Local Advertising & Marketing 2014 Henry E (Hank) Scott Publisher, WEHOville.com.

Local Advertising & Marketing 2014Henry E (Hank) ScottPublisher, WEHOville.com

Essential First StepsDefine your product

Define your audience / market

Define your competition

Define your USP (unique sales proposition)

Craft your message

First Steps / What Are You Selling?Are You Selling an Item, an Experience, Service

or Glamour?

Who is Your Market?How far will someone drive to shop with you?

Male, female? Gay, straight? Young, old? Style-conscious/value-conscious?

Exercise: Sit with your sales staff and together define your ideal customer -- sex, age, education, other interests, etc. Give him or her a name: Steve Shopper, Suzy Shopper

Who is Your Market?Compare that ideal customer with the

customers you have now

What customers are you missing?

What do you need to do to expand your customer base?

Who is Your Market?• Remember key characteristics of WeHo:– Predominately single

– Predominately renters

– 40 percent gay male

– Parking difficult

• But while WeHo’s population is 34,000, don’t forget the total population of the Zip Zones that encompass WeHo is 120,000

• And tens of thousands of visitors, from as far as Berlin and as near as Culver City, visit every day

Who is Your Competion?Look at Yelp and use Google

Look at a competitor’s website What does your competition market: Value? Style?

Brand? Parking?

What do you offer that your competitors don’t?

What can you offer that your competitors don ’t?

Craft Your MessageWhat can you tell your market that will

motivate its members to become your customers?

How do you test the effectiveness of your message?

What Do You Want to Achieve? Is your goal to build brand awareness or sell

product? It’s hard to do both with one campaign Brand-building is harder to measure Brand-building media/tools include magazines,

websites, publicity, events, stunts Product sales media/tools generally are

newspapers, websites, contests, events

Essential Second StepFind a medium/tool that reaches your audience:NewspaperMagazineWebsiteFacebook PageTwitter AccountContestStuntsEventPublicity

Established Media Advantages• They already have an audience that you would

have to build

• They already have a reputation

• They provide audience-building content so you don’t have to

BUT

• Their audience might not coincide well with yours

• They are expensive

Established Media/EvaluateContent/design/reputation: Will it enhance or

hurt the value of your brand?

Audience size/Print: What is the circulation? Where is the circulation? What is the readership?

Distribution: If it’s a free publication, is it distributed at places where your customers are likely to be?

Audience size/Digital: What is the number of monthly uniques? What is the page view number? Where is the audience?

Established Media/EvaluateDigital publishers, like unaudited print

publishers, exaggerate their audience size

Most authoritative sources are ComScore and Quantcast, but they are expensive

A free solution is Alexa.com

Established Media/EvaluateAlexa stats on local websits

Established Media/EvaluateAsk about zoning/targeting

Los Angeles Times has only two local zones. So an advertiser in WeHo pays to reach people in Venice and Laguna

LA Weekly has three zones. The WeHo zone stretches to Long Beach and South Central LA.

There is no regularly published local print medium that targets West Hollywood and environs only

Established Media/EvaluateCompare different media using CPM

When calculating CPM, consider only the audience you want to reach

Unless you are promoting a sale, don’t buy just one ad insertion. It takes time to reach eyeballs and make an impression

NEGOTIATE! Don’t pay the rate card price

Established Media/EvaluateSet an expectation and discuss with ad rep:

You want xx new customers in your shop You want sales to increase by xx percent You want your presence to rise in a Google search Consider offering coupons or using special phone

numbers to see if customers come from your ad

Social Media/Evaluate• This will be a quick overview, given the

complexity of social media.

• First, you should have a website. And it needn’t be expensive. Find a template on Wordpress and have a designer modify it to suit your needs.

• Make sure your designer is SEO-optimization smart.

Social Media/EvaluateCreate a Facebook page

Create a Twitter account

Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google + etc

are optional

Social Media/FacebookYour Facebook page is effective only if you:

Grow a meaningful audience, and Communicate regularly with that audience.

Both take time and energy.

Social Media / FacebookGrowing an audience:

First create some content.

If your business is design, consider posting regular links to interesting design stories on your page. If your business is a salon, consider posting links to articles online about beauty

Social Media / FacebookGrowing an audience:

Second, develop an audienceAsk your customers to “like” you on Facebook

in exchange for a one-time discountPay Facebook to advertise your pageBe wary of third-party services that offer to

get FB likes for youPost regularly on Facebook so that you are top

of mind with your FB “likes”Consider special offers or promotions that are

FB onlyBe aware of optimal posting times; don’t

overwhelm your “likers” with posts

Social Media/TwitterYour Twitter account is effective only if you:

Grow a meaningful audience, and Communicate regularly with that audience.

Both take time and energy.

Social Media / TwitterGrowing an audience

Look on Twitter for others in similar fields or influencers with large Twitter base

Follow them, which means they may follow you Retweet them, which means they may follow you Tweet links to stories relevant to your audience

and your products and services

Other Platforms/PRThis town is full of PR folks. Not many of them

are good.

What should you expect from a publicist? A plan that states an objective, states a message,

defines your audience(s) and describes the media best suited for reaching those audiences.

An explanation for how that plan will be executed. Consensus on effort will be evaluated.

Other Platforms/ContestsOnce you’ve established a following on

Facebook or Twitter, or found an ad medium that works for you, consider a contest to attract new customers.

But consider that there are rules that must be followed.

Other Platforms / EventsEvents are a great way to come face-to-face

with customers.

Best to join other events rather than do the work of launching your own.

But before you buy a booth or table, check: How will the event be promoted? What is the attendance at past events? Who are other vendors? Think in terms of CPM in deciding on what you’ll

pay for a booth. What will you offer customers at your booth,

table?

Other Platforms / EventsSome small events might make sense for you

to host yourself: A wine-tasting evening at a wine shop A dog contest at a pet supply store Hosting a small non-profit group’s regular meeting off

hours if you have the room