The Cost of Advertising Nationally Broken Down by Medium

May 8th, 2009 posted by Xander Becket 12:08PM | Back to the Front Page

At WebpageFX we’re firm believers that the web is the best way to advertise your business.

To prove this we compiled advertising cost data for a bunch of different mediums and compared their costs with the costs of web advertising.

We have numbers for both national and local sources. The national advertising cost data is below.

And we were right: the web is the most accountable, cheapest, and easiest way to bring in new business.

Click to jump to the data:

See for yourself how much less overhead there is with the web.

National TV Advertising
Setup Process Design + Production
Setup Cost $50,000-$750,000
Cost of Media $35,000 to $2 million per 30 second spot
Cost to Continue Cost of media + agency hourly rate
Demographic Served Anyone watching TV
Definitive ROI Tracking? No
Pros Exposure
Cons Expensive, wasted impressions on unqualified customers

National Magazine Advertising
Setup Process Design
Setup Cost $1,500-$20,000
Cost of Media $3,000-$25,000 per full-page ad per issue
Cost to Continue Cost of media + agency hourly rate
Demographic Served Anyone reading the magazine
Definitive ROI Tracking? No
Pros Exposure
Cons Expensive, wasted impressions on unqualified customers

National Newspaper Advertising
Setup Process Design
Setup Cost $1,500-$20,000
Cost of Media ~$28,000 per half-page ad per day
Cost to Continue Cost of media + additional design in future
Demographic Served Anyone reading the newspaper
Definitive ROI Tracking? No
Pros Exposure
Cons Expensive, wasted impressions on unqualified customers

Direct Mail Marketing
Setup Process Design
Setup Cost $1,500-$15,000
Cost of Media ~$2.20 per addressee
Cost to Continue Design, publishing + postage costs
Demographic Served People on your direct mail company’s mailing list
Definitive ROI Tracking? Yes
Pros Targeted
Cons Publishing and postage costs drive up initial investment

Telemarketing
Setup Process Script Writing
Setup Cost $1,000-$4,000
Cost of Media $20-$60 per hour per outbound caller
Cost to Continue $20-$60/hour
Demographic Served People on your telemarketing company’s call list
Definitive ROI Tracking? Yes
Pros Targeted
Cons Extremely annoying, hurts brand image

National Search Engine Optimization
Setup Process Website Configuration
Setup Cost $4,000-$10,000
Cost of Media Free
Cost to Continue ~$500/month to internet marketer
Demographic Served People actively searching for a company like yours
Definitive ROI Tracking? Yes
Pros Free stream of qualified traffic
Cons Continuous monitoring necessary to maintain traffic stream

National Pay Per Click Marketing
Setup Process Campaign Configuration
Setup Cost $4,000-$10,000
Cost of Media 5¢-$3 per qualified visitor
Cost to Continue Cost of clicks + ~$500/month to internet marketer
Demographic Served People actively searching for a company like yours
Definitive ROI Tracking? Yes
Pros Pay only for qualified traffic
Cons Easy for amateurs to mismanage a campaign and waste money

National Email Marketing
Setup Process Email Template Design
Setup Cost $4,000-$10,000
Cost of Media Free
Cost to Continue ~$500/month to internet marketer
Demographic Served Your email database
Definitive ROI Tracking? Yes
Pros Previous customers
Cons Inboxes are cluttered

You can also download this data in an Excel spreadsheet.

I’ll get you the local numbers within the next few weeks. Happy marketing!

Tags: ad cost, advertising cost, advertising roi, cost of advertising, cost of marketing, magazine ad roi, marketing cost, newspaper ad roi, tv ad roi

 

  • Daniel Kiefer

    Where did you get this information it seems to be more than expected……

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  • Quirk

    Where’s the local advertising costs you were going to put up? Can’t seem to find them anywhere.

  • Fidem Turbare

    The cost of eMail marketing is getting kicked off your ISP because they got blacklisted for your spamming. This is a very bad move for business.