i think any form of advertising can help, but it really depends what your online business is about and how much of a budget you have. i am not a believer that advertising in papers don't work. yes, the papers are losing business because people are searching more online for their needs, but subsciption rates are still pretty high. also, basically, with newpapers, you are usually paying for a certain geographic location with a cetain amount of subscribers. even if subscriptions are down, all that really means is you will be paying less for your advertisments. it all works out to about the same mathmatically.
one thing about offline advertising, it's somewhat similar to online advertising in a way. a prospect needs to see credibility which includes seeing your ad or promotion several times before they contact you so putting your ad in for a day(in a major daily newspaper) or for a week(in a little weekly newspaper) wont cut it. i suggest paying for a month of advertising. obviously, the bigger the ad, the bigger exposure, but the more money you will be putting in to an ad that might not even work.
with any advertising(online and offline), you will need to know how to word your ad to draw attention to it and get the reader interested in it so they can call you. since an ad is really impersonal and people respond better to "personal", it is really important to convert those ads to telephone calls. some people say to fib a little just to get those telephone calls. some people believe to be completely truthfull so you weed out the not so serious right from the start.. personally, i think combining the two should work well. but don't ever fib or lie to where it might ruin your credibility. especially if you plan to advertise locally in a small town.
when starting off, i would probably start off with a 2 inch block ad. they aren't that expensive and usually when you put your ad in for a month or more, you can negotiate a better price. this would be your initial investment offline for you and ALSO the newspapers who want to keep your business so they are willing to negotiate a little on price. i would also just start out with one newspaper at first to see if your ad is working and determine what you can change about it to make your investment worth while to start. once you have a good ad running, you can place your ad in more newspapers with somewhat similar results.
now aside from newpaper advertising, one good free way to advertise is to go around locally and speak with store owners to see if you can put a flyer up in their window. another good, but not free way is to create your own little boxes where you can put your business cards in, with a little advert on top of the box sticking up to put around stores in your local area near the cash register. the would draw a lot of attention from people who were at the register or waiting in line. you can offer a discount to the store owner for whatever you are selling(at your cost) or you can pay $50 a month for it to be placed somewhere.
also consider trying to get your hands on something you can give away for free for those who respond. people love free stuff. some people will respond just to get the free stuff and not interested in what you have to offer, but it's a good way to get personal with those people and change their outlook and get them interested. this technique has ALWAYS worked
now whatever you do, keep yourself on a strict budget. keep track of what your average expenses are compared to each sale. then you will know exactly how much it is costing per person you have successfully sold to. if you are in control of your own price, and there is potential of repeat sales from the same person, then sometimes it's ok to lose money originally just to grab those customers to get future repeat sales.
you know, i just touched base on just a few of the aspects of marketing. there are many things to condider....even psychologically. so it's not just about whether a newspaper ad is worth it. the real question should be....are you able to market yourself successfully online or offline. for example, is newspaper advertising worth it? the answer is undoubtedly a YES as long as you know how to do it right and there are a alot of aspects to consider to enable you to DO IT RIGHT. if you have a $100 budget, i wouldn't even consider newspaper advertising. if however you have a budget of at least $1000, i would definately consider that as part of your marketing plan
i don't know what your business is, but if it's a business where it also includes getting other people in to the business, once you have at least 1 person in the business, it's good to create a co op advertising campaign. which basically means, you set up an advertising plan, and you split the costs with the other people in the same business as you and share the leads equally.
be creative when you advertise. there are a lot of free ways to get known out there offline that doesn't cost a lot of money, but will cost you time and effort. spending money on advertising is for the lazier people out there that would rather pay to get known rather than work hard to get known. it's a tradeoff. they both have their pros and cons. i would try to include both ways in my approach because if you're not passionate about what you're doing and willing to work hard at it, then maybe you're in the wrong business that wont leave you very fullfilled.
anyway, that's my small input on the subject, i hope it helped you in some way or maybe got some creative juices flowing to where the possibilities are endless....without scaring you too much
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