Lay My Hat

Has anyone any success with placing an ad in The Lady?

www.northwalesholidaylets.co.uk

I thought about advertising with them last year. Their rate doesn't seem too bad. I remember in the 80's it was quite popular, but I'm not sure what coverage they get and how effective it would be, so I decided against it.

We tried it years ago and we seemed to get a lot of old dears ringing wanting a chat. We might as well have been the local double glazing company. That said it was 4 years ago so things may have changed.

It worked well for us, 2004-2008. Quite expensive, but we did have the ad. in all year round. The longer you leave it in, the higher up the list it goes.
You have to be quite clever to fiddle with your wording in the limited space available to make an impact.
How can I put this ....... a good class of customer!
I believe the magazine is on sale in most supermarkets, and finds its way into dentists/doctors' surgeries and military establishments.

We tried it a couple of times and had a good response in terms of telephone calls but only a couple of bookings. That said, both of those became repeat bookings for a few years so we certainly got our money's worth.
I think they do a 'special' for whatever country you're in and we advertised when ours came up.

Our very first advert was in "The Lady" when we started out in gîtes about 15 years ago. The ad managed to fill our single gîte all Summer and the guests were all lovely without exception. People would call us (or sometimes even write letters) to express their interest !

We used to post out a printed brochure as we had no website and not even an email address in those days. I'm very happy to hear that this publication is still going !

we tried this a year ago and didn't get a single enquiry so didn't bother again.

In another life we used it for promoting a mail order business which should have been right up the alley of their readership. VERY expensive - one response! Admittedly she spent oodles over a period of a few years!

apexblue wrote:Has anyone any success with placing an ad in The Lady?

www.northwalesholidaylets.co.uk

isn't that link holidaylets.net?

that is the one i advertised on in the past few weeks and i've 2 bokings already.

we tried the lady last year....not one enquiry so decided to not pursue any further....perhaps a longer ad could have worked but then the costs start mounting up?

Well I've just booked a couple of weeks ads - mainly because when the kids were young we always got our French holiday cottages from the Lady. As I am now an old blimp (according to my wife), it might be just the thing - or maybe not, lets wait and see. Its supposed to have dynamic new editor so perhaps it will attract more readers.

Robin

I used it 10 years ago to test the market and it wasn't too successful, but as the rates were very cheap last summer I thought I'd give it another go.

Sadly, only one enquiry (from someone who wanted to be near the sea - perhaps "Beautiful Barn Conversions in the peaceful mid-devon countryside" wasn't specific enough!) and several phone calls from other publications (country living, daily mail, & the like) and from holiday cottage listing sites.

Shame really, as I booked a cottage through The Lady about 15 years ago and have recruited 2 au-pairs and a nanny through the domestic ads.

The new editor is Rachel Johnson (sis of Boris) - maybe she'll glam it up a bit!