Newspaper ads:

Newspaper advertising is a robust little monster.  If you’ve ever been “privileged” enough to sit through a newspaper advertisers sales pitch, you will have noticed that there are more choices available for advertising than there are articles in each issue.

The area of the newspaper I am going to focus on is the most profitable for direct sales/leads efforts: the classifieds.

The thing that makes the classified section the most profitable for most businesses is the audience that you reach.  Anyone who goes through the classifieds is either browsing, whether it is looking for deals, better jobs or a new place to live OR they are specifically looking to buy something.  Both of these audiences are very profitable.

Now there are some best practices to keep in mind when creating classified ads.  Although each deserves their own post, I am just quickly breaking them down so you know what they are.

1) The Headline Rules – Make sure your headline reels everyone in to read the ad.  If your ad is getting overlooked, your marketing dollar is going to get absorbed quickly.
2) You Must Have A Clear Call To Action – Your CTA should be clear, concise & easy/fast to do.
3) White On Black Almost Always Out-Pulls Black On White – If you are able to make your classified black with white text you will usually make more money from your campaign.
4) Make Sure You Are In The Right Section(s) – If you need to put the same ad in the classifieds twice to ensure you reach your entire prospect base over multiple categories you should (but talk to your rep about giving you a min. 25% discount).

The classified section should generally be used to serve 2 purposes.  The first purpose is to generate leads.  The second purpose is to sell a product or service.  What’s really great is you don’t even need to have a product or service.  You could approach countless service businesses and offer to generate leads for them through the classifieds.

You can generate leads, sales or even potential employees on the companies behalf and set it up on a “per sign-up” fee.  To maintain control of you leads you simply need to direct them to your own phone numbers or landing pages.

Once you test a business ad a few times you will have a general idea of the conversion rates and will be able to ensure you always make the best profit margins available when selling leads.

Of course, if you can find a product that is deliverable, you can duplicate your successful ads nationwide.  This is certainly the most profitable means, however, there’s no reason why you couldn’t duplicate your successful joint ventures in the service sector nationwide as well.

If you look around at service business, you will notice that there are many who are more than willing to pay anybody $50, $75, even $500 for leads that convert.  When you compare this to the costs of $20-$200 to run an ad for an entire month which could generate as many as 20 leads for you to sell, you see that the classifieds truly are the most profitable pages in the newspaper.

Telephone Marketing

Some people cringe when thinking about selling through the telephone.  If you are one of those people then forget it.  Go read up on selling by snail mail or something, because you need to be into selling by phone to sell by phone.  Usually, the insane profits are enough to instil passion about telemarketing.

Telemarketing is still a numbers game, and if you simply follow the basic rules of selling by phone, the mathematics of telemarketing will do the heavy lifting for you.

The basic rules of selling by phone are simple;

Ignore the first 6 NO’s

Always have the other person’s best interests at heart

Be Polite Professional & Friendly every second of the telephone call

Know Your Product

Stand & Smile When Speaking

Be Persistent

Do Not Stand Idle.  Always Be Dialing, Talking Or Listening (unless You have a profile of the prospect, then you should spend time researching… just be careful you don’t spend too much time researching).

If you follow these rules then you will have done everything you can to be successful.  The offer and the list will determine how successful.

The mathematics of telemarketing are as follows

Number Of Dials = Number Of Contacts = Number Of Pitches = Number Of Decisions = Conversion Rate

The more you increase the number at the top level (Number Of Dials) the more the bottom level number (Conversion Rate) increases.

Here’s an example:

100 Dials

60% Convert To Contacts  = 60 Contacts

25% Are Available To Listen To A Full Pitch = 15 Pitchs

80% Make A Decision On The First Phone Call = 12 Decisions

8% Make A Purchase =  1 Sale

If you increase the number of dials you make in a day from 100 to 1,100 you can be pretty certain that you will gain about 10 new customers.