Nov 26 2007
Searching for Potential Advertisers
The reason I had to wait until Monday to start this little link sales journey of mine is because that’s when TNT Magazine comes out. What is TNT you ask? Well, it’s a weekly free magazine targeted squarely at the same folks that my site is targeted at - Aussies, Kiwis, and South Africans in London plus any other young people here on a working visa. About a two thirds of it is content including feature articles about festivals, life in London, road trips, European travel etc. The rest is packed with advertising and that’s the part that I’m interested in.
The ads in this magazine will act like a checklist for me. It’s reasonable to think that any company advertising in TNT might also be interested in an ad on my website. Ads in TNT are not cheap so I know any company I see in there has a pretty substantial advertising budget and they might be willing to spare a small amount for me.
Each ad in TNT usually has a website and email address listed somewhere so most of my work is already done, laid out in the pages of the magazine. This afternoon at work I flicked through the pages, taking note of possible advertisers. I set up a little spreadsheet listing the type of company (tour companies, shipping, recruitment, hostel etc.), the company name, URL, email address and then I have columns for date emailed and response. The idea is to make a pretty big list using TNT and a few other resources and then work through it, noting when I sent emails, if I got a response and what their reply was.
There are a couple other magazines I can look at for ideas and I know some companies I want to approach just from seeing them around the web or the city. For example, there’s a company called Man and Van that’s an Aussie owned removals company. Then there’s the Oz Bus which is an overland trip between London and Sydney that I’ve seen advertised in the pubs. Plus there are sports leagues I know about. I’ll spend the next few days brainstorming my list and then send out a flurry of emails later in the week.
Having TNT magazine and knowing the market so well is a huge advantage because I’m almost overrun with possible advertisers. I don’t think getting a list of companies would be as easy in most industries. Now the trick is converting as many as I can to sales!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
I've been travelling since January 2008 living off earnings from the web. Follow me as I bum around Asia and beyond, getting up to mischief and working online as I go.
Very nice idea to look for advertisers!
Seems like the beginning of a winning plan
Nice way to find them
). It usually works better if you use the phone to find out who to approach - unless the ads give you a good idea.
I’m not sure that emailling potential advertisers is the way to go - try to see if you can find phone numbers for contacts and actually ring them.
I get email from supply ‘contacts’ through my site all the time - I bin them as spam. That website is there for potential customers, not suppliers.
If the list isn’t too long, and you don’t want to use the phone, you could write them letters (you know, those things on paper
However you contact them, you might want to come up with a couple of different approaches and note which you used on who, so you can track what sort of approach is more successful.
Looking forward to following your progress
Sorry to be such a downer.
When I was trying to sell ads on one of my then sites I used to use same method, look at who were already advertising but I ran into a brick wall with my sites of pr 0 if pr (had existed then), all those I contacted said their advertising budget was already spent, it was decided one year in advance. Granted, many of them only said that to get rid of me but for the bigger parties I expect it’s true.
So I was wondering if as in your case, it might help to make a survey of TNT and see who are consistent advertisers, then find out if there is some industrial rule for when the next years advertising budget is decided.