How Does Off-The-Page Advertising Work?
Off-the-page advertising is a very effective method to generate both direct leads and sales for your business, establishing a direct and long-lasting relationship with your customers through national newspapers & magazines. A well targeted press campaign in trusted titles also builds brand awareness in the process.
The essential purpose of off-the-page advertising is to sell a product or service direct to the reader, generating a direct sale or a valuable lead. These sales or leads are collected via the web, telephone and coupon. The percentage of response via each channel depends on the value of the offer and the age of your target audience. The older the audience and the lower the value of the offer then the higher the proportion of coupon response. Conversely high-priced items targeted at younger audiences will drive more response via the web. Generally, we find the more options you give consumers to respond, the higher your overall response will be.
It is important to recognise that the reader will not have the opportunity to examine the product or question a salesman in-store, therefore all essential information must be provided in the press ad – your page becomes your salesperson and very often in direct response, off-the-page advertising, “the more you tell, the more you sell”.
Here are a number of key points we will take into consideration when planning and executing your off-the-page advertising promotion, whether it be for a product or service.
The Clarity of Your Offer
Off-the-page advertising gives you an inherently limited amount of space even when using our recommended full-page format. Therefore, you need to be clear and precise about what you’re offering. The majority of off-the-page advertisements have a single product with a single offer. Offering multiple products or services within a single direct response promotion tends to confuse the reader and dilute response.
Imagine you are browsing through a magazine: if an advertisement doesn’t grab your attention and give you a good reason to stop browsing, you will quickly turn the page. It is therefore essential that your combination of a strong benefit-driven headline and impactful image capture the reader’s attention immediately, drawing them into the detail of your offer and ultimately closing the sale with a strong call to action (CTA).
The Call To Action (CTA)
The fact that you are asking for a direct response from the reader should be made obvious. A method we have found to be effective is including response channels such as a coupon, particularly for older, grey-market consumers who more typically respond to off-the-page advertising. A phone number and web address should certainly also be included, but a coupon sends an obvious and immediate signal to the reader that they are expected to respond directly.
Measuring and Analysing Your Campaigns
It is essential for forward planning and optimising future media selection that the past performance of individual media insertions is accurately measured. This is done by recording results against phone numbers, coupon codes and URLs that are unique to each and every newspaper or magazine advertisement.
We constantly measure the performance of individual press titles, new offers and promotions and new creative treatments, all with a view to optimising results and increasing ROI. This analysis is just the first step in calculating the average lifetime value of your newly recruited customers.
Selecting The Right Test Media
Test media needs to be well targeted, but it should also be low cost in order to limit risk. However, low cost needs to be balanced against low circulation; if the circulation is too low the volume of enquiries received may not be statistically reliable and your test will be inconclusive.
We will work with you to identify who your target audience is and the most cost effective, lowest risk newspaper & magazine titles for reaching that audience, always with a view to gaining statistically reliable results.
When you work with Lavery Rowe Advertising
you benefit from:
- NO long term contracts
- NO volume media commitments
- NO fees or expensive creative charges
Top seller!
Actegy celebrates over 10 years of “off-the-page” success with Lavery Rowe
Lavery Rowe have been a fantastic partner for us over the last 4 years and have been integral to our continued growth and success. Unrivalled rates, great positions and first class account management make them the obvious choice for all out print advertising needs.
Marketing Director, Gtech
We’ve been with Lavery Rowe for over 6 months now, and our print campaign results have rocketed. We are now buying cheaper space but with better positions than previously, and the account management has been second to none. Using Lavery Rowe we’ve been able to grow our direct response campaigns profitably, we’ll certainly be allocating more budget to print going forward.
Director, Tufferman