Category: Newspaper Advertising

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7 Mistakes to Avoid with Newspaper Advertising

Newspaper advertising, if limited to classified ads, is the easiest way to reach out to people, especially in case of personal requirements or small scale promotions. Taking risks or making small mistakes in classified advertisements may not be a big issue due to its low cost.Classified Ad

But when it comes to something as grand and expensive as newspaper display advertisement then, advertisers need to become meticulous about everything associated with the advertisement. Advertisers are aware of the fact that a lot of hard work goes into newspaper advertising, in terms of money, time, effort, market research and creativity.

Hence, it is necessary to be very careful with it and avoid making mistakes which either leads to spoiling the reputation of the advertisers or dumps the efforts made in waste if desired responses are not received. While getting your newspaper advertisement released ensure relevant responses from the concerned target audiences, by avoiding 10 crucial mistakes made by many.

7 avoidable mistakes in Newspaper Display Advertising

Although a winning newspaper advertisement may not be subject to avoiding these mistakes but they should be avoided by every ad. Ensuring that these mistakes do not harm the potential of the advertisement is the main objective of encompassing and informing advertisers about them.

Let’s find out these mistakes along with possible solutions for the same.

1) Use of Complex Taglines

While advertising it is really essential to realise that an advertisement is also the form of communication with the masses and communication should be comprehensive. The simpler the content of the ad the more comprehensive is the advertisement. A tagline should give out the message but in simple words and not in some flowery terminology, because in advertising using uncomplicated terms, is extremely crucial.

2) Use of Abstract Taglines

Abstract taglines are often baffling for the readers. It barely delivers the message and actually leaves the audience wondering as to what is the purpose of the advertisement. For instance, if you intend to advertise your jewellery retail chain, then you must mention jewellery in the tagline or the type of Jewellery you are promoting, like “The Best Kundan Jewellery at a store near you!” This statement conveys the message as well as talks about the product that is promoted.

3) Excessive use of Text

The key strategy of an advertisement is to deliver a message, be it for sales, branding or an announcement. The primary necessity of an advertisement is to be crisp and concise because it is an advertisement and not an essay. Copy or Content is always an essential ingredient of an ad, but using it judiciously and effectively is what makes an advertisement stand out among the rest. So keeping the words or message concise in an advertisement ensures a much more elegant and crisp way of delivering it to the target audience.

4) Infrequent Ad Releases

It takes the time to gain the trust of any buyer irrespective of the medium of advertising. It also takes the time to establish the name of a brand and create a substantial recognition for it. Also, if a festive offer is running for a certain period of time, then announcing the event just once may not be enough since readers may tend to forget about it. Therefore, just one advertisement is never enough for either branding purposes or for increasing sales. Multiple ad insertions mean that the chances of the ad getting noticed are increased by many folds alongside increasing the number of repeated eyeballs it receives.

5) Single Ad Testing

Many advertisers often get discouraged by a single trial advertisement and end up concluding that newspaper advertising is not effective. The same advertisement if released several times may not get the responses it is expected to. Versatility is always welcome for the ordinary readers and audiences. So newspaper ad trials should not be limited to just one ad but released with a few changes every time it is published. Changes, such as using a different image or a more direct tagline, crisper content or even a different background colour may make it more relevant or attractive to the audience.

6) Ignoring the Contact Details

This is the basic requirement for an audience to be able to contact an advertiser. An address alongside a contact number and an email or a website, if available provided in the advert can prove to be highly beneficial to the advertiser. In fact, it is best to provide all these details as the audience can have at least one mode of contact in the absence of others. For instance, a person without internet access should be able to contact the advertiser through phone, while an interested buyer without a phone can directly visit the store for purchase.

7) Ad Release at the Wrong Time

While promoting a product or a sales event or offering festive discounts, it is essential to advertise at the right time. Timing is extremely crucial for advertisements even for making announcements and brand awareness adverts. There is no point in reminding the audience of the brand twice within a week, neither is there a point in promoting the Sale period after it is over or making an announcement which has crossed its deadline or too close to it. An illustration explaining the situation can be garnered through a series of adverts by Shopper’s Stop that needs to promote their Diwali offers which extend over week overlapping the festival. In this case, there is no point advertising after Diwali is over unless it is extending even after the festival, rather the event promotion should begin from the day it begins and continues until the day it ends.

Avoiding these mistakes may not make a display ad full-proof or a huge hit, but it will surely get it noticed and make it stand out among the rest of the advertisement that we see every day in a newspaper. So keep these mistakes in mind, to avoid making them, not implementing them!

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Best Practices for Retail Advertisements

Retail Advertising is one of the most interesting forms of advertisements that we see in our day-to-day lives. It involves several elements which are all equally essential and cannot be taken for granted. Retail advertisements may not be a very regular thing for newspaper publications but surely they are a huge source of revenue. Since when they choose to advertise, they do so in bundles within a stipulated period of time.Retail Display Advertisement

Retail newspaper ads in the display format are published mainly for one specific objective-Driving sales and Store Footfalls. This is the reason behind retail adverts to get their ads released when there are special offers, discounts or festive overtures, going on in the store. Retailers usually prefer to advertise throughout the stipulated date range of the proposed event or Sale/Festive Seasons. The purpose of almost all retail adverts is to increase the sales of their merchandise and branding is not really their top priority.

Therefore, to comprehend what are the essential elements for retail advertising, we need to delve a little deeper into the world of retail advertising. The important elements of a retail advertisement are described below in the order of their significance in an advertisement.

Conveying the Call-to-Action

To drive sales and ensure the higher number of footfalls, it is important to comprehensively deliver or convey the call-to-action. The customer or potential must be aware of his/her course of action after reviewing the advertisement. The call-to-action is a part of the copy that is developed for the advertisement. It can also be a directly conveyed through a simple yet effective tagline, for example, if you want the buyer to visit your garments store before the 25th of December, then you may straight away use the tagline “Visit us before Christmas ends for Best Discounts”.Display Ads on Newspaper

This kind of a tagline not only conveys the duration of the offer period but also directs the reader or potential buyer to the intended action, ensuring more relevant responses for your advertisement.

Use of Attractive Images

The visual effect of a display advertisement in a newspaper is quite significant in the case of retail advertisements. The ad image should include one or more merchandises that are being promoted by that specific retail store which may range from garments to jewellery to commercial bazaars. This actually lures the buyer to engage in reviewing the advertisement and responding to it as desired by the advertiser.

Significance of Logo

The logo of a retail brand is also quite crucial at the time of advertising to push up the store sales during a specific season. Buyers should be able to associate the logo with the concerned retail brand name to imbibe faith and remind the buyer about the advertisement and the event alongside the brand itself. This calls for developing an unforgettable logo that is imprinted in the mind of the buyer or anyone who comes in contact with the advertisement published in a newspaper of your choice.

Taking the help of an expert is recommended for logo designing as it may not be as easy as it sounds. The colour combination, the relevance of the logo with the brand, the font used and every minute detail is really important for the image of the brand.

Before engaging in a retail advertising venture, an advertiser must ensure that all the above elements are skilfully implemented in the ad, because, after all, everyone is advertising to compete.

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Elements of a Newspaper Ad Creative

For a newspaper ad to grab attention, the first thing that is necessary is the creative element invested in it. The creative is what attracts the reader to an advertisement. It is what drives the reader away from the news and information content, which is the basic task of a newspaper, to taking a look at the advertisement. In print advertising, the visual effect created by the ad is what makes it stand out or simply get ignored.

There are certain essential elements which contribute to the creation of a successful creative ad design. A combination of these basic elements is crucial for an ad creative without which an ad cannot be designed, irrespective of the marketing objective it intends to serve. The significance of each element is heightened or reduced depending on the objective but they are all present in the advertisement.

Let’s find out how each element affects the design of the advertisement.

Logo Designing

The logo of a brand name is what gets imprinted on the minds of the readers or target audiences. A logo is the symbol of recognition for a brand and potential audiences remember it through that symbol. So designing a logo that is unforgettable is a dream for a brand that intends to create awareness for itself. For every brand awareness campaign, it is essential to have a prominent yet unique and well-crafted logo so that the audience is able to recognize it and associate it with the product or service provided by the brand in question.

  •         Call to action

Describing the call to action

You all must have heard of the saying, “Communication is key.” This proverb stands true even in case of newspaper advertising. Advertisers need to communicate with the target readers to ensure that their message is comprehended by the audiences. For that describing the ‘call to action’ in an advertisement is highly essential. It is what drives the reader to become a consumer since the ‘call to action’ tells the reader what course of action is he required to follow after taking a look at the advertisement. This description is essential for all those adverts which are directed towards driving footfalls to a store or raising sales.

Use of engaging images

The image used in creating an advertisement is what makes the readers get attracted to an advertisement. An advertiser needs to pay a lot of attention to the image that is used in the concerned advertisement as it is important for both branding and driving sales objectives. It needs to be relevant to the call-to-action and at the same time promoting the brand name. An image needs to capture and exude the essence of the advertisement so as to engage every reader that comes in contact with it.

Body Copy and Taglines

In a newspaper ad, the readers may not get an audio but they can surely read a well-directed content. Every part of the advertisement is subject to copywriting, which makes the content or copy of the advertisement of utmost importance. The image selected, the catchy taglines provided, the words and language used in the call-to-action, the information provided to the audience, the border, the colour combination and everything else is driven by the copy that is created for the advertisement. The copy is what conjures an ad from scratch and creativity and imagination are the key ingredients required for creating the tagline and body copy. Therefore, an advertiser must ensure that complete attention is provided to the newspaper ad creative to make the advertisement relevant and successful.

So get ready to get your hands dirty and get creative for a successful newspaper advertisement campaign!

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How to Determine The Right Budget for your Newspaper Ad Campaign?

Budget, a word that pops up first in everyone’s mind, leave alone an advertiser. Everyone interested in advertising intends to be sure of how much investment needs to be made behind a successful advertisement campaign. One also needs to be sure of the elements that lead to the expenses associated with the advertisement.

To respond to that, there are quite a few factors which regulate the budget of an advertisement and needs to be published in a newspaper. In this case, the medium is already been determined, which is Newspapers and the elements that manipulate the expenditure for any newspaper advertisement are listed below:

Choice of Newspaper

Many of few may be wondering that how can the newspaper choice affect the budget for an advertisement. Well, the truth is that every newspaper is not as popular as a few are and not all newspapers have the same circulation or readership.

More popularity, higher circulation and wider readership lead to a higher price tag for a newspaper advertising space. Simply because all these factors ensure more eyeballs for an ad and of course higher visibility leading to better responses.

For instance, if you intend to advertise in Times of India, then naturally the budget will be higher when compared to an ad published in a less popular newspaper such as Midday. As TOI has a much higher circulation (around 31.4 lakhs) than The Telegraph (around 4.84 lakhs), rather the former is the most widely circulated English daily of India.

Frequency of Ad

The frequency of an ad is always a factor that manipulates the budget of a campaign. This frequency of the advertisement is associated with the objective that needs to be addressed with it.

Multiple Ads-Brand awareness advertisements require a lot more visibility on a frequent basis to make the target audience accustomed to the brand name, therefore, this objective requires advertisers to publish a single ad multiple times or multiple ads in multiple newspapers with consistent gaps between each release.

Running Ads- Certain advertisements need to be published at the time so that they run parallel with the event that’s being promoted. In the sense that, if a Shopper’s Stop is giving out a massive sale with attractive discount offers during the festive month of October, then they need to promote the event during the course of the month of October, if possible, on a daily basis. This can ensure a huge number of footfalls but will also be an expensive affair as the same ad cannot be run every day, but new ad creative needs to be conceived individually for different days.

One Time Ads- Notifications are the least expensive ones as they need to be announced only once as a formal announcement. It is the just straightforward intimation to the public about a personal development or change or a notice issued in public interest.

Ad Specifications

Ad specifications refer to the size, position and placement of an advertisement in a newspaper. So it is essential to comprehend that the cost of an advertisement is decided as per the size or space occupied by it in a page, the position or section of the page it is placed on and the page or supplement it is printed on.

The size of the ad is measured in terms of the height and width calculated in centimetres.

The position of the ad varies depending on the corner or area of the page it is printed such as upper half, lower half, upper right or left corner and lower right or left corner.

The placement of the ad makes the cost vary as per the page selected, which can be the front, back, third or any page and it can also be printed on a preferred supplement.

For instance, if an ad is printed on the front page, an extra premium will be added to it unlike an ad printed on any page.

Rate Negotiations

Negotiation is the most important part of budget allocation for an ad campaign. So an advertiser needs to be careful while negotiating the rates for newspaper advertisements. A simple strategy can ensure that you get the maximum out of the money invested in the ad campaign. Two things must be considered while confirming the release of your advert as are specified below:

Packages– It is always advisable to opt for packages in case of multiple city or district or state releases rather than choosing individual editions of a newspaper. This saves on a huge amount of money as packages offer hefty concessions on newspaper ad releases.

Insertions offer– Insertion offers to refer to bulk booking offers such as “Book 5 and Get 3 ads for free” or “Get 6 ads for the Price of 4”. It is quite evident that such bulk bookings help save a lot of money due to the availability of such insertion offers, which in turn can make quite a positive difference to your advertising budget.

So get set and be smart while you allocate your budget for your newspaper ad campaign!

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What are The Factors Determining Your Advertisement Release Schedule?


An advertisement needs to be timed well in order to be effective enough to draw sufficient attention and consequentially result in an urged action. In order to time an advertisement well, an advertiser needs to be aware of the factors that govern the release schedule of it.Newspaper Ad Online

Multiple elements affect the timing of launching an advertisement campaign in a newspaper. Some ads need to be published multiple times while in case of other ads just one formal announcement is sufficient.

So let’s find out what and how the factors determine the release schedule of a newspaper advertisement.

By Objective

By now it is quite clear that advertising objectives hold a significant place in determining crucial matters associated with the ad campaign. Rather objectives are the primary factor which pilot any and every newspaper advertisement campaign. Therefore based on the 3 main objectives of newspaper advertising, the release schedule is determined, which is different in case of every objective as mentioned below:

Branding– For a brand to create awareness for itself, it needs to remind the target audience of its constant presence and to ensure that multiple ads with a consistent gap between each advertisement should be published in multiple newspapers.

Sales-If the objective is to drive footfalls, increase sales during discount periods or other events, then it is advised that the ad be scheduled for release during the event or discount period

Notifications-Notifications such as public announcements, change of name ads, business tender adverts etc need to be announced just once as a formal communique as and when the requirement arises.

Day of the Week

The day of the week may not appear to be as significant for the readers but it is highly essential for the advertiser. This is because subconsciously, the readers read or access certain specific newspapers of supplements on specific days as they are purposely released on a weekly basis.

Many supplements associated with recruitment, entertainment, education, real estate and even matrimonial ads are published on different days of the week.

For instance, most matrimonial special pages are published on Sundays while Wednesdays are a suitable day for Recruitment Pullouts. Saturdays are a preferred day for real estate supplements.

So depending on the focus days dedicated to each supplement, an advertiser can publish the ad ensuring maximum visibility for it on that specific day of the week.

Seasonality

Certain advertisements are influenced by the different seasons in a year, that is, their releases need to be scheduled based on the audience requirements which are inspired by seasonality. Let’s evaluate some ad categories which are driven by seasonality.

Throughout the Year-Recruitment can take place in an organisation any time of the year and are therefore published as and when vacancies available. Apart from recruitment notifications, matrimonial ads, businesses and even real estate ads are published all throughout the year.

Festive- Most Retail advertisers choose to advertise during the festive seasons like Navaratri, Diwali, Christmas etc. New offers, new collections, discounts and more are offered during festive seasons by a number of retailers, FMCG industries, electronics and even automobiles.

Admission Period- As the name suggests, admission notices are carried out by Education institutes like schools, colleges and Universities are subject to a specific time period which starts from the month of June and continues till the end of August.

So prior to choosing and confirming the dates for release, you must be sure of the objective you intend to fulfil along with categorising the advertisement as Business, Matrimonial, Recruitment, Retail, Notification or Education.