Thought I'd share this here, for the peanut eating gallery...
Reference Thread/ Post by Bob Kittine
Having sold print advertising, I find that people who prefer to advertise in print media vs. online simply didn't get the memo.
Same with people who subscribe to Email Groups, or printed Newsletters.
For example, take the Seaplane Pilots Associations print magazine which cycles every 2 months, reaching some 5000 households.
I base that on the fact that there are no verified and published numbers for the membership count within SPA.
That's 2500 households per month approximately our weekly visitor count on the forum.
The forum is well sub-par to Seaplanemagazine.com in reach.
Arguments against print:
1. Out of 5000 households, at the very best, 3000 are actively reading the whole magazine.
2. Out of 3000 active readers, 30 are currently in the market or orientating towards any given product advertised.
2.a. Out of the 30, only 10 even see the content of the advertising, most people blend that out completely.
2.b. Out of the 10 who do see it only 2, maybe 3 will understand the ad and actually take action.
3. Out of the famous last 3, one will fire up their Commodore 64 and try to get online, but then mistype the email address or website.
This is absolutely exaggerated, however it is print advertising in a nutshell. Selling it is a PAIN IN THE ASS. Its a PITA so much so that I just smiled while turning down a new job being the advertising sales manager for a aviation publishing house in southern Germany.
Conversion rates (Views to Sales) = Lets NOT talk about it. Customers are extremely expensive in print advertising.
The prospective customer base is primarily out of the market, often no longer flying, renewing their membership solely for the magazine or because they have always had that membership. Habituated repeat customer, completely out of the loop on anything, not a dollar in conversions if tried. "Feel good having done something" membership.
Its best to inquire and get a quote for advertising in the magazine, buy it and then find out how much each (active buyer) views you generate.
I recommend to my consulting customers (media consulting is something I do) to put a print ad, calculate your all in expense, then measure your related sales.
In some cases a single conversion carried a cost of $1000 dollars to even generate it. In car sales, each customer through the door is an UP. You need to monitor WHY they are coming and what triggered them to come in. This requires a level of business thinking that simply isn't present outside of the largest matador companies like Jeppesen, Garmin, Boeing, Airbus and ...
Many seaplane related businesses are a 1/10 on email inquiries, a 0/10 on website generated traffic and a bare 3/10 in terms of customer service and sales skill. 90% of the companies I have dealt with are a straight 0/10 on pre-sales followup. It is what it is.
You quickly land in the online world after looking at the numbers.
Online stuff ain't easy either...
80% of online advertising is blocked through various adblockers and that is the case for EVERY website, independent of what its owner or advertising sales fuzzy tells you. On this forum mobile users (65%) do not see advertising at all. Many websites in aviation are not responsive, iow's they reach a fraction of their potential to start with.
We do get sponsorship requests here on the forum, primarily from float dock manufacturers. They appear in groups, iow., one of them inquires on ads and a few days or weeks later the other inquires on advertising. Rates are always to high, I have quoted anywhere between 100 and 5000 Dollars per year. Doesn't matter, you're dealing with COMPLETE deadbeats. Besides, you always run the risk of being censored by advertisers.
The fun really starts when you start working with something like Seaplanemagazine.com.
Here I can offer ADVERTORIALS, and banners if the price is right. If I'd like to, I could deny access to anyone who blocks advertising or sell access.
Reach far succeeds that of the forum and probably quadruples the reach of the SPA Waterflying Magazine. The quality of reader is higher, you have people looking for luxury items, expensive vacations, cars, we get found on Google by the use of several thousand keywords, only 20% of the traffic comes through Facebook. We (Chris, Sky and I) use about 5% of the sites SEO capacity and still reach is through the roof, worldwide and solid. Offering free classifieds doesn't work at all, so its going away. Pictures are "so so" as people don't seem to understand that publishing a picture that's already all over Facebook is simply not interesting to anybody.
Recent inquiries include two real estate brokers, a float dock manufacturer and there are talks with a float manufacturer as well as a few aircraft manufacturers.
Things are looking very well on Seaplanemagazine.com despite having revealed that Jason J. Baker (the terrible bad guy from Maine) has something to do with it. The magazine has restored some of my passion and interest in this kind of flying and it allows me to pay editorial attention to the people who make stuff happen, instead of watching from the sidelines and barking. That's where my focus is, online website wise...
www.seaplaneforum.com
The Seaplane Pilot Network!
