Video Marketing Strategies for Businesses

Video Marketing Strategies for Businesses

by | Aug 17, 2017 | Insights, Online Marketing

Video is becoming the preferred way to consume information, especially on mobile devices, and this is important news for small business marketers. As consumers spend more and more time watching video online, they begin to expect the sight, sound, and motion it offers. Here are four ways to take advantage of this growing trend and make sure your business is getting the most out of video marketing.

Use video on Facebook and twitter to increase engagement

Using filmed message and stories in ads and posts is a great way to engage viewers and attract them to your posts:

Use video to improve your search engine visibility

Diverse media, which includes videos, is favored by search engine algorithms:

  • Google constantly adjusts its algorithm to give its users a meaningful experience, and video continually ranks high for user engagement.
  • As a result, this kind of content is often extremely prominent in search results.
  • Incorporating video into your media portfolio can help to increase your search engine visibility, benefitting any type of business.

Use video to encourage sharing

Have some tutorials you want to share? Know how to help consumers solve problems? Want to showcase emotional stories? Filmed spots might be your medium. Online users are more likely to share and re-share video than other forms of content. If you have a visual way to showcase your products, services, or expertise, consider using film to do so.

Teach consumers how to use your product

More and more people educate themselves through product reviews and blog updates before making a purchase decision:

  • Research shows that 64% of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social videos.
  • Giving consumers helpful advice on how to find the right size, order the right wine, or open the right type of bank account will lead them to your filmed spot and your business.

Want to know more?

All types of business can benefit from a smart online video campaign. LNP Media Group can help you strategize, develop and launch your ideas into spots that sell. Contact us to find out more about your video marketing options.

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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!

 

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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.

The Secrets to Getting More People into Your Restaurant

The Secrets to Getting More People into Your Restaurant

by | Jul 18, 2016 | Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Good Food Starts with High-Volume Marketing

You have great food. Your restaurant looks good. And you finally got the back of the house into working order. All you’re missing are the crowds of hungry patrons. While Lancaster County is famous for having more than its fair share of outstanding eating options, not all restaurants are experiencing the same levels of success.

With so many great options available for diners, Lancaster restaurants need more than word of mouth to keep momentum going. In this super-competitive marketplace, smart advertising can make the difference between busy kitchens and layoffs.

Start with Awareness MarketingEvery Thursday over 40,000 households turn to Entertainment Lancaster to plan their weekends.

You need to reach large numbers of people without paying a fortune. LNP Media Group offers a variety of media options developed especially for restaurants. In addition to vibrant newspaper options and the area’s most visited website, LNP Media also publishes several specialty publications that can also increase awareness. Each Thursday L
NP publishes Entertainment Lancaster, also know as EL, which is the area’s most comprehensive guide to weekend activities, destinations and events. Fly After 5 targets people in Lancaster County looking for exciting nightlife options, including restaurants, festivals and drinks. LNP Media Group also offers Spanish-language ads in LaVoz, the county’s only Spanish-language newspaper. There are so many ways to reach the patrons you’re looking for. We can help you make smart choices that make sense for your business and your bottom line. Contact us to find out more.

IFly Magazinenvest in Photography

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but for restaurant owners, it may actually be worth more. Today’s restaurant patrons not only look at photos of food online, they may be posting some of their own! Make sure you supplement their amateur photos with a professional shots of your own. Lancaster County has dozens of young photographers who are both eager to work and affordable. Once you upgrade your food photography, your ads will work better, your social media will get more attention and the perceptions of your restaurant and its food will skyrocket.

If you’re not ready for a website, spend some time with your Facebook page.

Many restaurants skip the website, and honestly, in today’s digital universe, that’s okay. But it’s not okay to treat a Facebook page like a website. You can’t set it and forget it, or update it twice a year. Facebook pages require regular content. We recommend creating new posts daily. You should be promoting new menu items, changes in hours, talk about how you handle food allergies, features shots of guests and employees, and generally create a daily conversation. Facebook pages that look and feel like abandoned property reflect poorly on your establishment.

Advertise on Facebook and Instagram

A few years ago, Facebook purchased Instagram. Now you can place ads on both platforms that are geographically targeted. You can also refine your ad delivery by specifying people of a certain age, gender or interest. Want to promote new gluten-free menu items? Facebook and Instagram can send ads only to people concerned about gluten allergies. Have a pricey menu? Just send ads to higher income groups in Lancaster County. You may be surprised by the ease and cost of these new media. LNP Media Group’s experiences social media experts can help make the most of your campaigns by creating and placings ads, creating special promotional landing pages and even creating and monitoring content.

You Have Dozens of Marketing Options

LNP Media Group offers a variety of print and online publications. We offer a wide range of digital marketing tools and social media content and advertising opportunities. If you haven’t talked to an LNP Media Group representative lately, you may be surprised at how flexible and affordable our offerings can be. Contact us today and let’s get reacquainted.

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

by | Jun 28, 2016 | Uncategorized

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.
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.