Advertising Your Cattery in Free Newspapers

Newspaper advertising is expensive but by using the free newspapers you could be tapping into a market that might easily be overlooked.

There are people who, through no fault of their own are housebound. There are disabled people, old people, and many others. The free newspapers that arrive at their homes are full of advertisements and by careful wording of your advertisement you could gain some valuable clients.

How Should An Advertisement Be Worded?

Many people that live alone have a cat for company. If you aim primarily at the type of client think that they might not be able to transport their cat to a cattery because of infirmity or lack of transport. You must be prepared to collect and deliver the cat. It is up to you whether you charge for this service, but it could certainly boost your business if you felt able to offer this as a free service.

With the price of petrol and diesel increasing all the time you might not want to undertake long trips, but locally you might feel it worthwhile to absorb the cost. Anything over say ten miles you could charge a nominal fee. You might consider wording your advertisement to appeal particularly to the cat owners who no longer drive.

Contacting Free Newspaper Editors

Not all areas get free newspapers delivered. It will be up to you to find out which free newspapers are delivered in the areas you want to target. If you have friends or family living in those areas you can ask them to save the papers for you.

Telephone the advertising editor to find out how many papers are delivered each week and what areas are covered. These newspapers are only free because of the advertisers and people really do use them to find local services that they require. The cost may seem high, but consider how many homes are covered.

It would be worthwhile speaking with the editor of the newspaper about marketing your business, you might be able to run a feature article with photographs. Editors are usually helpful particularly if you are advertising in each issue.

Often you will see free newspapers in supermarkets or shops. Always collect as many of these as you can. They will all have the name and/or email address of the editor and they are all potentially good places to advertise your business.

Printed Leaflets

Most free newspapers have leaflets inside. The leaflets will need to be supplied by you and will be put into the newspapers at the printers. Perhaps you could contact the printers and pay them to print your leaflets, and insert them into the papers.

You can design the leaflets yourself and choose the colour paper etc. These leaflets can be as plain or as fancy as you choose, the main thing is to grab the attention of the reader. When all those free newspapers arrive on the doormats and the leaflets fall out, let it be your leaflet that stands out from the rest.