Local Advertising & Marketing 2014

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

2. Essential First Steps Define your product Define your audience / market Define your competition Define your USP (unique sales proposition) Craft your message

3. First Steps / What Are You Selling? Are You Selling an Item, an Experience, Service or Glamour?

4. 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

5. 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?

6. 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

7. 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?

8. Craft Your Message What can you tell your market that will motivate its members to become your customers? How do you test the effectiveness of your message?

9. 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

10. Essential Second Step Find a medium/tool that reaches your audience: • Newspaper • Magazine • Website • Facebook Page • Twitter Account • Contest • Stunts • Event • Publicity

11. 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

12. Established Media/Evaluate Content/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?

13. Established Media/Evaluate Digital 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

14. Established Media/Evaluate Alexa stats on local websits

15. Established Media/Evaluate • Ask 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

16. Established Media/Evaluate Compare 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

17. Established Media/Evaluate • Set 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

18. 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.

19. Social Media/Evaluate Create a Facebook page Create a Twitter account Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google + etc are optional

20. Social Media/Facebook • Your Facebook page is effective only if you: • Grow a meaningful audience, and • Communicate regularly with that audience. Both take time and energy.

21. Social Media / Facebook • Growing 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

22. Social Media / Facebook • Growing an audience: • Second, develop an audience • Ask your customers to “like” you on Facebook in exchange for a one-time discount • Pay Facebook to advertise your page • Be wary of third-party services that offer to get FB likes for you • Post regularly on Facebook so that you are top of mind with your FB “likes” • Consider special offers or promotions that are FB only • Be aware of optimal posting times; don’t overwhelm your “likers” with posts

23. Social Media/Twitter • Your Twitter account is effective only if you: • Grow a meaningful audience, and • Communicate regularly with that audience. Both take time and energy.

24. Social Media / Twitter • Growing 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

25. Other Platforms/PR • This 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.

26. Other Platforms/Contests Once 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.

27. Other Platforms / Events • Events 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?

28. Other Platforms / Events • Some 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