What’s the Future for Lancaster County’s Daily Newspaper?

What’s the Future for Lancaster County’s Daily Newspaper?

by | Aug 3, 2016 | Insights

Five Key Commitments Make the Difference

In conversations with neighbors, friends, and business associates, our colleagues at LNP Media Group are often asked about the future of LNP, Lancaster County’s daily newspaper.

Given the rapidly changing media environment for newspapers in particular, we focus on ensuring a vital, vibrant future that matches our nearly 225+ year legacy. The press reports regularly on news organizations that are laying off staff, reducing original content, and eliminating days on which they print. Some communities are without a daily newspaper and others are without a paper completely.

LNP is committed to being the source of news and information for every resident of Lancaster County and being the means by which every business in Lancaster County can reach their target customers. LNP’s commitment is evident in so many ways.

Meaningful Content

LNP Media Group, with Lancaster County’s daily newspaper (LNP) and a premier website for news and information (LancasterOnline.com), strives to deliver thorough and valuable content in a way that is informative, helpful and entertaining:

  • Our staff of professional journalists works tirelessly to discover and report what is important and meaningful to residents of the county.
  • No other news organization covers our community as in depth as we do, and no other news organization highlights issues that prompt community conversation as we do.

We are immensely proud of the work we do and industry leaders recognize the excellence of our efforts. The LNP staff has won more than two dozen awards from the Pennsylvania News Media Association and the Associated Press Managing Editors organization. LancasterOnline has won several awards for excellence in digital platforms, including best overall digital experience at the 2016 America East Conference.

Connecting Audiences to Advertisers

LNP has the largest core circulation of any newspaper in Central Pennsylvania and has the fourth largest circulation in the state. We have a diverse audience of engaged readers that is appealing to businesses in Lancaster and beyond:

  • Our advertising clients know the power of print advertising and see the results when their ads appear regularly in LNP Media products.
  • Advertising clients also reach new local customers and raise awareness of their businesses via LancasterOnline, our digital voice.
  • LancasterOnline is the county’s most widely read online news source. Our team also provides digital marketing tools and services to our clients, including paid search advertising, social media advertising, media-rich email marketing, and geotargeted mobile advertising.

Community Impact

Stories we publish have a profound impact on the quality of life in Lancaster County. From reporting that explains the importance of transparency in government to articles that illustrate the scourge of heroin across our county, we strive to investigate and develop stories that help our readers understand issues that matter to all of us:

  • Our reporting has helped open wildlife preserves to the public and prompted changes in a local school district that both saved money and re-established the arts and music programs.

Local Ownership

Unlike many nearby newspapers owned by large media organizations that make staffing and editorial decisions from afar, LNP Media Group is committed to fostering the vitality of Lancaster County due to its local ownership by the Steinman family:

  • We are headquartered in downtown Lancaster and are directed by members of the Steinman family. LNP, LancasterOnline, and all of the other publications produced by LNP Media Group operate under the guidance of people who live and work right here in Lancaster County.
  • The Steinman family has also dedicated a significant portion of LNP’s earnings to fund The Steinman Foundation, one of the largest private foundations in Lancaster County. In the last 65 years, the foundation and its predecessors have given more than $80 million to causes dedicated to improving the quality of life in Lancaster County.

A Legacy of Innovation

Some dismiss LNP Media Group as a legacy media organization that does not reflect today’s innovation and creativity. We’ve seen extraordinary technological changes and embraced them. We’ve been nimble throughout all 44 U.S. presidencies, 2 world wars, The Great Depression, and several recessions. We’ve adapted, grown and thrived since 1794. The ability to innovate to meet advertiser’s needs and exceed readers’ expectations establishes that change and adaptation are core elements of our DNA.

So back to the question, “What’s the future for Lancaster County’s daily newspaper?”

The answer is that LNP Media Group is deeply committed to our newspaper audience. We are also committed to evolving and growing as a news organization to ensure that we are able to anticipate the changing needs of our audience of readers and the advertising customers we serve. While the news business is changing fast, we are optimistic. We have faith in the bright future of Lancaster and we know we will continue to be part of it.

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LNP Media Group is committed to delivering exceptional experiences to our audiences, our customers, our vendors and our employees throughout Lancaster County and Central Pennsylvania. We provide value to our marketing and advertising partners by building effective and innovative solutions and by delivering exemplary customer experiences.

Cause Marketing for Local Businesses

Cause Marketing for Local Businesses

by | Jul 18, 2016 | Insights

Doing good in Lancaster County can set your business apart, win customers, and grow business.

Did you know that 90 percent of customers report they would probably switch to a brand with similar products or pricing if that brand supports a good cause? Consumers today know how to vote with their pocketbook, and more and more are choosing companies that support the causes that resonate with them. The numbers get even more impressive among Millennials.

Millennials expect their business choices to align with cause-related concepts:

  • In a Barkley report , 42 percent of Millennials said they’d buy products or services if their money in part helped a cause. 35 percent said they’d also donate money directly to the cause.

The implications are clear. Cause marketing is not only a powerful way to give your company a competitive edge, it also can be a positive way to contribute to your community by helping others.

Cause Marketing: What is it?

Cause Marketing can be defined as what happens when for-profits team up with non-profits in a way that benefits both. When it’s done right, Cause Marketing results in increased brand awareness and greater customer loyalty. Non-profits benefit from the time or talent of your support.

Choose a Cause You Care About

How can you make Cause Marketing part of your business plan? First off, choose a cause you care about. Make sure that your business and your Cause Marketing align with your personal and professional values. By staying true to who you are and what your business stands for, you are in a good position to communicate credibly and authentically to your customers and prospects.

Develop Relationships

Before you start using business time and money to support a cause, you should evaluate if the cause is are open to your sponsorship:

  • Meet with the organizers and tell them about your desire to create a partnership that helps them succeed. Find out if they have ideas on how to promote your support.
  • Some causes are open to sponsors. Other are not. Make sure your cause wants to work together before you make any commitments.

Match the Cause with Your Business Goals

Regardless of how you promote your cause, the key is to find a cause that makes sense to you AND your customers:

  • For example, if you sell children’s clothing, it would make sense to partner with a local youth program, youth sports, children’s events or programs that work with at-risk children.
  • You could make contributions in merchandise donations, encouraging customers to donate, promoting the cause in your store and in your advertising, or by supporting events with donations.

Tap Into Existing Partnerships

When does it make sense to tap into partnerships and when should you go it alone?

  • Maybe your team is small enough that Cause Marketing is too much to take on. Conversely, you may be so large that supporting just one cause is too limiting.
  • You may also be working with a cause that has a well-established role for sponsors, or one that doesn’t want to build a custom program.
  • The good news is that tapping into existing partnerships requires much less time and effort.

The downside is you may have to share the spotlight with other businesses. Either way, as long as you clearly communicate your support to your customers and prospects, you’ll still reap the benefits of Cause Marketing.

Find Out if We Can Help with Your Cause Marketing

LNP Media Group is continually growing and adding new, exciting technologies to our suite of marketing and media products. We also offer sponsorships to select cause-marketing events. If you haven’t talked to us lately, contact us today.

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LNP Media Group is committed to delivering exceptional experiences to our audiences, our customers, our vendors and our employees throughout Lancaster County and Central Pennsylvania. We provide value to our marketing and advertising partners by building effective and innovative solutions and by delivering exemplary customer experiences.

Recruiting New Employees with Targeted Digital Campaigns

Recruiting New Employees with Targeted Digital Campaigns

by | Jun 6, 2016 | Insights

Human resources and employment professionals today have a big challenge: finding and recruiting new employees. Unemployment rates are low across the country, and they’re especially low in Lancaster County. Most people who want jobs have them, so recruiting means taking someone from their current job. This highly competitive recruitment environment is much different from a few years ago when all it took was placing an ad and the resumes just rolled in.

How to find qualified job applicants in Lancaster County PA

You’ve tried ads. You’ve tried job boards. The costly open positions still remain unfilled.

The answer is developing a recruitment strategy that identifies where your best prospects are, providing an enticing offer, and implementing an advertising plan that reaches them.

This is uncharted territory for many HR professionals. It’s a new approach but it can work for you.

Create a Profile of the Ideal Employee

Start by creating a detailed description of the ideal person you’d like to hire:

  • You need to go beyond creating a job specification. Describe who they are, what they like to do, where they live, and more.
  • Include details about the preferences of certain types of employees. For example, did you know that accountants like to play fantasy baseball? How about warehouse workers? They like to work on their cars. Including that type of information will help target the right prospects with the right media.

Do a Recruitment Market Analysis

A recruitment market analysis will tell you where prospects for your job live and work right now. And it will guide your efforts to find them. Let’s assume you’re recruiting accountants. Here’s what the market analysis for accountants should include:

  • A recruiting area: create a circumference on a map showing the maximum distance this person might be willing to drive to work. Unless you are paying for relocation, this circumference should become your recruiting area.
  • A prospect pool: using demographic data, determine the number of employed accountants in your recruiting area. Now you know the size of the prospect pool for your job.
  • A competitive salary analysis: unless you cross-reference the employed accountants with salaries you could be wasting time recruiting in markets that will outprice you. Instead, look for nearby communities’ salaries that are lower, on average, than one you are offering. This will ensure your salary is attractive to prospective employees.

A good recruitment market analysis will reveal the kind of details you need to determine exactly where to recruit. It will become the foundation of your recruitment strategy.

Set Up Geo-targeted and Demographically-targeted Digital Campaigns

Now that you know where to target, you’re ready to set up the details of your digital recruitment campaigns:

  • Use geo-targeted digital ads to deliver your message to the right prospects in the right places. This is especially important when you factor in the salary you are offering, and the fact that you want this salary to be attractive to your applicant pool.
  • Layer demographic and lifestyle attributes on top of your geo-targeting. Some types of digital campaigns, such as email marketing, even offer targeting by current job title, which can be very effective.
  • Remember the fantasy baseball that your accountants are playing? You may want to incorporate this information by targeting particular websites.
  • Don’t forget social media which also has geographic and demographic targeting options. Building awareness for your job posting via Facebook and Twitter campaigns can yield surprisingly good results.
  • Your advertising plan should also include job postings that reach prospects by profession. Do this by placing your job postings at job boards. You can even target through diversity-oriented job boards.

Use detailed ads to get the best response rates. Good prospects are already employed and it will take a strong and detailed message to win their interest. However, beware of over-cluttering your ad with so much detail that it becomes hard to read. Have your ad artist create a three-slide gif so that your ad copy can be spread across the three slides, thus avoiding clutter. The gif should rotate on an endless loop so that your full message is continually being displayed.

Take a good hard look at the landing page for your digital campaign. Too often, recruitment ad campaigns click through to an applicant tracking system (ATS). While these systems are great at record keeping for HR professionals, they are generally not user-friendly for job applicants. An ATS can take a long time for an applicant to fill out which can discourage application completion, especially for lower-skill positions. Instead, consider creating a landing page that collects basic applicant information in a simple form. Do the initial screening on these applicants then ask your top picks to complete the full ATS application.

Clearly today’s employment environment requires much more than the same old recruitment approach. It requires data, ingenuity, and effective digital advertising across a variety of media. Do you need a recruitment partner who can plan and coordinate this effort for you.   We’re here to help with a free assessment of your talent acquisition challenge. Our recruitment team has years of expertise exclusively with in finding qualified job applicants for your openings. We are recruitment experts who can help you build a detailed recruitment marketing analysis and an effective recruitment digital campaign.

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Debbie Stremmel, Multi-Media Recruitment Marketing Specialist at LNP Media Group, brings decades of experience in recruitment marketing. She has helped hundreds of organizations succeed in the most difficult talent acquisition projects. Looking for a petroleum engineer who can speak both English and Russian fluently? Debbie found one. She combines the use of labor statistics and data with tried and true marketing strategies to find, reach, and recruit new employees. She never lets the most difficult recruitment challenges dim her sunny personality. She is a frequent speaker on recruitment topics and she has been a member of SHRM for more than 30 years.

LNP Media Group is committed to delivering exceptional experiences to our audiences, our customers, our vendors and our employees throughout Lancaster County and Central Pennsylvania. We provide value to our marketing and advertising partners by building effective and innovative solutions and by delivering exemplary customer experiences.

5 Surprising Ways to Grow Grocery Sales

5 Surprising Ways to Grow Grocery Sales

by | Jun 2, 2016 | Insights

Major local survey uncovers what grocery shoppers really want.

LNP Media Group surveyed over 1,500 Lancaster County grocery shoppers to find out what shoppers in this area like and dislike about the grocery stores already in our county.

The bad news?

The bad news for Lancaster County grocery stores is that consumers are no longer very loyal to a single store:

  • While this research revealed that about half of shoppers report they are “loyal” to a single store, we also discovered that even “loyal” shoppers regularly visit two, three, even five different stores each month

The good news?

The good news? The same thing:

  • Consumers are looking for value, deals, and the kind of products they need to live their very individualized lifestyles
  • They’re willing to shop at more than one store to find the kind of products they want

What can grocers in our area do to attract these fickle shoppers to their grocery or food store more often?

1. Romance Unusual Offerings

In the LNP Media Group grocery survey, shoppers say the most appealing feature of Wegmans “variety”:

  • Survey respondents believe Wegmans has new products and offerings not readily available in other grocery stores.
  • Grocery stores need to offer hard-to-find items such as lamb, real sugar cane, red lentils, vegan meatballs, or even peach Fresca. By highlighting unusual offerings, grocers start building their own reputation for variety.

2. Win the Coupon War

Coupons plan an important role in a grocery store’s popularity:

  • About 70% of our survey respondents report that it’s important that their grocery story provide coupons flyers.
  • This reinforces what we’ve been telling advertisers for years: grocery shoppers are looking for a strong coupon offering from their stores.
  • In fact, 10% of our research participants said that if their grocer starting offering coupon flyers less often, it would be a reason to switch stores.

3. Be Nice to Customers

When asked which factors inspire store loyalty, customer service and the checkout experience were top factors:

  • No matter how well grocers manage other aspects of their stores, customer service can make or break a customer’s desire to return.
  • Grocers who want more loyal customers will not only provide more staff at checkout, they will also staff the registers with people who are happy to be there, willing to talk to customers and, in general, know how to be truly helpful.
  • It makes good financial sense to reward the best cashiers with more money and preferential treatment. They can literally make or break the grocery business.

4. Talk About The Family

Our Research shows that Lancaster County likes family-owned grocery businesses, and they like knowing that the money they spend stays local:

  • Many respondents noted that family ownership is a primary reason for staying loyal to a grocery store.
  • “Family Owned” is important, but it’s also smart to start talking about the family. Does the family work in the store? Promote it. Add family photos to the photos already posted of deli managers and head bakers. Add the family name to name tags. Tell customers about the family and share the family’s business philosophy with customers. Call out family favorites throughout the store. Make the grocery store personal and human to increase shopper loyalty.

5. Specials and Discounts Still Work

Specials and discounts play an important role in enticing customers to come back:

  • 90% of our respondents report that specials and discount are an important factor when choosing a grocery store.
  • Grocers getting ready to run a big sale, or who have impressive specials running, should let ALL the shoppers in Lancaster County know. Our research shows Lancaster County grocery shoppers are willing to try new stores, so make sure to give them a reason to try your store.

LNP offers more grocery and coupon delivery systems than any other media available in our area. To find out what’s new with LNP grocery marketing, contact us.

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LNP Media Group is committed to delivering exceptional experiences to our audiences, our customers, our vendor and our employees throughout Lancaster County and Central Pennsylvania. We provide value to our marketing and advertising partners by building effective and innovative solutions and by delivering exemplary customer experiences.

It All Adds Up: 5 Tips for Financial Marketing

It All Adds Up: 5 Tips for Financial Marketing

by | May 26, 2016 | Insights, Marketing Strategy

Discover how to stand out in a crowded industry.

For any business, getting noticed can be challenging,  For banks, credit unions, mortgage companies, and financial planners creating awareness is critical. After all, financial services companies don’t offer ordinary services. In fact, many consumers consider financial services on par with emergency services—important, urgent, and vital.

So how do you, as a financial services provider, stand out from the competition in the critical moments in which your services are most needed? It’s not a quick fix, but if you follow these five tips, we can help you streamline your financial marketing and guide prospects to your solutions when they’re ready to act.

Create Awareness with Repeated Messages

Consumers need to be aware of financial services businesses well before they’re ready to buy:

  • Consumers equate name awareness with trust and stability— key attributes for financial services. By repeating your message over and over, you’ll create the kind of exposure that allows your business to come to consumers’ minds when it matters most.
  • While there’s no magic formula for creating awareness, it’s good to know that many marketers believe consumers must see a message a minimumof three times before it begins to sink in.
  • Leading financial marketers are exposing consumers to their message hundreds of times before the consumer is ready to make a decision. The more often a consumer sees your message, the more likely you are to build top-of-mind awareness.

Build Trust by Surrounding Your Ad with Credible Media

What you say is important, but where you say it is equally important:

  • Have you ever found a stranger’s business card on your windshield? How did that make you feel about the business? It might be an effective strategy to get people to try a new burger joint, but it doesn’t convey trustworthiness.
  • While it’s easy to see that print has more credibility than windshield flyers, it takes a little more time to figure out if your message is surrounded by compatible messages.
  • If you’re a conservative financial institution, you probably won’t want to be surrounded by ads for local nightclubs. However, if you’re a financial planner that focuses on helping the arts community, you might want to consider running ads in the newspaper’s cultural section or entertainment magazine.

Make Contact Simple with a Clear Call-to-Action

Once consumers start noticing your advertising and see that you’re advertising in the kind of media that they like and trust, they may want to contact you to learn more:

  • It’s important to remove any roadblocks in the communication path.
  • What phone number are you including in your advertising? Once readers call the number listed, will they get a real person, or will they be sent to an automated phone system? Did you list a website in your ad? Are you directing prospects to a website that isn’t mobile-friendly?
  • All it takes is a single barrier or frustration to lose a potential customer, so it makes sense to spend time reviewing what kind of call-to-action you want to include in your ads. Make sure you run through the call-to-action yourself so that you can see or hear what the customer is experiencing. This will help you identify potential road blocks beforethey happen to your prospects.

Resist Changes and Stay Consistent

Whether you are a chef creating nightly masterpieces or an athlete training for the big race, consistency is key. The same concept applies to your marketing. Maintaining your core message and values conveys stability and trustworthiness, traits that consumers look for in their financial service provider:

  • Is your brand consistently and accurately reflected through the proper colors, logo, and tone of the content? Keep track of how you’re using your logo, and make sure you use it in exactly the same way every time.
  • While marketers tend to get bored seeing the same messages and logos over and over, customers see these messages only a few times. Consistency isn’t boring to customers, it’s a recognition tool and helps consumers remember and internalize your brand benefits.

Have a Plan and Stick with it

It’s important to stick with a media plan, even if you’re not seeing immediate results. Financial marketing is rarely a sprint. By building awareness in credible formats, staying consistent with your message and adhering to your brand standards, you’re building a solid reputation.  Don’t be tempted to change ads, media, and messages when your internal marketing team gets bored. Remember that your company’s goal is to communicate stability and trust to consumers. Stay the course and you’ll build the kind of brand equity that competitors will envy.

Want to learn more tips for financial marketing? Ready to set up a free consultation? Contact us here and we’ll start talking about ways to build your financial services business today.

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LNP Media Group is committed to delivering exceptional experiences to our audiences, our customers, our vendors and our employees throughout Lancaster County and Central Pennsylvania. We provide value to our marketing and advertising partners by building effective and innovative solutions and by delivering exemplary customer experiences.

Digital or Traditional: Which Media Works Best for Seniors?

by | May 16, 2016 | Insights, Marketing Strategy

Are you marketing to adults 50+?

You may think that traditional marketing, such as newspaper and print, is the best medium for your target audience. After all, it has powerful benefits: you get broad reach, you have well-developed audiences, you can ensure exclusivity within a time block or within news sections. It’s true that print is still one of the very best ways to build brand awareness.

Digital marketing tactics, on the other hand, offer their own set of benefits. Most notably, digital marketing offers:

  • Refined analytics
  • Precise targeting
  • Reliable success measurements
  • Budget-friendly options
  • Increased exposure

So what percentage of your budget is spent on digital vs. traditional marketing? The reality is that the most effective programs are deeply integrated. The question is: how do you build an effective marketing plan when your target audience is mainly offline?

Marketing for Older Adults

Research is showing that not only do seniors (and their adult children) want to become familiar with a product or service before purchasing, the internet has now become the most popular way for them to do that kind of research.

Take a look at the following facts that dispel the senior/anti-tech stereotype:

Welcome to the World of Digital Marketing!

Where to begin? Think about how you want to allocate your advertising dollars; the most effective plans use the best features of both digital and traditional together to build awareness, create engagement and generate sales leads.

Don’t think of digital vs. traditional marketing as “either-or.” The right answer is both.

LNP Media Group offers all kinds of successful print and digital strategies. Contact us to learn more about how to activate your target audience through both traditional and digital media.

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LNP Media Group is committed to delivering exceptional experiences to our audiences, our customers, our vendors and our employees throughout Lancaster County and Central Pennsylvania. We provide value to our marketing and advertising partners by building effective and innovative solutions and by delivering exemplary customer experiences.