NewsBeat

March 2019 NewsBeat 17 volume or other discounts allowed, at a price reduced by percentage offered in the ad. If the end-of-season ad proclaims all clothing at 25 percent off, the discount is 25 percent. If the ad says 70 percent off, the discount for the ad is 70 percent. 9 SEPTEMBER Grandparents Day Pages Grandparents Day is always good for a mixed page of 2x5 and 3x5 ads from gift stores, drug stores, service centers and health centers. For best effect, sell only process color ads. 10 OCTOBER Name That Ghost Promotion Halloween is one of the top three retail holidays of the year. Publish a page or more of 2x7 ads, or a series of run-of-press ads, with ghost like images of the store's owner or one of the employees in the center of the page. (You can get the negative images in Photoshop by inversing the colors.) Ask your readers to visit each store to correctly identify the ghost in the images. Offer a simple prize to the first person to deliver the correct list to your office, or put each correct list into a drawing for a grand prize. 11 NOVEMBER Christmas Featured Firm Pages Begin this promotion the first week of November so you can run the page every week the seven weeks before Christmas Day. Break the page into six smaller 2x7 spots and one larger 6x7 position. Determine your price by taking a full-page rate, dividing it by seven and multiplying that amount by 115 percent. Be sure to move that figure up to a nice round number. Each business gets one of the smaller spots six of the weeks and the larger spot, at the same low price, one week. 12 DECEMBER Sports Heroes Section Local high school teams traditionally take time off from their weekly schedules during the holidays. That makes it a great time to publish a Sports Heroes section honoring the year's top seniors, a great state-winning team from two or three decades ago or exceptional athletics from a specific year in the past. Double your income by selling both traditional and community support advertising into the section. Plus, as promised, here are three more: 13 COMMUNITY SUPPORT PAGES Red Ribbon Day and Associated Pages You can easily sell four full-page community support pages each fall promoting restrained drug and alcohol use and run them during Red Ribbon Week in October, Homecoming Week, the Christmas holidays and graduation. (See example.) Use the majority of the page to explain the value of not drinking and driving and list all the sponsors in 1x1-inch spaces at the bottom. Sell all four pages with one call in the fall and bill the sponsor each time one of the ads runs. 14 MULTI-MONTH PROMOTION Agriculture Featured Firm Page If you are not a strong agricultural area use the format to sell a specific neighborhood, a nearby community, a group of contractors or other like industry. (See example.) Once you have determined the theme, break a page into seven sections much like the Christmas Featured Firm promotion listed above.Schedule the page once a month with six accounts filling the 2x7 spaces and one in the large 6x7-inch spot at the top. As before, determine your price by using your full-page rate, dividing it by seven and multiplying that amount by 115 percent. Close your sales calls quickly by pointing to the first buyers that by buying early, they get their choice of the best months for the bigger ad space. 15 SPECIAL SECTION PROMOTIONS Summer Dreaming Produce a summer of weekly special sections by focusing on different nearby communities or neighborhoods for editorial material. Do features on what some of the local residents and officials – mayor, fire chief, lead pastor or family doctor – dream about for that area in the future. Include comments from schoolchildren, senior citizens and the retail community to expand the information base. Sell advertising to local merchants with the line "everyone in your community (neighborhood) will be sure to read this section to see what your leaders plan to do in the future." So there you have it: 15 workable ideas for any size publication. And with that, a Happy New year to all and to all a most profitable 2019. Peter W. Wagner has a national reputation as "the idea man." He is publisher of The N'West Iowa REVIEW, which was selected as the National Newspaper Association as the Best Large-Size Weekly in America 11 times. Peter is a regular presenter at state newspaper association meetings and conventions. For even more ideas and successful publishing answers suggest Peter as a presenter at your next association or group meeting. He can be reached at mailto:pww@iowainformation.com or on his call at 712-348-3550.

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