Best of the ISP-Lists

A Day for Advertising

ISP managers report that timing is as important to advertising as it is to comedy.

[July 23, 2004]

On the ISP-Marketing list in July, TJ asked:

Does anyone have any feedback on which days of the week are best for newspaper advertising? Assuming you can't or don't want to do every day of the week, are some days better than others?

[SK reported] "It is all about the demographic you are trying to serve and hit. More family oriented readers take the Sunday paper, but more ads are prominent on those days. Often times Monday ads are the cheapest, but also garner the least response. For me, Saturdays are the best days to advertise as it hits a pretty good range of people."

[JN stated] "Wednesday and Sunday in the U.S. and Friday and Saturday in Canada, based on general circulation numbers, but each market has anomalies. Ask for the circulation numbers by market."

[KB added] "We have found Sunday to be the best for us. Monday morning rolls around an the phone rings. Helps when you have lively colorful ads as well."

[RS noted] "I agree. You may want to check out your newspaper's weekly special sections, i.e., women's life section on Wednesdays for target niches. However, generally speaking, Sundays are good. Most newspapers will have a full-year's worth of special non-recurring sections and themes that you may want to target as well."

Asked if he'd had any action on his latest colorful ad, KB wrote:

3 dialup signups and 2 surveys for wireless. Just got back from the second. We advertise consistently in local "advertiser" type papers that have a circulation of about 136,000 in our area. We only advertise on the front page, always in full color, and only on Sundays. We see about 15-30 calls and 10-20 leads that actually produce a sale each time we run. One of the papers we run in we own the front page 1 week, every single month of the year.

The keys as I see it are:

• Be consistent—both your theme and frequency
• Use a professional designer
• Never stop running your ads!

JL suggested a related route:

"We have done newspaper ads on every day of the week and to be honest, the results never justify the cost. The best bang for your buck is to do newspaper inserts. Inserts seem to receive better response and have a much lower cost."

[SM agreed] "I will verify that. We built our ISP on flyer advertising back in 96 to 99 and each insert generated many calls for weeks after."

WT closed the thread with a joke:

"Every day is good for newspaper ads. If you are the newspaper, that is."

—End