Here come the newspaper ad sales guys

The local newspaper ad sales guys & girls have been around for decades.

In the days when local newspapers had tons of eye-balls looking at them, the salespeople would show up, tell you how many readers they had, tell you all the possibilities and then ask you… “Do you want to do a quarter page, full page, eighth of a page?”

Then… if you wrote a good ad, you might get some results.  If you wrote a bad ad, and got no results, it was your fault, not the paper’s fault.

Those days died a long time ago.

Many local newspapers went under or really pulled back.

For example… the number of actual reporters and editors has dropped dramatically.

In many cases, the quality of news has also dropped.

Enter a company like GateHouse.

They are a buying up local newspapers at fire-sale prices.

Now…  are they bringing back quality local news?

Not really…  Most of the news is written in a central office and shared around the country.

Are they sending their ad sales guys out to sell quarter page ads?

Not really… they’re sending their guys out to sell small businesses digital marketing services.

I’ve been in this business for a while now.

Since late 2005.

I’ve seen it over and over…

The Phone Book Companies getting into online marketing.

Direct Mail Companies getting into online marketing. (Rimes with PalVak)

And now… Newspapers.

Make sure you vet who you might work with.

If you like a depth of knowledge and real experience running a small business… check out our FastLane program. It’s not for everyone, but… ya never know.

If you like… newspaper ad guys… there’s that option too.

And who knows… maybe an ad in the paper or their website would make sense…  as long as you can track via your own analytics, you’ll know if it working or not.