Recommend a URL in Your Client's Next Ad

One way to sell more print ad space is to encourage your advertisers to add a campaign and magazine specific URL to their next print ad. It is one extra step. But here is what happens; a readers sees the ad and is motivated to search the Internet for more information. By using a campaign and magazine-specific URL, the advertiser can track which campaign and which magazine drove the reader to their Web site.

A post on Clickz by James Hering offered tips on how to use campaign specific URLs. Hering references research that indicates many do not like to enter long URLs with a lot of extra slash marks. As result, some marketers now favor campaign-specific URLs, often based on the the tag line of the campaign:

Examples include:

Burger King: haveityourway.com and subservientchicken.com

Mitsubishi: seewhathappens.com

Subaru: need-desire.com

Universal Studios: iwantmyvacation.com

Lincoln Mercury: oneandonlyclearance.com

Dish Network: stopfeedingthepig.com

Audi: neverfollow.com

Now add the magazine initials or just a number to designate a specific media and your client can have it all. Is it better to use a custom campaign URL or extensions of the brand URL? Using the brand URL, of course, reinforces the brand. Which approach is better? The answer: the one that gets your advertiser to include a magazine-specific reference so your media gets tracked!

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By Josh Gordon -- Josh Gordon is president of Smarter Media Sales.com where he works with publishers to maximize their online and print revenue through training, consulting, and representation.

COMMENTS/DISCUSS: 4

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so obvious and outdated it's almost painful it gets posted

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 05/02/2008 - 21:42.

This is the type of post Folio allows of their bloggers? It's almost like we were transported back to 1995. Ridiculous.

You missed the cycle

Submitted by Josh Gordon on Sat, 05/03/2008 - 08:23.

Hey pal, while you weren't paying attention, you missed a turn of the cycle. You are correct that this tactic was a favorite in the late 90's, the very early years of online ad sales. Back then we were desperate for any traction for online products and adding a URL to print ads was a way to get things started. But the years have ticked by since 1995. Today many publishers face the exact opposite problem. Now many have online products gaining tremendous sales traction while we are having a rough time holding our print revenues in place. Advocating our advertisers use a campaign and magazine specific URL puts our print media into the online evaluation systems many marketers have today. Am I advocating a tactic we all used in 1995? Yes. But to solve a different problem.

Yes but....

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 05/03/2008 - 11:53.

Print ROI has been an age old problem, including back in 1995 and the web supplied one more way to help demonstrate the effectiveness of print advertising,. with MAYBE a side benefit of traffic generation...Remember bingo cards? Same thing as embedded URL's. Josh in order to be truly successful and to sell more of EVERYTHING (including print) you need to have best of breed web, print, events, custom etc, and attack the market with a fully integrated approach. Otherwise, you'll die. The thought of recommending to a print sales rep that they can sell more print ads with an embedded URL is ridiculous, at least in my market.

But it's "something"

Submitted by Josh Gordon on Sat, 05/03/2008 - 12:32.

In many markets advertisers have gotten extremely sophisticated. Some track leads from all sources; web, print, events, even direct response radio and TV, right to the point of sale. How many leads from a web banner resulted in a sale? They know. In cases like these print advertising is at a huge disadvantage as it is the only medium not tracked by THEIR lead tracking system. Posting a magazine specific URL that can be tracked by THEIR system is a way to do this. Other digitally oriented media buyers are snubbing print because there is no accountability. Bingo cards were not great but they were "something." Right now we have no feedback at all. A URL posted on a print ad is far from ideal, but like bingo card responses, it’s "something." I have found that a little bit of "something" and a lot of selling goes a lot further than just a lot selling alone.

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