All advertising is bad advertising when you don’t have a marketing goal in mind.
Whether it’s direct mail, digital marketing, broadcasting or newspaper; when you’ve undertaken an ad campaign with no consideration for your marketing goals you’ll be disappointed every time.
Every local business goes through a marketing lifecycle: awareness – consideration – conversion – retention and loyalty. Where your business is at in that lifecycle has to be a primary consideration when you develop a newspaper advertising campaign.
Awareness marketing has its place
If you’ve just opened your doors and you’re new to the community you need to create awareness. You literally need to be the town crier and tell people that you exist. Newspaper ads that announce events and grand openings, publicize your contact information, and let folks know who you are, what you’re doing and why you’re doing it are all part of a general awareness campaign.
When a company says that their newspaper ad is no longer working for them it’s more than likely they’ve gotten in the rut of continually advertising for awareness. The problem with getting stuck in an awareness mentality for too long is that it doesn’t deepen your relationship with the reader. “I’m here!” you say. “Yeah, so what!” They shout back. Once a business is launched the focus should shift to building relevancy, and moving a customer to considering your business over anyone else’s.
Relationship marketing: What does this look like in your local rural newspaper? A little different than you may think.
Local businesses are not global brands, and to advertise the same way would whitewash all the character that you bring to the table. Most certainly locals are looking for a product to satisfy a need but that isn’t the only input that goes into their buying decision. What looks like brand loyalty at a global level is actually relationship loyalty at a local level. Locals love doing business with people they know, either directly or indirectly. Since starting the newspaper there have been many people who have bought subscriptions and purchased advertising, not because they knew me, but because they know someone in my family, or someone on our staff. Locals are relationship loyal and love to support the names and faces behind the business. Don’t believe me – ladies how many candle parties, or tupperware parties have you gone to even though you have way too many candles and storage containers already? Exactly. People love to support people they know.
Leveraging your own name, and staff is one way you create the mental space for consideration and gets you away from general awareness marketing.
Secondly use the medium as a targeting method. When you advertise in the Drayton Valley and District Free Press, you can make some broad assumptions about who may see your ad: they read, more specifically they read the Free Press, they live in the region, they are one of thousands that are getting the same newspaper with the same information on the same day, to name a few.
As you personalize your ads to reflect the deeper character of your business you can also personalize your ads to focus on what’s happening in the community and make connections by resonating with local pain points – “Hey Free Press readers how about that wind storm last week! Sticks and leaves everywhere. Did you know we sell leaf blowers year round?…” “Spring potholes getting your down, come in for a spring tune up to make sure your car is on-road and off road ready…”
Positioning is important
On a local level building relevancy is not just about pushing product it is about positioning. At the end of the day you want locals to know who you are, what you do, and why your business is worth supporting and that you are one of them. You hate potholes too, you have a yard full of sticks too, their pain points are your pain points. To move from awareness to consideration you have to stop crying for customers and start connecting with customers – beginning with who you are.
