Harness the Power of Weekly Community Newspapers

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Have you ever asked yourself “What more can I do so that more people will know about the message that management cares about most?”? After covering all the usual bases, both traditional and new media, you can reach millions of additional readers at very little extra cost to your program by tapping into thousands of additional media outlets in the wealthy suburbs of America. There are three main advantages to covering weekly community newspapers:

1. Increased visibility: If you have a product or service to sell, you will be a lot more successful if you have a presence in the publications, supported by local advertising, that are delivered to the homes of affluent communities and stay there for a whole week. Those are much more likely to get read cover to cover than major daily newspapers in print, which have more than double the number of pages. Most people don’t read every page of their major daily newspaper or even every day.

2. Credibility: Feature news articles are a lot more credible if in the publication that people turn to as a trusted source of news about local politics, local school boards, local sports and other news that is not available in major daily newspapers. If you are fortunate enough to get a mention in a major daily newspaper and you get a double hit by getting one more mention in the local hometown newspaper of a reader, that person will tend to more readily trust the information.

3. Millions more readers: There are thousands of publications across the U.S. that most people may never have heard of but that serve a very upscale, highly educated group of consumers in bedroom communities of major metropolitan areas. For ex- ample, there are 20.1 million people living in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tristate area, of which 8.4 million are in New York City and the rest are in the surrounding areas. The New York Times reaches about 2.1 million in circulation, the New York Post reaches another 477k in circulation and the New York Daily News reaches another 456k in circulation. Even if you add on The Journal News, Newsday and The Star-Ledger, the major daily newspapers are only reaching a fraction of the population. There are hundreds of weekly community newspapers in the area that help reach out to the rest of the people.

After you have reached out to the major daily newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, you can do a more thorough job by covering publications such as The Scarsdale Inquirer, the Westport Minuteman and the Massapequa Post. Many have small circulations, under 25K, or may have names that people who live outside the area may not recognize. Cumulatively, you can reach hundreds of millions of people nationwide through these lesser-known newspapers. Circulations don’t tell the whole story. In Westport, CT, for example, the Minuteman has a circulation of about 7k, which seems small, but savvy marketers recognize that it is in a highly desirable community of people with a lot of purchasing power. Massapequa has a long Indian name that people outside the New York area may not recognize, but that is where a major shopping mall on Long Island is located and marketers would be thrilled to get a hit there.

The experts at North American Precis Syndicate (NAPS) get deeper market penetration cost effectively by reaching millions of readers, primarily in top-, second- and third-tier markets nationwide. For more information or a free proposal, contact info@napsnet.com. Learn More.