Remember the days when newspaper advertising representatives would stop by local businesses to pitch print ads?
And even more recently when they pitched digital online ads?
Now there’s far more offered and it’s far more complicated.
“We’re not just the newspaper anymore,” said Pocono Record Digital Marketing Consultant Stephanie Fairbanks.
They’re not even selling only ads any more. They’re selling digital solutions.
Advertising still is for sale. But the trend for publications, advertising outlets and radio and TV stations is to sell services, to sell their ideas for businesses to improve their website design, mobile website design, search engine marketing and optimization, social media optimization and list optimization.
That trend emerged about two years ago, Fairbanks said.
“We’re digital specialists now,” Fairbanks said.
It’s all part of the Pocono Mountains Media Group and its partnership with Propel Marketing from PMMG’s Gatehouse Publications parent company.
“Most of the smaller businesses build their own websites to save money and they’re not web designers,” Fairbanks said. “That’s just a short-term solution to a long-term problem they have — getting found online.”
Pocono Record Advertising Director Brad Bailey said, “Marketing for any business starts with putting their message in front of an audience.
“As a media outlet, we have an audience for our news and advertising products that businesses want to reach. But now we have different segments of that audience consuming our information in different ways. They might read our print products or our website or find our news stories through a Google search, on YouTube or one of their ‘friends’ could have posted a link to a news story on Facebook or Twitter.
“The audience for our news is greater than ever before,” Bailey said. “So it’s up to us to provide enough channels for our marketing partners so they can reach that same or greater audience through whatever means they are using to consume our information.
“I think all media companies subscribe to that strategy, and that’s why most of us have expanded our marketing offerings to include the greatest possible audience for our customers.”
Fairbanks pointed out that 40 percent of business listings have either missing or erroneous information.
Business owners have not optimized information on their websites. And mistakes creep in that get picked up by search engines such as Google and Yahoo. One wrong numeral or letter on an address can mess up the GPS directions to a business that a potential new customer is trying to find.
It’s getting as much up-to-date information pushed out as possible without mistakes. That’s list optimization.
“We have a lot to offer. We try to help the business owner figure out what the priority is and where they need the most help (in marketing) in an affordable way,” Fairbanks said.
Hitting that mobile device audience is essential to businesses, Fairbanks said, pointing to the fact that there are 331.6 million people in the United States and the number of mobile devices is 104.6 percent of that number, which means many carry more than one device.
Search engine marketing, also known as SEM or “pay per click,” is when the business selects pertinent keywords searched to show their web address and then pays that search engine company for every hit.
“It can get expensive and get out of control if businesses are not directed about it,” Fairbanks said. Some of those keywords could be in high demand by many like businesses, which raises the rates.
Search engine optimization is the work done to make a website appear naturally when certain keywords are searched — so you don’t have to “pay per click.”
And then there’s the social media aspect.
“We can help people write content that gets posted to Facebook and other social media sites, so people “like” it and “share” it with other people,” said Stacy Wivell, another Pocono Record Digital marketing consultant. “It’s controlled word of mouth, what people are saying about that business.”
Wivell said local businesses recently have turned their efforts toward social media, which has become the hottest option.
And it’s conveying a business’s message through that medium.
Offering solutions in as many areas as possible in a cost-effective way is another method for media outlets to continue the dialogue for selling their own advertising as well.
But Fairbanks and Wivell pointed out that all media outlets need to gain the confidence and trust of their clients.
“For us, it goes back to the local paper,” Wivell said. “People know us. We’ve been here for a long time.”
https://www.poconorecord.com/story/business/2014/03/09/pocono-record-branches-out-into/38387173007/
