How it works

The program is a little bit different this year. It’s being run in 2 rounds. First is an open nomination period running through June 15. Anybody can nominate any local business in any of 22 categories.

Companies receiving the most nominations in each category will  be named as finalists. Voting on finalists takes place in the second round (July 1-Aug. 31).

How to exploit it for your own good

1. Nominate yourself. There’s nothing wrong with self-promotion, and nobody will ever know you were the first person to nominate the business. Ballots require your name and contact information, but that isn’t shared publicly; it’s just to make sure the nominations are valid. Here’s a link to the online form.

2. Ask staff, family and friends to nominate you too, and tell then what category they should use.

3. Ask customers – also prompting the correct category. The very act of asking customers to nominate you puts them on your team and brings them closer to you. Here are ways to make it easy for them to nominate you:

• Keep a supply of forms on your counter (you can photocopy them right out of the Heights Observer; we don’t mind). Present them nicely, in a basket with a sign and leave another clearly-marked basket for completed forms. You can mail them to the Observer all at once.
• Use your website and e-mail communications to ask people to nominate your business. Provide a link directly to the online form in those communications to make it as easy as possible. This is a welcome opportunity to communicate with customers without asking them for money. You’ll be surprised at how many are happy to engage with you at this level.
• Put a message on your company’s Facebook page and any other social media sites you use. Make it direct, something like: “Joe’s Eats” is excited to participate in this year’s Best of the Heights Awards. Help us get to the next round by nominating us in the “Best Bar, Pub or Tavern” category. Here’s a link to the nomination form: http://ht.ly/kChN7.”

4. Get your staff involved. Make sure everyone on your team knows this is a special initiative. Give each his or her own supply of forms (they can place their initials in a small spot in the corner) and offer a reasonable incentive – a cash bonus or gift certificate – to the staff member who brings in the most valid nominations.

5. Team up with friends in your business district. While you’re soliciting nominations, offer to suggest businesses in other categories if they’ll do the same for you.

6. If you are named a finalist, repeat the whole process in the second round.

7. If you’re a finalist or a winner, promote yourself. Put the honor into your advertising, on your letterhead template, in your e-mail communications, etc. Where appropriate, provide a link to the Heights Observer’s coverage of the winners (probably in October).

When all is said and done, the nominating process is a useful and refreshing way to promote your business. It engages your customers at a different level; it helps them think of your business not just for what it sells, but for how well it runs.

Even if your business is tiny or new and you think you have little chance of being named a finalist, the process is likely to strengthen some existing relationships and create new ones.

It might also reveal areas where you need to build up your marketing, such as building your Facebook network, or tidying up your customer database, or creating regular e-mail communications.

In the worst case, if you find people aren’t excited to nominate the business, you’ll have learned something important – and can begin looking for ways to improve the customer experience.

The Best of the Heights is designed to highlight and honor the many excellent independent businesses that are located here. But it’s also a platform for you to do  some honest self-promotion. I hope you’ll make time to do so.

You’ve received quotes for advertising from two publications or websites; one wants to charge $150 and the other $350. How do you know which is the better deal?

Creating an apples-for-apples comparison between different publications is difficult because it involves so many variables.

The most common calculation for this job is cost-per-thousand (CPM), which measures the amount of money it takes to reach 1,000 people. You can use it for any medium – broadcast, print and online. (But it won’t hold up if you try to compare one medium against another).

Here’s the formula:

CPM = Rate/(Circulation x .001).

So if an ad costs $250 and the publication’s distribution is 8,000 copies, the CPM is $250/8, or $31.25.

It’s a simple calculation, and it lets you compare the rates of different publications with different circulation sizes.

But it has limitations.

For instance, it only works when comparing rates in the same media channel – print v. print or online v. online. That’s because the economics to produce different media – and the results they generate – are so different. Even when using it to compare two similar offers, be aware of these complications:

Ad size: CPM for a half-page ad will be higher than for a quarter page ad in the same publication.

Frequency. The more ads you buy, the lower the price will be for each. That means a single publication will have a different CPM for every ad unit and every frequency rate. The Heights Observer, which offers a pretty typical rate structure, has 60 different CPMs depending on the size of the ad and the number of insertions you buy.

Page size: Move vexing, a quarter-page ad in one publication (The Wall Street Journal, for instance) may be much larger than a quarter-page ad in another (i.e. Reader’s Digest).

That’s why it’s helpful to take CPM a step further – CPM per square inch (CPM/i²).  It’s the cost you pay for each square inch of space to reach 1,000 people. Here’s the formula:

CPM/(height x width)

This will get you closer to that apples-for-apples comparison between different publications. It’s still not perfect. The bigger the differences between two publications, the less relevant CPM/i² will be. But in such cases, it may be the only tangible link for comparing  disparate ad products.

So what’s the best way to use CPM and CPM/i² to make advertising decisions efficient and painless?

Step 1: Decide which publications you’re interested in, based on who they reach and how you feel they’ll work for you. Then look up or request their rates.

Step 2: After getting past the sticker shock, decide how much you want to spend per week, month or year. (Plan to advertise consistently over an extended period. It works best when treated as a long-term investment.)

Step 3: Select ad units in each publication that fit within your price range. Include any extra charges for color. If you can afford a full-page ad in one publication but only a small ad in another, that’s OK. CPM/i² should become a smaller part of your decision but it’s still instructive in your evaluation.

Step 4: Using the same frequency rate (i.e. if you use the 12x rate in one publication, use the closest thing to a 12x rate in every publication), calculate CPM/i².

Now you can evaluate the pricing with confidence, knowing this is as close as you’ll get to an apples-for-apples comparison.

In the end, CPM/i² is only one metric; it should never be the your only consideration. Such factors as a publication’s acceptance among readers, the relevance of its content and its customer-friendliness are at least as important.

Your gut may have to take you the rest of the way.  But you’ll know there is at least some science behind the decision.

Image courtesy of Suvro Datta/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Understanding local media

Essentially, he is saying that newspapers must now serve communities of special interests. (Right so far.)

But then he largely dismisses the special interest of a community based on geography.

Here’s the problem: Seth Godin’s brilliance is based on being outside the box. He is a wonder when it comes to seeing things from a different perspective and ignoring the comfort zone.

But when it comes to going home at night, most people want – no, demand – to be in the comfort zone; inside the box. They want to go to bed knowing the things that really matter are working well. Things like safety and recreation and family and comfort.

There are, of course, different ways to achieve that. One, for example, is to live in a gated community where people of different economic, ethnic or racial background have trouble getting in, and where a well-paid management company takes care of the rest.

But another is to live in a community more like mine, with sidewalks and shops and some level of interdependence among its members. Such a community is organic and only works when fragile balances are tended. Which, of course, means that its members feel invested in knowing what’s going on.

Most of our urban areas are surrounded by places like this. And in such places, people DO care about their neighborhoods. Local newspapers that truly foster a sense of this kind of community will continue to thrive in exactly the way Godin specifies. And they’ll do so by being more important than the newspapers that serve the distributed communities he describes. Because, unlike those newspapers – which serve the special interests that make us different – the local newspaper serves the thing that makes us all the same: The basic human yearning to live in groups.

So what’s more important: running a big ad or running an ad often?

Advertising – any advertising, whether print, online or broadcast – works best through repetition. Look at it this way: You know that if you send a direct mail piece or a mass e-mail, only a small percentage of recipients will actually open it.

Advertising offers better percentages, but the concept is the same; 10,000 people may read a publication, but only some of them will notice any given ad.

Conventional wisdom in the media industry says it takes 7 impressions to attract a reader’s attention. I’ve never actually seen any research to support this.

But I think I know where it comes from. I’ve been involved with research at various magazines over the years that indicated 10% to 20% of readers were able to positively identify whether a specific ad ran in the most recent issue. Larger ads generally increased reader recall.

From that you can conclude an ad needs to run 5-10 times before everyone in the publication’s circulation can be assumed to have noticed it.

(A statistician could find about a dozen things wrong with this statement. And the research will vary widely depending on the publication, its audience, the number of pages and advertisements it contains, and a host of other factors. So please take it in the general spirit intended).

But just because people see your ad doesn’t mean they are currently interested in what you’re selling.

For instance, regardless of how large your ad is, you’re not likely to sell carpet to someone who’s renting an apartment month-to-month.

But when that person buys a house and starts thinking about upgrading the floors, you want him to have noticed your ad in the past; you want him to go looking for your ad in the publication’s current issue.

Therefore, successful advertising isn’t just about getting noticed. It’s about 3 things:

1. Getting noticed
2. Being remembered
3. Being there at the right time

That’s why I recommend frequency as the higher priority in advertising. Frequency is a factor in all three things while size is only a factor in No. 1. I’d confidently predict better results over time for someone who runs a smaller ad in every issue than a larger ad sporadically.

Further, spending too much on an ad can harm its chances of success. How?

If you sell houses for a living, a single commission can pay for a year’s worth of large ads. Selling a home is a big deal involving big money, and a big ad to discuss it seems reasonable.

But if you sell haircuts or ice cream cones your ad needs to attract a lot of customers just to cover its cost. The larger the ad, the better it has to perform just to pay for itself.

If you run a hair salon, how many strangers on the street would you have to approach and talk to before one of them says, “I was just thinking of getting my hair done and I’m not satisfied with my current stylist. I’ll head over there right now.” Would it be 100? 200?

Run through the math: If a publication has 10,000 readers, perhaps 1,000 of them (1 in 10) will take note of your ad the first time it runs. If 1 in 200 decides at this particular moment to abandon her old hair salon and try yours, that means it would be unrealistic to expect more than 5 people to walk through the door as a result of the ad. What is a reasonable amount to spend for those 5 people? And because this is an inexact science, what’s a reasonable amount to spend if the first time the ad runs, it’s only 1? Or none? (As in the bottom of the pyramid in the graphic above.)

So be realistic about how much business the ad is going to bring in – especially in the first few months – and don’t sign up for more than you can afford to spend out of existing cash flow. And expect the results to improve gradually over time, until a steady flow of people tells you they’ve noticed your ad.

There are moments when these rules of thumb may not apply. For instance, if you’re promoting an event or have some other short-term message, then it’s most important that your ad gets noticed right away by as many people as possible. That’s when you want to buy a large ad and negotiate (or pay for) the best positioning you can get.

Color too plays a role. Spending extra as needed for color will help get your ad noticed – though it has a lesser impact than size. Also, color probably has more impact on the way your message is perceived than on whether it’s noticed at all.

The small business owners who tend to be happiest with their advertising are those who buy a smallish ad, spend time developing its look and its message, and then commit to running it month after month, year after year.

Advertising works. It’s not so much an expense as an investment. So invest wisely and consistently. Do it in a way that you can afford to give it time to work. If you do, it will make your business better.

Image courtesy of Graur Razvan Ionut/FreeDigitalPhotos.net