Buying Ad Space

I just pulled the trigger and am signing up to advertise in an upcoming edition of one of the B2B publications for my industry. I've always been a little skeptical of print advertising (well, all advertising really) but this particular trade publication has been really good to us and is giving us a ton of free press. Plus, from talking to other small businesses in my industry I've heard that they get pretty decent ROI on their trade publication print advertisements so I figure it's worth a try. Heh, it's certainly cheaper then what I spent on PR last year and that didn't exactly pan out as planned!

So while part of me is conservative on the adversiting front another part of me feels like I'm actually way behind on getting on the ball with this one given that my biggest competitors all do advertise in said publications. I don't exactly want it to sound like I'm trying to keep up with the Joneses but I also know that many of the small retailers are so busy they almost need some sort of constant reminder to get them to order and reorder and reorder.

If it all works out this first print ad should actually coincide with when an article that will feature/mention/highlight (I have no idea which if any of those it will do) will be run in the magazine so I'm hoping that the combination of the two will get our name out there and possibly result in orders.

So now I have an April 21 art deadline and am trying to pull together a print ad that is similar graphically to the direct mail piece we have going out at the beginning of May to 12,500 retailers. My thinking is that if all my advertising/direct mail uses similar graphics and then I utilize those same graphics at the tradeshows it will hopefully build brand awareness and trigger folks to come and order when they come see at the tradeshows. Though if nothing else at least we're getting great usage of our new professional photos!