News

Pre-Dummied Products Give Advertisers Tangible Feel for What They are Buying

3/11/2011 2:21:51 PM

By Sean Ireland
Special to the eBulletin

Newspaper advertising sales have always been about making the proper pitch – clearly showing the potential benefits that the right message delivered in the right way can have for a business.

Though variations on that theme have been developed over the years, it still boils down to demonstrating how your products can deliver a valuable audience of potential customers to a business with worthy products and services to sell.

So knowing this is the formula, why do newspaper sales representatives still go out to make their presentations empty-handed?

A growing number of newspapers have been finding increasing sales success simply by showing potential advertisers the product the newspaper is producing as well as where those advertisers can place their ads in that product. It’s not only a way to give a customer a tangible feel for what they are buying into, but also a method to create urgency to make the buying decision.

Of course, demonstrating content and placement in the general-circulation newspaper is usually impossible, but for the increasing number of newspapers that are jumping into the world of niche products – magazines and special sections – presenting pre-dummied products during the sales pitch is turning out to be a key tool to ramping up sales in a difficult economic environment.