreads instead of one.

Now - I rarely have gotten this, but almost always, I get offered an article / advertorial or editiorial in the same issue. Make sure it is full page, and offer to supply the copy yourself. Most publications are desperate for content, so you will be pleasantly suprised that you can produce a second slightly less obvious print advert!

So - what has all this bargaining got me?

Well, a couple of months, I got a double spread (advertorial, plus full page advert) in a niche magazine with a circulation of 30,000, with an extra full page advert in next months magazine.

The cost? $1500 ish. 60 days terms. So, I got the money from the front end offer before the bill was due to be paid. Didn't cost me a thing.

So, I got three chances to convert a reader into prospect. I offered them a free trial, which they had to text for. For every dollar I was getting three shots at 20 readers.

Over two months I got around 3 qualified leads for each dollar I spent. That would work out like this - Total qualified leads - 4622 who texted for the free email report.

I actually suspect that some of the leads were faked by an involved party (so the leads rate was artificially high) - but this was still a success and my suspicions are another story.

I then put them through a four day cash machine type of process. For the sake of argument, let's say my frontend product is $50. Convert at apporx 4% (pretty poor but this is a test)

181 sales at $50 (actually £29.99) = $9050

So that is about $7500 profit on the front end (further testing seed money!)

That is just the front end, I'm not going to talk about the backend

Why did I use texting?

Well, the magazines are placed in financial planning offices and certain banks. People wouldn't be at a computer, they would be browsing before their appointment. I'm sure that techie errors with SMS code, and the akwardness of the process.

I'm darn sure we lost a lot of money there. Also, in terms of the conversion rate from reader to lead, remember we had 3 shots (2 adverts and 1 editorial) - so this was 3 shots at 30k. Some will have had one exposure, some multiple - but I don't believe it is accurate to say I had 90,000 views - nor is 30k views accurate either...

Anyway, this was a poor performing test, you need to do due diligence, but there is a lot of money to be made from niche specific print publications.

I'm hoping that this is useful for a few of you. Any questions - bat away! I'm sure I've missed lots out...