Selling Your Publication
Your products: stand alone
and special sections

	Selling Your Publication Circulation vs. Readership Readership/Market Survey Your Competitors Daily Newspapers Weekly Newspapers Shoppers/Pennysavers Your Product: ROP Your Product: Classifieds Your Product: Sp. Sections Preprints and more The fastest way to increase sales! Participate in this award-winning, newspaper-specific ad sales course on-site or in a Webinar.  • Get past upfront stalls and objections without any pushing  • Make the account believe he really needs you  • Get better information from your prosepct  • Develop quick ad strategies that work the very first time  • Eliminate size, frequency, content, cost and most other objections before they ever arise  • Get dramatic responses for all kinds of advertisers  • Never have to push an advertiser to run again click here

Most newspapers feature a number of companion and stand-alone products that you'll be expected to sell in addition to ROP ads. Most daily newspapers have a separate TV book, usually a small magazine-like product that's perfect for reaching couch potatoes or people who live and work at home with the television on. This product comes out weekly.

Similarly, your classified department might come out with monthly or weekly real estate and automotive stand-alone sections in addition to the regular real estate and automotive sections found in the classifieds. However, if you're not a classified sales rep, you might not be selling into these two sections very often unless you handle those types of accounts as well.

Another newspaper product you surely will be selling into are special sections, which are an excellent way to generate added revenue for you and your advertisers.

These separate, stand-alone sections are usually tabloid-size and deal with whatever the hot topic is at that time of the year. Many newspapers have multiple gift guides around the holidays, as well as spring and fall home and garden sections, health and fitness sections right after New Years Eve and also right before swimsuit weather, and many more. It's not uncommon for newspapers to publish 52 different sections each year. One newspaper I worked at even had a death section. Another had one targeted toward senior citizens called Stayin' Alive.

There are a couple of advantages to these sections. First, they're targeted toward readers interested in that particular subject matter, so the odds the readers will respond to relevant ads are much higher. Second, these sections are often guides, they tend to have a longer shelf life than the average publication, sticking around the house for weeks, months, and sometimes years and referred to multiple times.

These sections are often easy to sell, since it's obvious to many advertisers that there's a fit even when your main product doesn't seem so obvious. This is a double-edged sword, however, since you may win the battle of selling the special section but lose the war of gaining a regular advertiser in your newspaper (see more on this below).

Each special section contains both ads sold by the ad staff and related editorial written by the editorial department. Some newspapers encourage advertisers to run in these sections by offering to include stories about their businesses in the section, too. Since these stories might be less than newsworthy and more like ads, called advertorials, many editorial departments won't write for or endorse these sections claiming it's a conflict of interest. In these cases, the advertising department has a dedicated writer just for this purpose. The cover of the section may say "brought to you by the advertising department" or contain another designation to explain it's not a creation of the editorial staff.

The editorial department's hard stance on participating in these sections has softened as they've seen how the revenue generated impacts all departments and your editorial staff may help out wholeheartedly.

There are a couple of tricks to selling special section advertising. First, you've got to sell them weeks ahead and suppress the natural tendency to hold off selling them until the deadline in upon you. If you're constantly selling these at the last minute, you'll look desperate, you'll have less success, you'll sell smaller ads, and the ad that's thrown together at the last minute won't nearly be as effective.

The advertiser won't make it easy on you and will probably ask you to call him at deadline. If you have an advertiser like this, suggest that you start the process early to ensure that you can create an ad that will be effective instead of just throwing something together quickly.

The second trick is when you're selling the sections early, make sure you don't make the mistake of selling them to advertisers as stand-alone products without selling them on the benefits of running ROP. Instead, try to sell these sections as part of a larger plan for the year or quarter.

This is because even when an account gets a fantastic response, he may be sold on the section but not on your newspapers and hesitant to run again until the special section is published again. Sure, your special sections are highly targeted, but the primary reason they work so well is your readership–the same ones that pick up your newspaper the rest of the year, too. Make sure the advertiser understands this going in, so all your effort doesn't result in a one-time, or once-a-year sale.

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