Re: Advertising Help Needed!! - Posted by Nate
Posted by Nate on March 13, 2001 at 11:12:04:
I’m actually located in DC but do most of my work in PG County. Admittedly, PG County is not Anne Arundel, but hear me out.
When I was investigating newspapers for classified ads, I checked into the Washington Post, Washington Times, and the Journal (local PG County paper) and ultimately went with the Post for reasons I’ll explain here.
If you call up the classified ad departments of the papers, they should have figures as to their total circulation (daily & Sunday). Some even break it down by jurisdiction (the Post, for example, has all this stuff on their website, and showed that more people in PG County read the Sunday Post than the PG Journal).
Basically, what it came down to was that although the Post was slightly more expensive than the Journal or the Washington Times (really NOT much more - maybe $35 instead of $25 or something like that), but the far greater number of people reading it made up for that. My cost per “impression” was much, much lower than in the Times or the Journal.
Now, this was mainly for ads to sell houses, not to buy them. But if you are targeting a similarly small area, I don’t see why you could not do something similar. Check out the Post Sunday zoned real estate classified rates (I can point you to the right place on the web site if need be). You can specify which “zones” (DC, PG, N. Va., etc.) you want the ad to appear in. And you only pay something like $3-4 per line per zone, with a 10% discount if you do multiple zones.
The only thing I’m not sure about is whether Anne Arundel is a zone or not. I don’t know if enough people in Annapolis get the Post for them to bother.
A couple of other thoughts:
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As far as the Pennysaver - call up their classified ad people and ask about circulation. They should be able to give you numbers to allow you to do a “cost-per-person” comparison to the other papers.
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Is your market area too small? I dunno…that’s really more a matter of your personal preference. If you have a fairly well-defined market area that you want to stick with (say, Annapolis, or southern Anne Arundel County, or however you define it), I would suggest calling up the classified people at the papers you’re considering and see what data they have on their circulation in their target area. Then you can do the comparison directly.
Good luck, and let me know if I can help in any other way.
NT