Another advertising question

[Roberts]

Okay, I've taken the excellent recommendations into consideration and built myself a pretty darn good flyer to use as an insert with my local paper. There was a website I found that gave lots of hints so I think it's pretty good! This question is a little different:

I run a small investment firm (it's actually 90% of my income) and I'm thinking of advertising these services on the other side. Think this would be a mistake? The ads I have for this come directly from a professional firm and are supposed to be for newspaper advertising so they look great. Trying to decide if it would be better to advertise our complete services of portfolio management, just mention tax free income offerings (muni bonds) or advertise the tax prep on both sides. Seems like the tax free income and tax preparation ads would work well together.

I figured it out and for 16,000 inserts, the cost difference is $162. Do you think I would be better off just having a simple tax prep ad on the other side instead of changing themes? The thing is that the investment clients generate about 5x the income of a tax prep client. But I would hate to destroy any response the tax prep ad generates because tax prep clients generally become investment clients eventually.

Opinions? Thanks for your responses - I appreciate them more than you can imagine.

[OHIOTAXMAN]

Keep Your Ads Separate

I would only advertise tax prep on the flyer. By adding investments, you will get your prospect thinking that you are trying to get him in just to sell him something.

Be an expert at taxes......then inform them of your other services AFTER the taxes are done.

Also, since investment ads have to be run thru your compliance department, you may hit a snag in the wording of your tax ad. (Compliance is very strict nowadays).

When are you planning on running the inserts? I find Monday or Tuesday to be the best (less clutter to compete with your ad).

Did you include an irresistable offer and a guarantee?

Who is your target market? (EIC, RAL, Sch C, Rentals, etc.)

Is there a way to distribute flyers to the 50% of the people who don't read the paper?

Just food for thought.

[Roberts]

I have a guarantee - it's not irresistable but it's as good as anyone elses I've seen.

My best clients are schedule C people but in reality at this point I'll take any. Since I sell investments, being focused on EIC or RAL market doesn't fit at all. Schedule C clients can usually benefit from a SEP-IRA or some other retirement package.

The investment ad woudn't include any reference to me personally. Different phone number, different company name, different address. The only way anyone would make the connection is if they called both firms to set up appointments or already knew me as a client. As for compliance, the compliance officer is ME! The NASD doesn't consider an ad on the other side of the page by a different firm to be the same ad.

I read on the internet that you want to advertise where you have a connection like an industry newsletter. It said you should advertise in a monthly but if not possible, a weekly is still 30% better than a daily. Well I'm advertising in a Catholic Newspaper that is delivered by mail once per week. Since I'm Catholic - I thought it was a nice fit. The newspaper says that 75% of their subscribers try and support the advertisers because they see a mutual connection.

On the ad there is a coupon. They can recieve a 20% discount or I will make a $20 contribution to their church. Figured it might draw a little interest.

I'm running 16,000 flyers and the total cost will be about $1,450. To break even on all of my expenses this year I'll need 1-6 investment clients or 40 tax clients.