I spent about $30k on this ad in Alt Press, and I can't attribute a single dollar of revenue to it.
This is when I worked at CreativeLive- we did online education for creative people and worked with lots of big names like Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, Brene Brown, Richard Branson, Ramit Sethi, etc etc.
I joined in 2013, after their series A. They were primarily focused on photography classes (since the founder Chase Jarvis is a very well-known photographer), but knew they needed to expand.
To make a long story short, I started our Music & Audio channel and eventually did ~75 classes before moving on. I was something along the lines of a GM, and I did almost everything aside from production: recruiting instructors, signing partnerships, and running marketing.
Shortly after I joined we raised a $21M series B led by Chamath Palihapitiya (now internet-famous from the All In podcast), which meant I finally had some budget to work with.
And one of the first things I did was signing a year-long deal with Alternative Press magazine for $30k.
And despite the fact that I can’t attribute even $1 of revenue to it, I still think it was some of the best money I've ever spent.
Here’s why:
Instant credibility
We were a Silicon Valley tech company with no currency in music- and in music, authenticity is EVERYTHING. If they see you as an outsider, you'll get nowhere.
I had a decent network in music from growing up in the hardcore scene and writing about music, but it wasn’t enough - I needed to get to people who were way bigger than that.
And full-page print ads in the biggest magazine in the genre = we're instantly taken seriously as a real company.
In practical terms, when I’d cold email a record label or instrument company about partnerships, they’re about 100x more likely to reply if they’ve seen our name in Alt Press for the last 4 months.
Easier to recruit instructors
Notice that I prominently featured instructors in the ad.
Most of them are music producers, who normally barely get a mention in the liner notes let alone have their faces in a magazine ad.
With the help of a great PR agency, I also got them tons of media coverage in other A-list outlets like The Hollywood Reporter, Modern Drummer, Guitar World, Sound On Sound, and dozens more (see screenshots above).
Basically, I wanted them to feel like they were in the spotlight for once (instead of their famous clients), and that I was promoting them like nobody else ever had.
And that in turn made it a lot easier for me to sign other instructors, because they saw how hard I hustled to promote everyone.
And since signing the right instructors was the biggest growth lever for the business, that alone was worth the $30K.
Access to AltPress' network
We weren’t Alt Press’ biggest advertiser by any means, $30k was enough for them to consider us a partner.
Since they were the biggest publication in our space, they were connected to just about anyone and everyone. Artists, labels, gear companies, you name it... their contact list was as deep as it gets.
If I needed an intro to a potential brand partner, instructor, etc I could ask and they’d almost always be able to help.
What’s the ROI?
Did we sell any courses from this ad? Honestly, I never even tried to track it and didn’t care. Probably some small amount, but that wasn't the point.
This was an investment in BRAND: showing the music world that we were serious about being an authentic part of the scene, so we could make the moves that would set us up for long term success.
There’s no way to measure the ROI in concrete terms, but I did grow the business from zero to about $1.5 million in 18 months, and I’m very sure that would’ve been much harder without this AP deal.
It's also worth mentioning that they gave me an amazing deal: $30k for an entire year of these full-page ads, which was probably something like an 80% discount.
My point:
If you try to measure brand marketing like it’s performance spend, you’ll almost always come back with a negative ROI.
But not everything that grows your business shows up in Google Analytics.
To be clear, I’m not saying everyone should do print ads. That’s just one specific tactic that made sense for us in this specific situation, and probably doesn’t make sense for most other companies.
But you SHOULD be implementing the same pattern in whatever way makes sense for you: investing in things that will give you credibility, access and help you open doors that would otherwise be closed.
Brand IS an investment with very real returns, even if they don’t fit nicely in a spreadsheet.