Successful Advertising to Patients: Are Newspapers or Magazines Better?
Practitioners often ask this question when they are considering an external (outside the practice) marketing tactic such as print advertising. Print advertising can be extremely effective at attracting new patients and case types as long as it’s done correctly by professionals who understand print media and know how to get the best results from it. Generally, newspapers tend to be more immediate and magazines tend to be more long term. But there’s a lot more to it than that.
What’s your objective?
Are newspapers or magazines better for running your ads? The answer depends on what you hope to gain from print advertising. Are you looking for more patients? Do you want more of a certain case type? Do you want to establish or change your image in the community? Or do you simply want to keep your name out there in front of your target audience?
Without a specific goal in mind, your print advertising dollars will be wasted and your results will be disappointing, regardless of what medium you are in. So let’s assume that your objective is to attract more patients as quickly as possible – a common goal among medical and dental practitioners who buy print advertising.
Let’s also assume that you have a good idea who your target audience (ideal patient) is for your ad. Your next step is to find out which newspapers or magazines reach your target audience most effectively. Most newspapers and magazines can provide advertisers with circulation and demographic data about themselves. These “media kits” are available from the advertising sales person or department at each publication.
Use this data to compare space costs for your ad along with the appropriate circulation and demographic information for each publication. This will help you decide on the best place for getting your message to the right audience.
How fast do you want results?
In most cases, you will attract more patients more quickly by using the more immediate medium of newspapers. In the case of daily papers, an effective, well-targeted ad can start seeing results within three or four placements. In small markets, a well-designed, attention-getting ad can generate callers the first time it appears. Of course, crafting an effective, well-targeted message to the patients you’re seeking is not as easy as it sounds (see How to Create an Effective Print Ad in this issue).
Newspapers also give you the flexibility of being able to change your ad message if it doesn’t begin pulling responses after three or four appearances. Remember that we are each exposed to over 4,000 advertising messages every single day, and it takes a minimum of three or four impressions before your message even gets vaguely noticed through the clutter.
Most magazines, on the other hand, are monthlies or quarterlies. Once you place your ad, you will not be able to modify it until the next issue comes out. That’s one reason why magazines are used more often for image-type ads that do not seek immediate responses.
Tracking is critical
But, the only way to know for sure whether newspaper or magazine advertising is best for you is to run the exact same ad in a local newspaper and in a local magazine at the same time, then track your results. If you have trained your staff to ask every new caller how the caller heard of your practice and what factor(s) about your ad convinced them to call, you should be able to obtain an accurate reading on which medium pulled better.
If you don’t track, you won’t know. It’s that simple.