By Kathryn C. Joseph
For more info on becoming a Wordpreneur contributor, click here.

There are two audiences to be mindful of when starting and continuing your magazine: your readers and your advertisers. It is a delicate balance. I don’t mean that all your content should cater to your advertisers. Having the right articles is part of it, but not all.

First you must think of why a business is advertising with you. If it is a small local business, it is most likely looking for new customers from this ad. It may be useful to talk about their expectations when buying advertising. Although in my experience, advertisers want results in either new inquiries or sales. In this article we are going to talk about three different methods of tracking printed advertising results. So when it is time for renewal with your advertisers, you have hard numbers to convince them with.

Method 1: Using a discount phrase such as,” Show this ad to get 20% off” is the most common to use and easy to implement in local business advertising. The idea is to have the new customer show the ad to the business owner. There are a few downsides to this. If the offer is not compelling enough, people will forget about the ad and not even ask about the special deal. In this case, talk with your advertiser about their ad. Tell them that you want it to be successful so they should offer a spectacular, unforgettable deal to attract these new customers. It should also be a unique promotion that is not running in another medium or something that they have always ran before.

Method 2 (the best, I say): When I was using Media bids to get per-inquiry ads for my magazine, I was given a special 1-800 number for each ad I was running. Because I was paid per call, it was important they had a way to track these calls. You can apply this to your own magazine too, but on a smaller scale. Get a 1-800 number that is used for all ads and then assign a special extension for each business advertising. Using this method allows you to track all calls that come in as a result of your advertisement.

The challenge with this method is the cost of maintaining the phone numbers. Another issue you may run into is that advertisers may want to submit their ad on a pay per-inquiry basis, which means they only pay you for the results they receive. Avoid that if you can, because you will need money upfront to pay printing. Also just because a customer doesn’t call in one cycle does not mean they aren’t saving the magazine to call at a later time. Companies like Call Source provide an ad tracking service for publishers and If by Phone offers call tracking for various industries with packages as low as $50/month.

Method 3: Your website is an inexpensive way you can track responses to advertisers. It is not the most reliable because not everyone is on the internet. But it’s better than nothing if you absolutely cannot afford the call tracking numbers right now. Reserve a page for each advertiser on your website, in your magazine be sure to mention the incredible deals offered by your sponsors that are only available on your website. When people click on the link to the ad, that will record their visit in Google Analytics and you can use that to show your advertisers proof that people are seeing the ad.

In conclusion, business owners buying advertisements in your magazine should understand that no marketing method guarantees results. But they will be more eager to buy with you if you can show them that there is some activity associated with advertising in your publication. Always talk to you advertisers about their expectations and how you will be tracking results. This way you won’t have anyone asking for a refund or trying to not pay upfront when it’s time to renew.

Kathryn Joseph is a home-based publisher and author of “How to Start a Magazine for Cheap!” For a free report on “How to Get a Celebrity Interview” and more articles on starting a magazine and home-based business, please visit her site.

----------
Making Money With WordPress Just Got Easier. Start generating multiple streams of income from your WordPress blog in minutes. No programming required!
----------

Related posts:

1. Can You Make a Good Magazine in a Weekend?
2. 5 Things About Digital Magazine Publishing
3. Freelance Writers: Foodservice Magazine

advertising, marketing, Publishing General