Many small business owners think that they should not invest on magazine advertisement. They would rather spend same amount of money to advertise on a newspaper for a few days or weeks. Many small business owners state that, they do not like magazine advertisement because they are costly and they are often far from the penetration level of a newspaper. Are they taking a correct decision? Let us find out.

There is a basic difference between newspaper advertisement and magazine advertisement apart from pricing issues. The advertisement that you publish in a newspaper become stale the next day. There is a new newspaper to replace the new one. To add to this, people are more interested to read news in a newspaper. They often skip the advertisement and go straight to their desired page. Out of habit, people know what to find and where to find that.

In case of a magazine, the situation is different. A magazine got better longevity than a newspaper.  You normally carry a magazine for at least a week, until the new issue arrives. To add to this, magazine stories normally carry some editorial value. This further adds to the reasons to keep the magazine for a longer period. Thus, as long as the magazine survives in the rack, your advertisement lives.

There is another big difference between magazine advertisement and newspaper advertisement. People have different reasons to read them. A magazine reader normally keeps it to read in spare time. The same reader will hurry through the newspaper to get the headlines as fast as possible. The readers know very well, what they can expect from a newspaper and a magazine.

Now, as a small business owner you must ask yourself if the magazine is good enough for you or not. As I stated above, many small business owners think that the penetration level ofmagazine ads is much less than newspaper ads. However, you also need to consider another very important factor here. The success of an advertisement campaign does not depend on the number of people the medium can reach. The success depends on the quality of the market. If your advertisement does not reach the target market via the right medium, it will only increase the wastage amount.
For example, what is the best advertising medium for you if you are a boutique owner in your locality! If your target market is only local people, there is hardly any need to advertise on newspaper or magazine. On the contrary, you should try other medium like banners or word-of-mouth advertisement to promote your shop.  Nevertheless, what will you do if you want to target women (age group 35 to 45; irrespective of gross household income) in your city who wants to keep track fashion changes? Find out if they read any particular fashion magazine and advertise there. Another reason to advertise in a local fashion magazine to attract local clients for similar businesses is that, your product is not something of immediate need.

Similarly, if a plumber wants to advertise his or her service, local telephone directory is a good and cost effective solution.

The main issue is that, before you abandon a media, think about the return on investment.