Regional publisher Johnston Press has launched a nationwide campaign to persuade more small businesses to advertise online.
The ‘Think Digital’ initiative aims to highlight the benefits of online advertising to companies who may traditonally have only advertised in print.
It follows a recent study by the Advertising Association which found that those who advertise online and engage in social media are far more likely to see an increase in customer loyalty.
The campaign will run throughout June and is being promoted in all JP’s local daily and weekly titles.
Neil Jones, JP’s chief commercial officer said: “Digital advertising and harnessing the power of social media to promote their business can, for many SMEs, feel daunting but it can be the perfect way to broaden their reach and give them the ability to really engage with their audience.
“We hear all the time that SMEs don’t think digital because they simply don’t understand it and as a result are really missing out on valuable potential customers.
“Johnston Press has almost 14m monthly unique users across our online portfolio. We know digital and we understand what a powerful tool it can be.
“Our Think Digital initiative will encourage our customers to consider the many other opportunities available to them which can complement their print advertising spend in a really efficient and economical way.”
Earlier this year JP launched its Digital Kitbag, aimed at providing a fully integrated digital marketing solution for local businesses keen to reach an online audience for the first time.
Added Neil: “Small business owners really do need to start putting digital at the heart of their marketingplans and we’re perfectly placed to help them focus on what they need to, which is running their business, and let us take the headache and hassle out of digital marketing.
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Small businesses tell me that the problem with online is that you often pay for adverts which are then placed by the media outlet where you don’t want the adverts to go.
Economy of scale makes it such, but that is of no use for the advertiser. If I am running a garage I don’t want my advert going in among rival businesses in some publication 20 or 30 kilometres away, yet that is often what is happening.
A lot of people are turning to the glossy A4 sized free publications which are pushed through your front door on a regular basis. These command large circulations and are now well-established in many areas.
It’s a bit condescending to claim that businesses don’t understand digital. You’d still think we were in the 1990s.
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Hmmm, if digital advertising was so obviously a good thing firms would be queuing up to take out ads, wouldn’t they? The internet is hardly a new phenomenon, after all.
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The same could be said of print advertising, Kendo Nagasaki.
I agree with ‘JP stone thrower’ about the use of monthly, glossy, locally-focused publications. I receive three such mags through my letterbox every month and they’re clearly prospering.
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Absolutely right JP stone thrower …… and of course those glossy frees appear to be Hoovering up just the kind of ‘corner shop’ advertising which was a cornerstone of free newspapers and old fashioned paid for weeklies not so long ago in their role of ring-facing media centre revenues – remember those free wars and takeovers at ludicrous prices, not to mention the crushing of upstart interlopers – nearly all that hard won territory now surrendered without a whimper. The suspicion lingers that the career digital champions have been just too sniffy about assessment of such bargain basement revenue to have even factored it into a true profit and loss measure of the value of their ‘revolution’. I don’t think shareholder groups will be very pleased with them when they wake up and do the sums themselves on ‘digital transformations’ (which always seems to be successful just over the horizon) and realise what a pup they look to have been sold.
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Agree with comments above. At the risk of sounding like Tubs from Royston Vasey, local plumbers (joiners, decorators, et al) want local customers. They can find them in local publications. Life was local once, I seem to remember…
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JP stone thrower, sorry that’s not completely true. You can target online ads to specific people, groups, searches or locations in numerous ways and across many different platforms. It all comes down to how well JP are gathering and analysing their own data as well as using key Google partners (eg ReachLocal) and the various key social media networks. Many SMEs can, and are, doing this themselves but all publishing groups should be offering it as an extended package to their own data for those which feel they don’t have the time.
The main issue is that it is now vital to give advertisers an exact breakdown of the success or failure of a particular advertising campaign but the current publishers don’t do this properly. This leaves the advertiser feeling let down and leads to the sort of complaints you mention.
Chasing unique visitors from all over the UK/world has added to the difficulties around the figures and expectations. If they concentrated on local/regional readers, as they did in print, the top figures might not be as high but the advertising response would most likely provide a bigger percentage of uptake, making the success rate clearer to all advertisers.
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Johnston Press begs local businesses, “Send us your money!”
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