Marketing Tips for Home and Holiday Retailers

Marketing Tips for Home and Holiday Retailers

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.
Marketing Tips for Lawn and Garden Marketers

Marketing Tips for Lawn and Garden Marketers

It’s Time to Start Thinking About Fall

It’s hard to get motivated about Fall sales when the temperatures have climbed past 90 degrees, but for lawn and garden services and retailers, July marks the end of the summer selling season. It’s time to start thinking about Fall marketing efforts and to get prepared for the lawn and garden rush that begins after Labor Day.

The local lawn and gardening business has always been competitive, and Fall 2016 will be no exception. Staying top-of-mind will be key to business success as more and more retailers and lawn service flood the Central Pennsylvania market with promotional messages.

Frequency is Key to Top-Of Mind AwarenessHome Garden Lawn Fall Advertising Lancaster County

Top-of-mind awareness is a powerful marketing goal. When consumers put a business into that small set of names they
remember first, they’re also highly likely to patronize that business over less familiar names. Top-of-mind awareness also increases a business’s value to consumers. It is an image enhancer. When customers familiar enough with a business to assign it top-of-mind awareness status, they’re also much less likely to be price sensitive with that business. They’re, also less likely to shop around. They stick with the businesses they know.

One of the most effective ways to build top-of-mind awareness is through frequency. Frequency is a marketing term that refers to how often a consumer will see an ad. High frequency means consumers see the ads repeatedly. Repeated exposure to ads results in heightened awareness. And if these ads have relevant content that customers care about, that awareness can quickly escalate into top-of-mind awareness for the business.

Smart lawn and garden services here in Central Pennsylvania know they can create top-of-mind awareness with regular advertising in a major medium, like newspaper. Newspaper is an especially desired format for lawn and garden businesses, After all, LNP readers tend to be 40+ homeowners with families and a yard. Advertising in LNP not only offers affordable way to reach homeowners who care about their lawn and garden, it also offers special Fall sections developed to engage homeowners looking for ways to improve their homes, lawns and gardens this Fall. Contact us to discover all the ways your lawn and garden business can build strong awareness with LNP.

Reinforce the Message with Social Media Marketing

Newspaper are a great tool for creating top-of-mind awareness. However, when businesses combine newspaper with targeted digital campaigns, they can amplify targeted reach quickly with relatively inexpensive programs designs to build on core messages. For example, if a lawn care business promoted a series of “fall cleanup” ads in LNP, they could also target those readers again with social media ads that allows prospects to click through to a website, or find a special offer on a stand-alone landing page. Our LNP Media Group teams can help you map out synergies like this, and can also create and place social media ads, develop landing pages and proactively optimize campaign performance daily, to ensure your business gets the best results possible.

Effective Advertising Won’t Work if You’re Not Ready for the Leads

While mixing traditional and new media is a key part of growing a lawn and garden business today, there are still some old-fashioned basics that make the difference between success and failure.

Media makes the phone ring (or emails or texts ping.) However, no matter how prospects contact a business, crackerjack sales teams must be ready to take the call (or email or text) and start selling quickly.

Make sure your team is ready to handle new leads. Consumer expectations have changed. They now expect quick responses, and if you’re not ready to answer quickly, they’ll move on. For example, If someone expresses interest on your website, have someone contact them within five minutes to close the deal. And like in the past, you need to look at the bigger picture when creating a marketing plan — which could include a mix of old and new channels.

The Trifecta of Lawn and Garden Marketing

When you combine a strong print campaign with a creative social media effort, and have a team in place that is ready to respond and sell quickly, you’ve set yourself up for record Fall sales. If you want to learn more about how LNP Media Group can help you create a marketing trifecta, or how we can employ our wide range of marketing and advertising tools to take your marketing efforts to the next level, contact us today and we’ll create a custom plan that makes sense for your business.

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.