Why is a newsletter ad better than Facebook ads or a print magazine?

This is the pitch I teach reps. Sell the placement, not "an ad."

Why do newsletter readers pay more attention?

"When somebody opens a newsletter, they're opening it because they want to read about Leander, and they are going to read it. They are focused. You're on Facebook, you're not trying to look at ads."

The reader chose to be there. The newsletter gives them so much value that they're actually paying attention, and that attention carries over to the sponsor. That's brand awareness and brand trust.

How is that different from Facebook ads?

On Meta you have about a quarter of a second to get someone to stop scrolling. You can't tell a story. In a newsletter, 120 words is a lot. You tell a story, and it feels like part of the newsletter.

I'll be fair to Meta: it's more trackable. But most local businesses don't know how to run it anyway. A business can pay for Facebook ads, sure. People are just flicking past so fast.

How is it different from a print magazine?

"A magazine can just add pages full of ads nobody will look at. Our ad space is limited, which is bad for us but good for the advertiser. It's Manhattan real estate."

In a magazine you could get a half page on page 29 and never know if anybody looked. In a newsletter, the ad is at the top and the reader doesn't have a choice. There's no skip-ad button.

Then why do business owners still prefer print?

Because they can touch it. Local business owners trust what shows up in the mailbox, and digital is foreign to many of them. Businesses are used to print and don't understand local newsletters yet. That's an education gap. Our metrics are far better than those magazines, but owners don't know that.

Two ways to handle it:

• Teach. Frame the newsletter as a digital publication, the same as the newspaper or magazine they know, delivered by email.
• Bundle. Add a postcard so they get something physical. See print postcard bundles.

How do I explain it to a business owner who's never bought a newsletter ad?

Use the 1996 newspaper. You're the publisher of the local paper, just doing it the new way. The paper had ads, classifieds and stories. Businesses wanted to be in front of its readers, so they paid. Same thing here.