Advertising – Bigger is Not Always Better

Previously a saying used by unfortunate men, it also rings true in advertising. From my own personal experience with my own advertising, I can definitely say that bigger is not always better.

I advertise in a local paper that is delivered free to houses weekly across a handful of suburbs. When I first placed an ad in this paper about two or so years ago, I used a basic four line text ad as it was one of the cheapest options and I wanted to see how well it worked before I committed too much money to it. The ad I placed ended up working quite well and my advertisement remained like that for about a year.

Over the course of the year, some other onsite computer techies placed their ads along side my own and my ads effectiveness began to drop. I called the local paper and made my ads larger by making it seven lines instead of four for about $30 more a week. My ads regained their effectiveness and another few months passed.

Once again my ads effectiveness dropped and I opened up the local paper to find out why once more. It turns out some computer business brought a big box ad which had a big heading, a big thick border and spanned about two columns which simply overshadowed all other ads.

I called the local paper and made my own ads the same size for $30 more per week which put me up to $105 for that ad per week. This setup worked ok for the next few months but I wasn’t earning as much as I used to.

Recently a blogging buddy who is also a computer technician in a nearby state mentioned that he found out from his own experience that line ads are just as effective as box ads. So I changed my own ads back to the seven line ads I had earlier but increased the amount of suburbs the paper was delivered to, so now I have smaller ads going to a wider area which is still cheaper than the box ads. The line ads in a larger area costs $70 whereas the box ad in a smaller area costs $105.

After the most recent ad change I had some of the busiest weeks I’ve had in a long time so this ad configuration was extremely effective for me.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that this may work for you, especially if you live in a country town where a wider spread wouldn’t work because there is nothing out there but cows. However, for someone in the deep suburbs like me it worked great.

The lesson learned here is to always tweak your ads because chances are that it could be more effective than it currently is.