How to Target the Right Audience on Facebook

How to Target the Right Audience on Facebook

by | Feb 23, 2017 | Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Uncategorized

By Tiffany  Anderson   

If you don’t already know the value of Facebook advertising, it’s OK. The good news is that it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down in the near future. In fact, the ad manager platform frequently launches new updates intended to create a better user experience.

Businesses can now promote content with a few simple clicks but if you don’t understand the targeting opportunities beyond what boosted posts have to offer, you could be wasting money. We’ve collected a few stats from Facebook’s ad manager to give you a preview of the targeting potential in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Facebook users in Lancaster County Pennsylvania

Share this Image On Your Site

 

Our infographic illustrates just a few of the 200+ targeting options businesses can use to increase their local reach. January reports showed that nearly 70% of the county’s population 18 years and older are active on Facebook. Before you assume this isn’t the right advertising tool for your business, the ad manager allows us to check the potential reach before spending any money. You may be pleasantly surprised by the numbers!

Here are the best Facebook targeting strategies every ad manager should take advantage of.

Custom Audiences

If you have a list of customer emails, upload them to your audience profile. This presents an opportunity to nurture your audience, develop brand loyalty, promote order frequency, and increase the lifetime customer value.

Lookalike Audiences

Who better to target than the friends of your current customers? You can create a “lookalike” audience from a custom audience, conversion tracking pixel, or business page followers. How does it work? First, Facebook scans the active accounts of the source to identify similar qualities based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. Then, those qualities are matched with the friends of the users from the source and curated into a new lookalike audience list.

Location Targeting

This is one targeting option that is pretty easy to overlook. Besides having the option to target locations by country, state, address, and mile radius; there is one selection advertisers should think twice about before starting their campaign. It’s that little drop down box beside the Locations field where “everyone in this location” is preselected. Depending on your business and/or offer, this may not be the most efficient way to spend. When you look at the drop down options (everyone in, living in, recently in, and traveling in this location), you may find at least one of the three groups that make up the default selection does not apply to your target audience.

A home cleaning business, for example, wouldn’t benefit by targeting people who do not live within their service area. A local attraction, however, would see value in targeting people who live in the area and are traveling near their location. In this instance, an advertiser can create different ads that are unique to residents and visitors.

Detailed/Layered Targeting

This is level audience targeting is not available in boosted posts so pay close attention because it can help save you money! There are so many scenarios where this hypertargeting tool comes in handy but let’s pretend we are marketing a new fast and fresh meal option to working moms with small children.

It’s not enough to simply add those selections in one layer because you won’t be targeting the right audience. Without narrowing your selections, you will be targeting all working moms no matter what age their children are and all moms with small children who may or may not be working.  Detailed targeting allows us to exclude or narrow selections to further define your most desired audiences.

Purchase Behaviors

Facebook’s partnerships with big data companies offer advertisers with a whole new set of targeting options based on the buying habits of users. From DIYers, coupon users, fashionistas and consumers of just about any type of product you can think of, there is bound to be a selection relevant to your offer.

Life Events

Some businesses, like jewelers, can benefit greatly from Facebook’s life events selections. Life events is a collection of user data that helps advertisers target people in new relationships, who are newly engaged, have an anniversary coming up, started a new job, and more. This feature gives us the unique ability to capture and convert customers at opportune times.

With the amount of information Facebook collects on their users, to say they know more about you than your best friend wouldn’t be totally far-fetched for some. As scary as it may sound, they are committed to transparency and respecting user privacy. Advertisers will never gain access to personally identifiable information of their target audience unless it is willingly submitted by an individual in response to a call-to-action campaign.

Are you ready to explore the opportunities Facebook has in store for you? Create customized ads for niche audiences, build better connections, and measure campaign effectiveness. For help getting started, contact us!

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.
LNP Media Group is a division of Steinman Communications, one of the largest and most experienced communications companies in the Mid-Atlantic. Steinman Communications is an innovative, multi-channel communications company that delivers high-quality news, information and entertainment to diverse audiences.
Digital Marketing from the “Newspaper?”

Digital Marketing from the “Newspaper?”

by | Dec 30, 2016 | Insights

Digital marketing has become a critical part of most marketing plans. Platforms like Facebook/Instagram offer unmatched audience targeting, paid search advertising reaches specific customers who are ready to buy, and geofencing reaches mobile audiences within narrow geographic areas. The question we often get is, “Why do I want digital marketing services from the newspaper instead of a dedicated digital marketing agency?”

In this article, we’ll demonstrate the reasons why your business will get the best results using “the newspaper” as your digital marketing agency:

  1. Digital marketing credentials – We earn, and maintain, digital marketing credentials that demonstrate our expertise.
  2. Local – As a newspaper, we have a long history as a part of the Lancaster County community, and we understand the importance of having a local team you can talk to. Our team includes local artists, videographers, photographers, and digital marketing strategists.
  3. Design – We have robust graphic design capabilities that are offered at no extra cost to advertisers.
  4. Multi-channel and multi-audience – Because we have deep expertise both print and digital marketing, we are experts at creating multi-channel campaigns to boost performance by reaching targeted audiences wherever they spend time.
  5. Proof of performance – Newspapers have long understood the need for transparency and factual information. With LNP Media Group, you’ll know exactly where your money was spent and what results your campaign generated.

Digital Marketing Credentials – LNP Media Group is a Google Partner and Meta Certified

LNP Media Group’s historic roots in the newspaper business mean that we know the value of credentials to prove the truthfulness of our claims to have digital marketing expertise. Our Google and Meta credentials show our clients that we have taken the time and effort to master these platforms, and that we can bring that expertise to a business’s marketing campaigns.

We are not a fly-by-night digital marketing agency; LNP Media Group has been in business for over 225 years. We have embraced the digital marketing era and will continue to stay at the forefront of the learning and credentials needed to maintain our expertise.

Google Partner:

  • To be certified as a Google Partner, LNP Media Group’s digital team members had to pass exams to validate our understanding of Google Ads (Google’s advertising platform) and Google Analytics (Google’s website traffic analysis tool).
  • We also have to show Google, on an on-going basis, that we’re managing a significant amount of digital advertising, and we have to verify that we have sustained growth in the number of clients we serve.

What does this mean to your business? It means that when you use LNP Media Group for a Google campaign, you can be sure that our team is on top of the latest advances in Google’s ad serving technology. Google offers a broad array of campaigns and we can select the best ones for your business’s goals. Among the options are:

  • Search campaigns – These campaigns target people who are actively searching online for specific items and services to purchase. This is an excellent campaign type if your goal is to drive sales or leads through your website.
  • Display campaigns – These campaigns are best for creating awareness and consideration of your business’s brand, products and services. Display campaigns use visually appealing ads to help drive interest. You can target people who have visited your website, or who have visited a competitor’s website, or who have interests in topics related to your brand.
  • Video YouTube campaigns – Video is a highly engaging content type that can tell the story of your business. Your business’s video can be shown as pre-roll, outstream, skippable in-stream or non-skippable in-stream.
  • App campaigns – These campaigns run on over 3 million sites and apps and are great for promoting downloads and engagements with your app.
  • Shopping campaigns – Use shopping campaigns if you have an e-commerce store so that your ads will appear in the Google Shopping tab and in search results. This campaign type is excellent for conversion.

Our status as a Google Partner also means that the Google support team is just a phone call away. Our proven expertise translates into a better return on investment for your digital marketing campaigns.

Meta Certified:

  • To become Meta Certified, our team members had to study the details and pass exams to demonstrate mastery of Meta’s targeting and campaign management tools for Facebook and Instagram.
  • We understand the details of the audiences that Meta can reach, and the best placements for your Meta ads. We also understand best practices in setting objectives to drive the right kind of traffic and engagement with your campaign.

What does this mean to you? It means that when you use LNP Media Group for a social media campaign, you can be sure that our team is on top of the latest advances in Meta’s ad serving technology. Meta offers a broad array of campaigns and we can select the best ones for your business’s goals. Among the options are:

  • Awareness – This type of campaign objective will cast the widest net to reach the most people and let them know about your business’s brand.
  • Traffic – This type of campaign objective will increase traffic to your website, app, or Facebook page.
  • Event promotion and ticket sales – We have used Meta many times to successfully drive event attendance and sell tickets for many types of events.
  • Leads – This campaign objective is best for getting people to share information about themselves for further communication later, such as signing up for an e-newsletter.
  • Sales – This campaign objective is great for e-commerce, to drive product sales, including adding items to a cart.

Our Staff Are Local

Many digital marketing agencies will not tell you that they use offshore contractors to set up and run campaigns. In this digital world, it’s tempting for marketing agencies to use inexpensive overseas labor.

However, with our long history as a local news organization, LNP Media Group does not use offshore labor and never will, even for digital marketing.

LNP Media Group has been deeply rooted in Lancaster County for over 225 years, and this connection means that we only hire people who live and work in this area. We believe that offering employment is a benefit to our community, and we also believe that, as a marketing agency, we perform better by having local people who can get to know businesses in-person. As you work with us, you’ll get to know the names and faces of our team members. This builds trust and transparency between your business and our team.

Graphic Design Services Free for Advertisers

LNP Media Group’s long newspaper history means that we have always had a strong cadre of creatives on staff. And because newspapers have tight daily deadlines, we know how to work quickly and efficiently. In prior decades our artists were focused on creatives for print advertising, but our capacities have expanded with the rise of digital marketing. View some portfolio samples here.

Graphic design services are free when you advertise with us, whether using our owned-and-operated media or using outside services like Google and Meta.

Our design expertise includes, but is not limited to:

  • Newsprint and magazine ads
  • Digital ads: jpg and png
  • Animations: gif and html5
  • Billboards
  • Event materials like table tents, step and repeats, signage, booths
  • Illustration
  • Brochures and flyers
  • Van wraps
  • Video and photography
  • Logo design and branding

But, if you’re not advertising with us, that’s ok! Our graphic design services are also available as a fee-for-service.

Multi-Channel and Multi-Audience

LNP Media Group is different from a typical marketing agency because we have our own media distribution that we use to efficiently deliver audiences that no one else can:

  • We own LNP, a local daily newspaper with strong circulation.
  • We own Lancasteronline.com, the largest news website in Lancaster County with over 1 million unique visitors per month.
  • We own a TMC (total market coverage) weekly circular called Pocket.
  • We own two weekly newspapers, the Lititz Record Express and the Ephrata Review, that provide hyper-local news content for their communities.
  • We publish a tourism magazine, Visit Lancaster, three times a year that is distributed to hotels and tourism attractions in Lancaster County.
  • We publish Balance magazine, a glossy lifestyle magazine with beautiful photography and informative articles.
  • On top of all that owned-and-operated media, we can layer digital campaigns with pinpoint precision through geofencing, paid search, email marketing, targeted display, and Facebook/Instagram.

The fact that LNP Media Group is “the newspaper” means we have local ownership of news media that allows us to bundle together digital and print marketing to create the most effective marketing plan possible.

And, in July of 2023, LNP Media Group became part of WITF, a non-profit locally owned and operated media company in Harrisburg PA. WITF is an affiliate station of both NPR and PBS.

This combination of two local media powerhouses, WITF and LNP Media Group, creates incredible marketing opportunities for local businesses. Through this partnership we can provide your business with every possible type of marketing campaign, from print to digital to public radio and TV sponsorships.

We Deliver Clear, Measurable Digital Marketing Results

With our historical roots in the newspaper business, LNP Media Group understands the importance of building trust through factual, transparent journalism. This integrity carries over to our work in marketing, where we demonstrate our transparency through digital marketing campaign reporting. With every marketing initiative we create for your business, you will get a report that shows exactly where your money was spent, and the results that were achieved.

Here are a just a few examples:

  • An email marketing campaign for a local auto retailer resulted in 17 cars sold with a return on investment of over 100%.
  • A paid search advertising campaign for a heating and air conditioning company increased sales leads by 165%.
  • A Facebook advertising campaign for a local retailer resulted in 1,431 sales leads at a cost per lead of $0.81.

You can read more detailed examples on our case studies page.

Our roots in the newspaper business also mean that we understand the critical importance of the small business community in Lancaster County. Because of this, we offer digital advertising rates that are very affordable and get outstanding results.

Are we “the newspaper”? Yes, we are proud to be Lancaster County’s locally owned and operated daily newspaper for over 225 years. You’ll find that this heritage has tremendous benefits for your business when you use LNP Media Group as your marketing agency.

Let’s take the first step of getting to know each other with a free marketing strategy session. Together, we’ll review your business’s goals and craft a custom marketing proposal to achieve those goals. To get started, contact us today!

 

« Back to Blog

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 Ways Real Estate Uses Digital To Attract Sellers

5 Ways Real Estate Uses Digital To Attract Sellers

by | Nov 29, 2016 | Insights

Digital marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your business. By investing in digital marketing, you can reach a growing customer base at a fast pace. Has your real estate business dipped into the digital world yet? Start reaching more sellers with these digital marketing tips.

Content Marketing

Though maintaining a blog can be tedious, it’s importance to a complete digital marketing portfolio should not be overlooked:

  • Having an updated blog with engaging content is a great way to connect with sellers and even buyers.
  • Companies that published 16+ blog posts a month got almost 3.5x more traffic than companies that published between 0-4 monthly posts. Increasing the amount of blog posts you have increases web traffic.
  • Customized content will allow sellers to feel as though you’re speaking directly to them, which is a great way to connect with your target audience.
  • When choosing blog post topics, make sure to pick subjects that are both applicable to your audience and focused on a specific topic.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a great way to connect with potential home sellers and buyers in any market. What’s critical about this kind of digital marketing is that you can communicate directly with an engaged audience. Email marketing gives you the tools to stay connected with those who are interested in what you have to offer:

  • Studies have shown that 74% of consumers prefer to receive commercial communication via email.
  • If you have a website, consider adding an email sign-up form to the most highly visited pages, such as the homepage, in order to collect email addresses. This will help provide you with a sufficient list of emails.
  • You’ll want to be sure your sign-up form also tells visitors what kind of information to expect in your emails.
  • If you’re on Facebook, set up your business page’s call-to-action feature to connect to your sign up form to attract new email subscribers.
  • You can also collect emails offline by using sign-up sheets at events such as open houses.

Geo-fencing

Geo-fencing is location-based digital marketing in which you define geographic boundaries to target an audience on their mobile devices. Geofences can be precision targeted down to a radius of 400 meters, allowing you to fence locations such as home shows, interior design stores, home improvement stores, or any location you can envision that would attract your target audience.

Once your audience has entered the geofenced area, they will be tagged to be served your ads on their location-enabled mobile device. You can use these ads for awareness of your real estate company, or even to alert people to their proximity to an open house.

Social Media

Social media allows real estate agents to set themselves apart while growing a loyal following:

  • Selling or buying a home is one of the most important processes in a person’s life. Listing houses can be a lengthy process, and prospects will need to be nurtured along the way.
  • Facebook is an excellent tool for building longer-term relationships. Facebook Ads can reach a targeted audience based on demographics and interests, so that you can engage with them throughout the longer buying and selling process.

Website Design

You have one shot at impressing visitors when they come to your website for the first time. Their first visit will influence their decision to stay or move on. Make sure your website makes an impact and highlights your most compelling message. How do you make sure your website is working hard?

  • Ensure it is mobile friendly
  • Include a mortgage calculator
  • Include information for buyers, sellers, and investors
  • Make sure your site is easy to navigate on all types of devices
  • Include social media sharing buttons
  • Make sure your content is compelling

For more information on how you can use digital marketing to reach sellers, contact us. Our real estate experts will be happy to assist you in developing your digital marketing plan.

« Back to Blog

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.

LNP Media Group is a division of Steinman Communications, one of the largest and most experienced communications companies in the Mid-Atlantic. Steinman Communications is an innovative, multi-channel communications company that delivers high quality news, information and entertainment to diverse audiences.

We’re a Google Partner!

We’re a Google Partner!

by | Jul 27, 2016 | Uncategorized

What are the advantages of working with a “Google Partner” company? 

Running paid search advertising campaigns on Google isn’t necessarily hard. Anyone can set them up, buy a few keywords and watch the traffic start to roll in. But running them effectively is difficult. That’s why working with a marketing partner that has Google Partner status is advantageous.

What Expertise Should your Marketing Partner Have?

Successful paid search advertising campaigns will put money in your pocket while unsuccessful ones are merely an expense. Here’s why.

First, the wrong keywords will not convert to leads. Almost any keyword can drive traffic to your site, but only the right ones will turn into profitable marketing leads. Picking the right ones requires deep expertise. For example, imagine that you are a Central Pennsylvania painter with a specialty in wallpaper applications, and you’re seeking sales leads. A keyword like “wallpaper” might seem like a good one to buy at Google. But buying that term could be a waste of money. People entering this keyword might be seeking new screen savers for their computers. Or they might want to see photos of wallpaper to buy. Choosing keywords that will lead to a conversion is critical and this requires careful analysis and experience.Digital marketing paid search Lancaster PA

Second, in order for paid search campaigns to be successful, they must be carefully measured and optimized over the entire course of the campaign. This requires measurement tools to monitor the performance of each keyword, to track how much website traffic it drives, how many sales leads it creates and to measure its return on investment. Setting up campaigns for this precise measurement is a skill that takes time to master.

Advantages of Working with a Google Partner

Google Partnership is a designation that Google provides to organizations that have proven their ability to successfully set up, manage and monitor paid search advertising campaigns. To attain the Google Partner designation, a business must:

  • Show expertise in AdWords (paid search advertising)
  • Manage a significant amount of paid search advertising
  • Show sustained growth in the numbers of clients served

The LNP Media Group team is pleased to have recently earned Google Partner status and we can confidently report that getting this kind of certification ain’t easy. It took months of taking certification exams in Google AdWords (Google’s advertising platform) and Google Analytics (Google’s website analysis tool). We also had to prove that we have been delivering strong results for clients on live campaigns. And lastly we had to show that we have a growing list of satisfied clients.

This designation has strong advantages. Google support is just a phone call away with our dedicated Google account manager. (Try reaching someone at Google without this!) We can tap into their experience across thousands of ad campaigns, and get ideas for increasing performance on our campaigns. And we access ongoing training to stay on top of the latest advances in paid search advertising; critical because the tools and techniques are always evolving.

Why does the Google Partner Badge Matter?

Lancaster PA Paid Search Google AdWorksIt matters because it’s proof that your digital marketing partner knows what they are doing, and that’s going to translate into a better return on investment for your paid search advertising campaign.

Want to to know more? Contact us today to learn more about paid search advertising and how we can help your business grow.

 

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.
LNP Media Group is a division of Steinman Communications, one of the largest and most experienced communications companies in the Mid-Atlantic. Steinman Communications is an innovative, multi-channel communications company that delivers high quality news, information and entertainment to diverse audiences.
Marketing Tips for Home and Holiday Retailers

Marketing Tips for Home and Holiday Retailers

by | Jun 29, 2016 | Marketing Strategy, Uncategorized

Fourth Quarter is Just Around the Corner. Are You Ready?

For businesses in the home and holiday markets, July is truly the calm before the storm. While home décor and holiday sales are traditionally very slow in July and August, September heralds the return of the hordes of eager shoppers. They’re ready to outfit their home for the cold weather and make this the best holiday season ever.  

It’s no secret that fourth quarter can make or break a home fashion or holiday business. It makes sense to start planning your fourth quarter marketing strategies early. We can help.

The Goal is Top-of-Mind Awareness

When you think of phones, which brands come to mind? When you’re considering a new vehicle, which brands do you look at first? The brands that popped into your head have top-of-mind awareness with you. They are the brands you think of first when you think of that category.

Top-of-mind awareness is one of the most powerful marketing goal. Think of your best customers today. They come to your store often. They don’t complain (much) about price. They’re loyal. You have already achieved top-of-mind awareness with those people. Wouldn’t it be great if you could create the same kind of awareness with hundreds, even thousands, of new customers? This Fall your business goals should go beyond creating awareness. You want to create top-of-mind awareness.

Here in Lancaster County LNP Media Group offers a variety of ways to create top-of-mind awareness. We all know newspaper offers a highly visual medium. But did you know that LNP readers tend to be 40+ homeowners with families and above average income? For many home and holiday marketers, that’s the sweet spot.Lancaster County Consumer Advertising

That’s why, every Fall, LNP Media Group creates special Fall home sections developed to engage homeowners looking for ways to make this season the best one ever. Contact us to discover all the ways these special advertising opportunities can help your home and holiday business.

Combine the Reach of Print with the Laser-Focus of Digital

Nothing beats LNP for creating brand awareness, but if you want to combine your awareness campaign with super-targeted digital ads, we’ve got some great tools to help drive traffic into your door at the right time. LNP Media Group offers geo-fencing, a relatively new technology that pushes your ads out to customers’ mobile devices when they’re close to your store. That means they’re g
oing to be reminded of your business when they’re already in the neighborhood.

We also help businesses create special promotional landing pages, social and internet ads and help push those ads out to the targeted audiences that are most likely to purchase your goods. Be sure to contact us so our team can explain all the exciting digital options to your business.

Promotional Marketing

Even the most loyal customer needs an occasional push to get them to shop at your business. Break through shopping apathy with exciting promotions and sales. While nothing moves people to action like super low prices, if you want to maintain margins, you may want to consider fun, thematic promotions that pique curiosity and encourage foot traffic. It requires your business to think creatively and get a little less predictable. Have a sale on everything orange. Run a scratch and win promotion. Unveil new merchandise at an invitation-only event.

And then promote it creatively with things like digital landing pages, social media ads and geo-fenced mobile ads. Fourth quarter is a time to make big, bold moves, so be creative and try moving outside of your comfort zone.

We’re Ready to Rock the Fourth Quarter

LNP Media Group is continually growing and adding new, exciting technologies to our suite of marketing and media products. If you have talked to us lately, fourth quarter is the time to get reacquainted. Give us a call and we’ll help you make this your best fourth quarter ever.

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.
LNP Media Group is a division of Steinman Communications, one of the largest and most experienced communications companies in the Mid-Atlantic. Steinman Communications is an innovative, multi-channel communications company that delivers high quality news, information and entertainment to diverse audiences.