How should a local media company tier its advertising offers?

Every local media company I'd build today has a ladder of offers. Each rung is for a different buyer and sells a different way, and each one builds the relationship for the next.

What goes on each shelf?

Shelf	What's on it	How it sells
Free	A basic directory listing. We fix photos, hours and wrong information once.	Promote it anywhere, it costs nothing
Low	A fuller directory listing around $50 a month, one-time boosts around $50 to $100	Self-serve, no sales calls
Mid	Newsletter ad packages, roughly $400 to $1,000 a month, or $1,200 to $1,500 a quarter	Media kit, light selling
High	Local Partner: one business per category, around $2,000 a month. Or agency work like SEO, a page rebuild or Meta ads at $2,000 to $3,000.	Apply and talk, sold by a person

Why is the low shelf so cheap?

Because the buyer is tiny. Restaurants and mom-and-pops with fewer than about six employees top out around a $250 ad, or the $50 a month Pro membership in WilCo Guide. The pitch to them is fully digital: claim your free page, do the free interview, get the search and AI-search benefit. Then upsell Pro and ads.

The businesses that raise their hand to advertise are usually the ones with no money. You can't put sales time into somebody paying you $25 to $100 a month, but that doesn't mean you can't build something for them. The rule for that tier: give them a bunch of valuable stuff that takes us no real effort. At $500 a month, we put in effort. That's why I'm building the cheap tier into software.

Push the $50 plan to every business owner you can. They'll pay it. You probably won't make enough doing only that, so treat it as a supplement.

Some cheap ideas I've heard or kicked around:

• Group slots. A newsletter ad rep I know puts six restaurants in one ad slot, each with a small coupon, at about $50 each. That's $300 for the slot instead of $250 from one business. He says it's working really well. I haven't tried it.
• Event listings. A partner sells a one-off event listing for $25.
• Classifieds. A message in the back for about $20, like the old paper. Ten more businesses at $20 is $200. I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

What goes in the middle shelf?

A standard package instead of $200 one-offs, which are barely worth the hassle of chasing content every time. My baseline is $1,200 to $1,500 a quarter for a primary ad and a secondary ad each month.

• Primary vs. secondary. A primary ad sits higher, gets a GIF of photos and gets more text. A secondary ad is lower and shorter.
• Social once a quarter. Monthly takes too much time.
• Price by buyer. Even $500 a month is technically low. I'd go nearer $750 for a strong business, and lower for a taco joint.
• Charge more for a year. Don't let anyone lock in a low price while the audience is still growing.
• Logo in every issue. Anyone on a plan goes in a sponsor logo strip at the bottom of every newsletter, bigger logos for bigger tiers. It may not drive clicks, but sponsors love being in every single issue.
• Presented by. A logo at the very top that every reader sees, like a stadium name.

Small details on the price page matter. Offer one ad or four, not two, because almost nobody wants the middle. Don't write "for one month," or you're stuck running all four ads that month. Ask for ad copy only after they've picked and paid.

Why does the high shelf need a person?

"Local Partner is always apply-and-talk, sold by a person. The system delivers what was sold; it does not self-serve sell it."

Exclusive, multi-channel deals involve real money and real customization. Software can handle delivery. A human closes the deal. I wrote that rule into the ad system plan for lightbreak so nobody builds a buy button for the expensive stuff.

The targets are the big-spender verticals: local banks, estate planners, the biggest roofing companies and independent insurance agencies, custom home builders. For them, $2,000 a month is normal, especially when it's exclusive. Selling a partner slot is easier than selling "a newsletter ad." The package is 20,000 or 30,000 subscribers plus a strong website where we update their profile monthly, write articles and interview them. Newsletters are limited on space and have no SEO. Advertisers understand websites anyone can find.

Don't underprice this shelf. Pitch a bigger business $500 a month and they may say no because it's not worth their energy, the same way you'd turn down filming a business for $50. Selling $1,000 packages is small-ball thinking. Bundle newsletter placement with Instagram deals and an event, go to the custom home builder, and ask $2,500 a month. Katie Myers of Localish told me on my podcast she only targets businesses that spend more than $50,000 a year on advertising.

The top tier also works as an anchor. It makes the standard price look like a bargain, and about 10% of people who find you want the best thing you sell. Make it apply-only, say up front you only take five businesses a quarter, and if demand outruns capacity, start a waitlist and hire.

What does a premium exclusive tier look like?

• Expert contributor. One per category per city, term-limited. Anyone can buy the mid-tier listing, so you could have 20 roofers paying for it. The expert contributor slot is the VIP upsell, totally exclusive.
• Own the city page. A media brand with a local directory where a service business, like an estate planner, pays roughly $500 to $1,000 a month to own the featured spot for a city: an interview, top of the directory, homepage placement and newsletter mentions. I'd treat that as a later step that needs sales. I'm not selling it today.
• One payer, many businesses. For an organization with several businesses under one roof, a year at $1,000 a month where we feature two of their businesses each month. One payer, varied content, no repetition fatigue.

Why bundle instead of selling one ad?

Offer one thing and the advertiser judges whether that one thing will pay off. Offer six things for $500 or $1,000 and it's way harder to value each one, so the bundle just feels like a good deal. It's the Hormozi angle: make it so obvious they'd be crazy to say no. If they're trying five things, one of them is going to work.

My own example: a spot on the offer wall is $250 on its own, but it's free for anyone on the $1,000 membership with directory, newsletter ads and job board. Sell packages like a restaurant combo menu: the first is one placement, the second adds a newsletter slot and something else, the top has three or four things.

When you're starting, simplicity can win. One offer at $1,200 a month that lists exactly what's included works fine, because selling is a conversation, not a Shopify checkout. If they hesitate, your salesperson can go to $1,000 or $900 and still close.

Do I need separate sales motions for each shelf?

Yes. Small businesses get an automated, digital path. Bigger brands get a different approach that pitches partnerships instead of ads. Mixing them is how you end up spending an hour on the phone with a business that has $50 to spend, or sending a bank a self-serve link.

• Never send one business both offers. Keep the media kit for bigger advertisers and a separate link for the $50 directory page. Send someone both and they'll say "I don't need ads, I'll just pay $50."
• Don't offer the free page to a big prospect. If they could pay $1,000 a month or more, they won't care.
• Make a page per buyer size. One for mom-and-pops, one for mid-sized businesses like a big insurance agency or med spa, one for the utility, the city and the chamber. About three offers each.
• Hide the cheap stuff from serious buyers. I dropped the "classifieds" label from my media kit so advertisers wouldn't buy a classified instead of an ad.

Does a public $250 price hurt the big deals? It can. A big player sees $250 ads and asks why they'd pay $10,000 for a year. My answer is to make the partnership clearly worth far more: social posts, articles about them, content they can reuse, a backlink. Shane, my podcast co-host, treats self-serve as a lead source and follows up with click counts to pitch six-month deals. More on that in annual partnerships vs. single ads.