Survey Shows Where To Advertise Local Business

If you are a local business owner and are running a special on one of your products, should you advertise in the local paper or on the web?

According to the latest AdWeek Media/Harris Poll it depends on your target market. The specific question the survey asked was “When you are looking for a bargain, which of the following types of advertising, if any, do you believe is most likely to help you find one?”

Of the over 2,000 adults surveyed 23% say the best bargains are in newspapers and magazines, 18% say the Internet is best and 34% say it makes no difference.

But, when you break it down by age groups…

When looking for the best bargains, different age groups have different ideas of where to look. Those 18-34 are more likely to say online ads (22%) and television commercials (17%) are the best places to go while those 35-44 years old go online (26%). The older one is, the more likely they are to use newspaper and magazine advertisements, as 24% of those 44-54 and one-third of those 55 and older (33%) say those are media most likely to help them find the best bargain.

In other words, if your product is slanted at a younger age group, you’ll get a better response with online ads. If you are targeting an older group your newspaper ad may get a better response.

Females had a slightly higher bias toward newspapers/magazines/catalogs, men had a higher preference for online ads.

29% of college graduates chose online ads for bargains while only 12% of high-school grads did.

So it pays to know your target market. While the difference isn’t all that much, you should gear your print ads toward products for older women and online ads for younger, college-educated males.