Mary Ciapciak and Charlie Twedell, a pair of real estate agents in suburban St. louis, ran a series of ads in their local niche paper, The Ladue News. They followed my basic rule of thumb, or rule of newspapers, which is to buy space big enough to cross the center line in at least one dimension. Decent creative helps, too.

Near as they could tell, everyone they knew saw the ads, even after they'd run just a few times.