NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT IN VIRGINIA- STAUNTON, HARRISONBURG, WAYNESBORO, STAUNTON, VERONA, CHARLOTTESVILLE, FREDERICKSBURG NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING RATE CARD DEPARTMENT:

 

Please foreword the following suggestion to whoever runs the paper!

I am sending this to all newspapers that have made this Christmas tree selling season the best ever for us. If you are doing well, that is good for us advertisers because I continue to have a great place to continue advertising my trees!

I am amazed to find that of the papers that have websites, almost nobody bothers to put their ad rates and relevant basic information on them. Only one has contact information for their advertising people, which I just found out after doing my usual faxes to everyone to advertise in their papers. This would help me immensely if us advertisers can just check out each of your websites for the latest publishing and advertising information when we are working on ads at 2AM. It will save your staff time, and eliminate the clutter of misplaced (hard to find what you are looking for in) rate cards from our desks. Surely the same is true of other of your advertisers, and advertisers who could not find out about you, or that you even exist since they could not find you on a web search.

The rest of the business world does not do business via FAX & personal visits any more! Honest! How about making it easier to give you our business by putting the following information 
On Your Website for us? -

As a serious advertiser, I want to know:

$ / column inch ad rate.

Name of paper, Phone, FAX, email and format I can email display ads in

URL of: 

Your online rate card 

Volume discount rates, but only if they apply to consecutive runs of small ads rather than just bulk inches / month

 Map of your newspaper's Geographic region covered

Days of the week you publish:

Circulation in number of COPIES each run: 

Closing date is how far ahead of publication date for:
Space Reservation
Copy submission 

You guys have a page of your advertiser's links on your website to help all your advertisers' web pages get found, right? Include information for your advertisers to take advantage of this service that costs you little but offers them a reward for advertising with you. It would be nice if you leave their links up for at least a year after they stop advertising with you , as this takes into account your seasonal advertisers, like us Christmas tree sellers.

Making this information easy to find on your web page helps keep us advertisers interested. Nothing is more frustrating than having to fish for simple information. Can I communicate with my ad rep via email? It is a lot simpler than fiddling with faxes and would have saved both of our time!

One more little thing since I have your attention... why not occasionally publish a survey to see which Comic Strips you readers like? My local paper once thought it was OK to replace Calvin & Hobbs with- are you sitting down? They replaced Calvin & Hobbs with Alley Oop!! And can there possibly be anyone who takes the time to read the worst blabbering idiotic talking head comic strip that ever wasted print space in a newspaper- Cathy?