Newspapers

Newspaper advertising means paying for space in a local, regional or national newspaper. Your advert appears among the news and other adverts the paper's readers see, so the paper you choose decides who is targeted. A free weekly paper delivered to one town targets that town; a national daily targets readers across the whole country.

What newspapers do well

• Detailed information and images: a newspaper advert has room for a headline, a photo, prices, opening times and a phone number, so you can explain an offer properly instead of in a few words.
• Local focus: a local paper reaches households in the area it serves, which suits a business whose customers travel from nearby.
• Relatively cheap: space in a local paper costs far less than television or the national press, so it can fit a small budget.
• Reaching people you would otherwise miss: an advert can reach customers who cannot or will not use your existing sales channel. For example, a plant nursery that sells mainly through its website could take a half-page advert in the town's weekly paper to reach people who never buy online and would rather ring up or visit.

The drawbacks

• Read for a short time: most papers are read on the day they arrive and then thrown away, so an advert stops working quickly and has to be repeated.
• Declining readership: fewer people buy papers than in the past, so reach is limited and one advert may be seen by relatively few people. Readers are not only older people, though: free local papers are picked up by a wide mix of households.
• Readers may not match the target market: a paper goes to everyone in its area, so part of the cost pays to reach people who would never buy your product.
• Limited interactivity and response: a reader cannot click, share or reply instantly. Compared with digital media it is harder to count responses and slower to see whether the advert worked.

Newspapers suit a business that needs to give detail to a local or regional audience and can accept slower, less measurable responses, such as a hardware shop announcing a weekend tool sale with photos and prices.