Space for Sale

6/20/2011

Beyond the Event Brochure: Printing Your Ad Book

What’s so great about ad books? For the cost of printing a simple event booklet, you can earn many times more money, gain valuable sponsorship relationships, and offer special rewards to the guests at any event. An ad book is a way to tie your specific community—the members of your group or organization—with the larger community in which your event will take place.

An ad book is a printed booklet in which anyone can buy space—think whole pages, half pages, quarter pages, even eighth or sixteenth pages, if the dimensions of the booklet are large enough—to share any message that might be relevant to your guests or patrons. These might be personal words of encouragement, as are often seen when ad books accompany high school graduations, or valuable coupons for books printed in conjunction with large conferences. They may also be simply informational ads, which will cost less than other forms of advertising.

How to Create an Ad Book

If you think you’d like to print an ad book in addition to your event program, or combine your event program with an ad book, the first thing you’ll want to do is gauge interest. If a few members of your organization are willing to purchase big ads, either to congratulate others or advertise their own businesses, you can be sure that you’ll be able to sell out all the pages. The nice thing about this is that modern printing allows you to print as large (or small) of a book as you want.

You, your sales team, or anyone else who’s interested in helping out can begin by approaching all attendees along with any local businesses. It will help to arm yourself with the following information:

• The cost of each different size ad
• The number of people who will potentially view the ad book
• The cause that will be supported by this money
• The dates of the associated event

Encourage potential sponsors to drive traffic to their nearby businesses by offering special deals available only during the days of your gathering, or only to those wearing their convention IDs. They can earn more money and attract new customers by creating bargains that will draw your guests to their store, or, if your group is local, by creating coupons that are only available in your ad book.

Once you’ve sold the minimum number of ads you’ll need to make the ad book worth your while (calculate in advance how much money you’ll need to earn per page to cover your printing costs and make a little extra) you can begin to sort through the ads. Some may be simple text, while others will require that your sponsors send you digital files. You may like to lay these out yourself, hire a professional layout artist, or use the services of an online printer to do the work for you.

From there, let the printer handle the rest! Sure, you can print them yourself on your computer, but a professional printer will do all the work, and won’t charge you very much for a really lovely final product. Your books can be professionally printed and bound in plenty of time before the event, and you can distribute them along with any other orientation materials. It’s an easy way to attract sponsors, and it helps your guests feel comfortable exploring the area around your event. Plus, done correctly, it can really help you earn more money for the event.