What advertising?

The advertising industry would have us believe that the only way a business can get its message over to the public is to pay for advertising. There is no doubt that in some cases advertising does pay. There is no guarantee that advertising will actually get you paying customers or really have much impact in getting your ISP service more widely known.
Reports from various ISPs in New Zealand have not agreed on the effectiveness of advertising in any particular media. The main problem seems to be in getting the message to the appropriate target audience, that group where you could expect to recruit paying customers from.
This is where you need to look at what you are trying to achieve with advertising. Of course the goal is to attract paying users to your ISP operation, hopefully enough to fully cover the cost of the advertising AND make you some money in the process.

Where do I advertise my (ISP) business?

ISP's advertisements have appeared in both daily and weekly general newspapers, business newspapers, magazines of all types but especially in the computer press, in Telephone directory's Yellow Pages, on all Television channels, on various radio stations, in local council publications, various clubs and societies magazines and other publications ranging from company in-house newsletters to fliers and beer coasters.
More recently ISPs have also been advertising on popular web sites, in internet magazines and irregular internet publications. Many ISPs see it as important to get their own web site up and running as quickly as possible.

A good start when considering advertising is to look at the people you are trying to get as paying users. Most ISPs would answer this by saying 'everyone', and if they really believe that they need advertising to reach as wide an audience as possible then they will need to look at the mass media - Television. This is the only real option to reach a large population and so far only national ISPs have considered this. The big problem with Television advertising is the cost, even short ads are extremely expensive. This sort of expense is beyond most medium and smaller sized ISPs.
The only New Zealand ISP so far to launch a television advertising campaign has been Telecom's XTRA. Telecom management have already said they do not expect XTRA to become profitable until 1998 so Telecom are clearly not funding this advertising from income or profits from XTRA.
On a more local basis an ISP has too consider the local media. This could include local television and in fact in Auckland there have been two local ISPs who have advertised on the Auckland Television channel. Neither have continued with their advertising so it is not known if this was successful.

How much does advertising cost?

As much as you want to spend. At the bottom end of the cost equation must be the small ads that appear in popular bi-weekly advertising newspapers such as Trade and Exchange. A small boxed ad can he had for less than $30 for one insertion.
At the other end and by far the most expensive is television advertising with a few seconds of airtime costing many thousands of dollars.

Does advertising work?

Depends. This is the difficult to know. The people selling you advertising would say 'Yes', but the relative high cost of advertising when compared to other methods of getting exposure for your ISP means you should do some background work before decideing where and what to advertise.>br>

How should I deal with advertising salespeople?

Carefully.
Listen to what they have to say. They are trying to sell you a service and can make no promises whatsoever concerning the results of that service. Often they will quickly gloss over the advantages to you of advertising in their particular media.
Ask them for the names of other ISPs who advertise with them, or other internet related companies or computing organisations. Remember that _any_ figures or statistics these people produce, especially where such figures are used to try and convince you that advertising with them will bring results for you.

Advertise in the same places as the competition?

There may be good reason why your competition are advertising in certain publications and other places. If you come across somewhere where many ISPs and others in related activities are advertising then keep an eye on it for several issues.

Some example ads