How do I explain newsletter ad pricing to local businesses who don't understand CPM?

Local business owners don't think in CPM. If you lead with it, you lose them.

What should I say instead of CPM?

Nobody knows what CPMs are, so you don't ever say it. National advertisers and big chains are the opposite. They know every detail and will question you on CPM, open rate and click rate. In local, they don't know any of it, and bringing it up makes things worse, because when people get confused, they do nothing.

A guest on my podcast runs a newsletter and gave me a script I immediately wanted on my own pricing page:

His script: "10,000 people will probably see this ad on Monday morning, it's $300, do you want to try that."

His math behind it: 20,000 subscribers at about a 50% open rate is roughly 10,000 people. He never says "open rate" to the advertiser. He says how many people, which day, how much.

After hearing that, I said out loud on the episode that I needed to message my team right then and change our pricing page. It's so obviously the better way to do it.

Why do advertisers get confused by audience-based pricing?

Because they fixate on whether the price moves. A guest dropped CPM talk after advertisers kept asking whether his price would go up if he gained a thousand subscribers. He switched to a flat subscription, about $500 a month on a list of around 10,000, and the question went away.

Flat monthly price, one plain sentence about reach. That's the whole pitch.

Should I use CPM at all?

Only as a private reference for yourself. I ran one quick check: across two of my newsletters we get about 12,000 impressions per issue. At the $75 CPM I'd heard another publisher charges, that's about $900 an issue. I wasn't suggesting selling at that price. The point was that higher pricing is possible.

Most operators I see sell ads somewhere between $150 and $400, more if the audience is big or they're good at sales. Pricing is mostly a sales issue. Go with your gut instead of stressing over a number your buyer can't read anyway.

What do I say when a business asks "what do you charge?"

Two good answers, and I've gone back and forth between them a ton.

Give a starting number. A custom home builder, a genuinely good lead, emailed me exactly that question. You can't have fixed pricing if you customize every package, but you can give a starting point: it starts at $500 a month, with customization above that. That's better than "let's hop on a discovery call." They asked a simple question. Answer it.

Or ask about goals first. A lot of the really good ad salespeople don't have a public price at all. Their pitch is: my goal is to get you what you want, and I don't know what you want yet. In person, that sounds like:

• We don't have standard pricing because I need to know your goals, but I can get it to you this afternoon.
• Give me two minutes. Do you need to sell a certain amount, build brand awareness in the community, or get people on a wait list?
• What would your call to action be? What are your goals for the year, for the quarter?
• Then send the proposal that afternoon.

Justin Moore made a related point on my podcast that I agree with. A business owner would rather see "here's what we can do for you" than three packages from someone who doesn't know them. They get the same generic "I have local media, I have an audience" pitch maybe 20 times a month. "I saw you did this, here's what I can do," with a specific time or a couple of options, puts you above everybody before you even speak. He said his coaching clients get about a 50% response rate that way, and he never uses AI to write the outreach because it's obvious.

How do I show them what they're buying?

Show the actual thing. One of the biggest complaints from people selling local newsletter ads is that business owners don't get what a newsletter is, where the ad would go, or what it would look like. My fix was a media kit page with a real issue and the ad slots marked on it, so a salesperson can pull it up in front of an owner.

• Fill empty slots with realistic placeholders. If a newsletter doesn't have a primary and secondary ad yet, put in placeholder ads that look like real local advertisers, a med spa or an insurance agent, so the owner can picture their own. This is ad sales. Make it as good as it can be.

Frame it right, too. Business owners think a newsletter is a small toy. Call it a digital publication, no different from the newspaper or magazine they already know, just delivered by email. Assume they don't understand the model, because they don't.

Advertisers are really asking you to do marketing for them. You probably know more about digital marketing than the agency they've used for 25 years. Position yourself as the AI-forward local marketing option.

How do I make the first purchase feel safe?

A guest who runs a newsletter in the Catskills uses a de-risking discount. If a month is $2,500, offer $1,750 for the first month to prove it works, and advise four weeks in a row instead of one ad.

What's the ceiling on small-business pricing?

Lower than your audience size suggests. One guest said even reaching 50,000 people, local advertisers might only have $400 or $500 to spend. The lever with small businesses is more advertisers, not a higher rate. Bigger rates come from bigger organizations. See selling to banks and hospitals.