The Value of Calendar Advertising

Calendars are one of the most cost effective - and underrated - advertising vehicles out there. To touch on the old 'we practice what we preach' theme for a moment, I have used calendars for each of the 19 years that I've been in business, and if I were forced to only choose one promotional item to market my own business, I would pick calendars.

They are the oldest promotional product in our industry and with good reason - calendars are the way we mark time -- both its passage and to see what lies ahead. They're standard equipment in any office and necessary in all homes.

Some think that technology has rendered them obsolete. To that I say - nonsense! If you're in business, try operating without a wall calendar. You need to be able to see the current month, the next one and the previous one...which is the basic information that your typical Commercial Calendar (see above) provides. At home it's the same thing, only for aesthetic purposes and due to the generally limited wall space available, the smaller Appointment Calendar is usually the product of choice.


And if you want to promote your business, there is no more cost effective way to do it than to place your company's name on an advertising calendar.

Think about it. Statistics show that the average person working in an office looks at a calendar 12 times a day. Multiply that by 5 business days a week and then by 50 weeks a year. That's 3000 ad impressions a year!

What would it be worth to have your company's sales message viewed by a client or prospect 3000 times over the course of a year?

In the home, maybe that 12 times a day figure drops to 5 or 6, but also figure 7 days a week and all 365 days of the year. What's that type of ad space worth to you? The answer is a whole lot more than the nominal cost of purchasing the calendars.

But here are a couple of other numbers to consider: Statistics by the Calendar Marketing Association show that 83% of customers purchase products or services from the company that gave them their calendar. And 94% of calendar recipients can recall the advertising message on their calendar.

Finally, think of the waste involved with newspaper, magazine or direct mail advertising. You're paying for lots of impressions that lots of non-customers and prospects will see. Calendars allow you to control distribution and thus cost -- the only people getting them are people who you want to get them.

A calendar marketing program offers great value to any business, especially those with limited advertising dollars. The reason being that they provide lots of ad impressions each day at a very nominal price.

Of course, there are also some tricks for maximizing the value of the dollars you allocate to such a program. I'll cover those in my next post. Until then however if I can answer any questions about calendar advertising, please contact me at sboyages@promoresource.com.

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