Here's why good ideas are lousy ideas...

[Ankesh]

Originally Posted by -TW

Also, note to Ankesh -- if they had used YOUR method(s) (aka passive), they would have gotten no ads, perhaps.

MillionDollarHomePage.com - sold a million dollars worth of ads within what - 2-3 months? He got 3000 people to buy the ads on his site. Out of those 3000 - he may have personally called upon maybe 8-9 folks to buy the ads in the initial days of his website.

So how did he get the other 2990 folks to buy ads? Yep. Buzz creation. Massive public relations.

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I'm not saying direct selling doesn't make sense. But direct selling alone is a harder route.

Its like the old fights copywriters used to have. One group only focused on long copy - facts and benefits. Giving strong reason why. Another group focused only on image building ads - branding - making their way into folks memory.

It wasn't until David Ogilvy came to the scene that both the fields got merged (somewhat). Ogilvy used the best tactics from both the camps. He stuck to reason-why selling. But also used gimmicks and anchoring techniques like using eye patches to sell shirts - to seep into people's memory.

The ad that tripled the annual sales of Hathaway shirts:
http://anke.sh/eyepatch-ad

I'm trying to make the same point here. Merge both the fields. Don't draw boundaries around different camps of marketing. Use the best ideas from both of them.

The question to ask is - what can the newspaper supplement do to sell 225 ads?

1. Publish a 64 page newspaper to fit so many ads.
2. Hire more folks to do the selling of ads.
3. Create themes. Like "green month" and so on. Easier to get advertising if you follow themes.
4. Give yearly discounts to merchants who buy ads to run throughout the year.
5. Track sales of 10-12 advertisers (teach them techniques of soft and hard tracking - depending on their situation - if their ads don't have any tracking device of its own). Create a book of case studies out of that. And then send that book of case studies to all the prospects before making your first call to them.
6. Joint venture with the local radio station. They promote the paper when they have no other ads to run. In turn - you promote the radio station in all the issues of the newspaper.
7. Follow up with advertisers. If you find out that they've had a good month - suggest them to write a press release announcing the fact. Or you could write a joint press release too (obviously giving more attention to the advertiser than to the paper.)
8. Organize a raffle or something. If folks subscribe to the newspapers - they can win a big screen TV. Increase the number of subscribers and the advertisers will automatically increase.