Facebook ads vs magazine ads

Hi,
I’ve got an offer for a TV magazine ad space that cost around 500USD for 1 half page and only 1 ad.

Looks like expensive for 1 ad published in 22000 copies in my local area. I have 2 option this ad or FB ads.

Have you been in this situation, what will you chose Magazine ads or FB ads (cheaper) to target your audience?

Any recommendations?

Thanks.

Hi Steve

- I’m not a founder of a space so my frame of reference might be slightly off however as someone who has worked with companies on their marketing I would question

a) what the publication is and whether it’s specific to your audience (i.e a generic magazine or
something aimed at likely users of a coworking space) -

b) whether you could get multiple adverts in the same publication for the same cost (repetition breeds trust) -

c) if you’re confident that the message and design of your advert is good enough (so many adverts are poorly done with no call to action etc) -

d) if they will throw in any kind of paid editorial as well (it’s far less interruptive than an advert).

Obviously with Facebook you can be a bit more targeted in terms of your audience’s demographic and geographic profile but I would say that whichever route you go down make sure to MEASURE THE RESULTS of your campaign.

So many clients like to advertise because, ultimately it makes them feel warm and fuzzy and that they’ve ticked the “marketing” box for that month but so few actually check to see if they get any return on their
investment (ROI) - then when the next offer of advertising comes along they have nothing to base their decisions on apart from gut instinct. The best way to do this I’ve found is to put an advert specific offer code in your advert - Something you can track back on.

Hope that helps a little?

Mark

Hey Steve,

I recommend Facebook ads because they can be highly targeted and allow you to hit your customer repeatedly. Plus, if you integrate their pixel and Google Analytics then you can set up a more complex tracking plan that will help you lower you cost over time.

My big issue with a magazine is that your customers are really within a 15 minute radius of your location. A local magazine will hit a lot of people that aren’t relevant to your business. If you have multiple locations that you can promote then it a magazine will have more value if the audience if right but mass media rarely works well for single location spots.

We have been testing out a lot of Facebook ads for coworking and testing out several different strategies. We are starting to see results but we are quickly learning the best ROI is SEO. However, if you are in a competitive market for SEO then Facebook is probably the best way to get in front of people right away.

Good comments about the cons for advertising in a magazine from Mark and Craig.

My company Office Divvy will turn 10 years this January, and I would not consider magazine advertising, unless I’m doing it for a reason other than ROI (i.e. supporting a magazine, because I cannot say know to a connection etc.).

About facebook ads though: I find it hard to select a razor-sharp target audience.

Geography, and age related demographics, yes…no problem there.

But how do you even narrow it down based on interest?

Interest-based targeting has to be based on assumptions, but there are so many possibilities there, if you add them all up, it gets very wide (I like narrow targeting). You can model it after the interests of your existing membership, or make assumptions by thinking whom you want as a new member etc.

About a month ago I ran two versions of ads (A B Test), one was a video-to-landing page ad and the second was a straight-to-landing page promotion.

Video ad outperformed the still-ad, 3 to nothing.

Three member sign ups, at about $4,000 annual value, for $250 total budget spent (this was a 10 day campaign, set to spend $25 a day).

**Not bad! **

Actually, great!

But there is more…

Funny thing was that none of the sign ups were based on what I narrowed down the ads for (based on additional interest/industry), there was almost no relevance whatsoever. I’m thinking perhaps these folks saw the ads organically, as a result of interaction one of their facebook friends had with the ad.

So while the bottomline ROI looked great, I cannot conclude anything from the experiment and scale the ads for further ROI, simply based on this experiment.

More experiments to come, I’ll keep you posted.

Ky Ekinci

Co-Founder & Managing Partner

@OfficeDivvy

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On Thursday, October 5, 2017 at 5:20:21 PM UTC-4, steve suard wrote:

Have you been in this situation, what will you chose Magazine ads or FB ads (cheaper) to target your audience?

Any recommendations?

Thanks.

Thank you everyone for these great advices. Will then go FB ads. Again many ideas came out from you guys like video and tracking… I was thinking offering a useful guide in exchange of their email address: They see the video on FB ads, click to watch, but as a picture that looks like a video with a play button they get redirect to a capture page asking their email to watch and get the guide free. Something like that. Now I have to make sure it follows FB guidelines but I’ve seen these ads before on FB.

···

On Thursday, October 5, 2017 at 11:20:21 AM UTC-10, steve suard wrote:

Hi,
I’ve got an offer for a TV magazine ad space that cost around 500USD for 1 half page and only 1 ad.

Looks like expensive for 1 ad published in 22000 copies in my local area. I have 2 option this ad or FB ads.

Have you been in this situation, what will you chose Magazine ads or FB ads (cheaper) to target your audience?

Any recommendations?

Thanks.

Simply put number of copies printed doesn’t relate to how many people saw or read your add. ROI and CPA are vital and with print, radio and TV you will have little to no idea on those metrics.

At least with socials, you can target and engage which is the next step.

Regards,

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexahom/