Professional Services Advertising 101

Part 1 - Print Advertising

A. Display Ads

Display ads are the most common advertising medium employed by professional service firms. They are placed in newspapers, trade journals, magazines, community publications and other print media.

Pros

Relatively inexpensive advertising rates
Easy to create
Templates can be easily changed to target specific messages to specific audiences

Cons

Long lead times: some trade journals require a long production phase, meaning that your ad needs to be ready up to two months before it will be seen.
Perishibility: a daily newspaper is rarely looked at more than once, whereas a magazine or journal is often referred to several times and kept for a long while.

Tips

Research the newspaper or journal. Most publications will be happy to tell you how successful similar advertisements have been in the past.
Advertise more than once. The three cardinal rules of advertising are recency, frequency and relevance. Most publications will offer a lower per-ad rate if you commit to a regular schedule of ads (and you don’t have to place the same ad each time, most firms use variations on a theme to advertise unique services or lawyers under one brand).
Design is one of the few differentiating factors amidst the clutter. Create something memorable!
Write a great headline – 75% of buying decisions are made on the headline alone .

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