Does local advertising in the newspaper work for anything except local businesses?

 Actually - to add to that, how well does it work for local businesses?

If you have a local business and advertise locally, how do you track your conversions (coupons, promotions, where did you hear about us?). What kind of return on investment do you get?

 As far as I'm concerned, no... advertising in local newspapers doesn't give you anything except exposure in the local community. Whether or not you will benefit from a wider range of advertising depends on what kind of industry you are in. Are you a local merchant that only deals with people who come into the store? Then you should probably stick to local advertising. Maybe spread the wealth into more of a county area rather than just one city; most counties aren't too wide and aren't too long of a drive from one point to another.

But if you do business via internet/shipping/phone as well (are you able to ship products to your customers?) then advertising in a wider-hitting medium would be a good investment. Get with a newspaper that is distributed to multiple counties or even nation-wide. As far as I'm aware, the New York Times and Los Angeles Times are distributed to a variety of cities throughout the nation.

Looking to keep record of how people found out about you? Take note of how many coupons you distributed and make them "must present at time of purchase" coupson... then you can track how many come back to you. When it comes to how people found out about you... ask! That's how we do it around here. Any time someone calls/emails us about a quote or questions on our products, we make it a priority to ask them how they heard about us. We have a variety of sources that have our name within their database and each source is listed. Each time someone names the source, we tally. At the end of the week, we see where people have been looking and where we should turn up our promotions.

We're a promotional company ourselves. We deal with putting out custom-labeled products for your promotional needs. If you need anything, feel free to contact us. We could even help with ideas!

Hope that helps!

 Hi Paulina,

I thought your post was really interesting. I am looking for some promotional items (small quantity for now, if you are interested). Do you have a website you could post the URL for?

Thanks!

Sian

 You can look up my company at www.innopackusa.com

On the site, you will find a nice variety of items that you can put your name on. What kind of company do you run and what kinds of promotions will you be doing (ie special events, gift with purchase, etc...?) Let me know and I could probably help you to pick something that will work for you. We also have a wide variety of past jobs that we have done so we could probably show you some good examples. We send samples for free. Feel free to email me with any questions/comments/etc.

admin@innopackusa.com

Hope to hear from you soon!!

The only way that I would see advertising in a local paper giving more exposure outside of your community is if this paper is HUGE.  An example is the New York Times.  Millions of people read this paper acorss the world daily and while this is a local paper in the sense it really isn't.  The only other way is if your local paper also puts the same ads on its website, odds are it does not though.  So what you might want to do is not neccessarily advertise in the paper itself, but on its website.

I have found that advertising in local papers draws little or no response.  But I am also a very specialized niche market store.  It depends on what you are selling and how big your ads our.    Obviously, big business like auto dealers who put in 1 page and 1/2 page ads do make sells but it is one of many marketing venues they use.  You have to look at your product and budget to determine if what you have has mass appeal to warrent newspaper advertising.  I think your yellow page ads in your local phone directory would be good.  Depending on the competition you may not need a very big ad.  I just do a online ad because there is no other venders in my directory. 

 You might also consider specialty magazines.  Ex. Del Web's SunCity Lincoln does a magazine for all the residents (12,000) in it's adult community.  Rates are low $300 for 1/4 page for 6 months and associate of mine with a Glass Shop does well with orders for showers, mirrors, etc.  A lot of your advertising will depend on the market you are trying to reach and the product you sell.  Ad's on Grocery shopping carts work well for say realtors.  You have to experiment with what works for you.

Have you considered a PPC campaign? If you have a website, it's a great way to drive traffic. Your ad is only displayed to people who are looking for what you have, and you only pay when an interested person clicks on it. These are the ads that show up alongside the organic search results on sites like google and yahoo. I believe they can even be targeted for local markets if you want.

Conversions can be tracked easily, because you will know how many times your ad is clicked each month.

I could see some value if the newspaper runs the ad on their website.  I would imagine a lot of newspapers now have online versions.   Say you place a classified ad for something you are selling, it is likely (depending on size of the paper) that your content could appear online and return in search results.

Something to consider about newspapers is that their regular articles about businesses can be very helpful.  I frequently see newspaper articles about local entrepreneurs or businesses.  One such example is a classic 1950's style soda fountain and restaurant in my home town.  I am friends with the owner and stay in touch with him about where he draws business.  Many of the local and regional papers run an article about his business once or twice a year.  Frequently it is a review of the food and experience.  He sees pretty big increases in business when these articles run.  He pays nothing for the article but he sees pretty significant revenue as a result. 

I would suggest asking yourself if your business is something that would interest a newspaper.  If so, perhaps you can find ways to encourage writers to cover your business.

 For me the local news paper was good in regards to advertising, and yes it does have alot to do with what business you're in & what you're advertising in the local news paper.

For myself i'm a personal jeweler & i placed 2 natural colored diamonds in the local news paper for sale and i sold them both within 2 weeks of each other.  I no longer place news paper ads due to scams and fraudulent cashier's checks, but i will say that the news paper did work for me that brief amount of time.