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Old 11-21-2011, 02:34 PM
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KNAdmin KNAdmin is offline
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I've been chomping at the bit to wade back into this thread. But I wanted to give it a couple of days to see if we could get any more opinions cast into the mix.

Quote:
Like most custom makers, I have a very limited ad budget and feel that there are other avenues that will give me "more bang for the buck".
I think most professional makers are thinking along these same lines. Let's get some input here...

#1) How do you guys determine your advertisement budget?
#2) What do you consider "Bang for the buck"?

Ed came in and exposed one of the great myths earlier... "That the common magazines are being mostly read by general enthusiasts." Regardless of whether you believe their published statistics or not, you'll note that 90% (rough estimate) of all of the articles in them are written for makers. The other articles are the obligatory production knife (look what we just introduced) written infomercials. Yes, they look like general interest articles, but they are written for those that advertise with them.

He said...
Quote:
Statistically, over 75% of the subscribers to knife magazines are knifemakers, which is why I believe it to be a less successful media for knifemakers who advertise. Knifemaking Suppliers, photographers, and other related vocations will often find much higher success rates by advertising, simply because 75%+ of the readers are seeking the goods/services those entities offer.
And I would add, as an experienced advertiser, that even those ads are growing less and less effective now, if you consider that the magazines are experiencing negative net gains in new audience each edition; therefore the cost per 1000 perpetually increases, and/or the net effective exposures decrease. Either way, it's bad for the "print advertising" ROI argument all the way around.

In edition to the businesses that I directly own, we also do layouts and have given advice on ad campaigns for a couple of the larger production knife companies and many of their dealers. In these cases, I "would" marginally recommend print advertising as part of their strategy, as their target audience is a mix of users, makers, designers, resellers and suppliers. We're going to talk about those guys later.

In fact, I have a lot to say to aspiring makers that want to break into the so called "Big Time" with their knife making career. Yes, the "Big Time" exists; and some guys are getting fairly rich (and pretty famous) from it. But it's not what you think it is!

Let's give the poll until Friday. By then, we should have enough input to get a decent look at the trends.


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