There are many benefits of advertising your products in Hydraulics & Pneumatics magazine or in one of our many digital products. One of the benefits is the generation of sales leads, also referred to as inquiries. When I started in this business several decades ago, a rule of thumb was that one tenth of one percent of a total circulation would inquire about every ad and press release seen in our magazine.
At a circulation of 50,000 qualified readers, our yield would be about 50 inquiries per item. Keep in mind that this level of performance occurred before fax machines let alone e-mail and internet. Mail- in inquiries was one of the few means of contacting a company whose ad was seen in a magazine. The other way was by calling the advertiser directly.
Since H&P has always been 100% devoted to fluid power technology, all of our sales leads have always been fluid power leads. With the advent of other means of communication, the number of mail-in inquiries dropped with each innovation. However, we continue to produce a reader service card in every issue of H&P. Why? Because every advertiser deserves to have this means of inquiry generation open to them. Every ad still generates some mail-in inquiries.
Our online products such as web banners and eNewsletter ads have generated many more page views and clicks than the paper inquires. These are not exactly traceable because we only report the number of click on the advertisers' ad generated by our website and eNewsletters.
We do have traceable, full-contact lead producing opportunities though. Our White Paper program is a gated item meaning that users must register to view the White Paper. Our Basics of Design and FAQ offerings are additional full contact products. These full contact leads are passed along to the advertising sponsor.
In addition, we now offer an issue follow-up eBlast called FasTrac. This is a digital product that generates full-contact leads as well as clicks on the advertisers' websites after the issues are mailed.
If you have any questions about generating fluid power sales leads, please contact me. I can be reached at michael.ference@penton.com or at 216-931-9352.