Coupons and voucher campaigns have, for too long, been the elephant in the room at the marketing party. Early advertising gurus were staunch advocates, with David Ogilvy even making couponing one of the advertising ‘commandments’ in his seminal Confessions of an Advertising Man. Despite this, modern ad agencies have lost their way in the medium, leaving vouchers to the direct mail specialists. Here Jason Mawer, MD of hyper-local agency Oxbury Media, explains why vouchers are alive and well and how a network of outlets the company has created means that they are now more effective than ever before.Oxbury Media provides advertisers access to a unique network hyper local media outlets. At present we are seeing a huge trend towards accessing this network as part of strategic voucher campaigns, mostly by national brands. These campaigns tend to be based around timely events, such as Christmas, Halloween, and bonfire night as well as stock sales and product testing. The other key reason for running voucher campaigns for high street retailers is to improve footfall at new stores.
However, there is a crucial point to be made here. We aren’t encouraging these brands to add to the mountain of recycling currently generated by households across the UK. The couponing campaigns we are advocating run in hyper-local media channels, including local magazines, village and parish magazines and local newsletters. There’s no litter on the floor with these campaigns, because these titles are actually read by people with an interest in their local communities.
But how big is that hyper-local audience? The existing Oxbury Media network of 10,000 titles has a reach of over ten million readers, so this is unquestionably not small beer. In fact, that’s over three times more readers than The Sun has every day. Clearly, this isn’t a like for like comparison, but it does illustrate that this is a huge market which has gone untapped by national advertisers for years.
What is hyper local media?
Hyper local media is a marketing channel – it’s a way of affordably reaching a postcode using the publications produced just for readers in that postcode and the immediate surrounding area. It’s a way of talking to communities by starting at the bottom and working upwards. From a couponing point of view, this allows the advertising buyer to run different product based campaigns in different areas.
It’s about being able to communicate at the correct level. By placing advertising in a hyper local title, you are contextualising your message with genuine editorial, genuinely chosen because of its relevance to a particular geographical area. We believe that this hugely reduces the throw away factor.
One only has to look at the work Boots is doing integrating its ‘Your Local Boots Pharmacies’ into its network of outlets to see the importance of hyper local marketing. Equally, the initiatives currently underway at The Press Association and The Guardian, introducing networks of reporters to boost local and regional papers whose revenues have slumped, illustrates the perceived importance of local news.
How is it done?
The first step is to decide on the areas that your brand needs to target. This can be done using customer data gathered via loyalty programmes, by strategic plan (if you are supporting new retail outlets for instance) or based on a geo specific product range or marketing plan.
Once that has been achieved, Oxbury Media can match publications from its network to the postcodes and geographical catchment area you plan to target. The coupons are then uploaded in the form of an advert to an easy to use dashboard from which the relevant local magazines can download them and place them into the page. In exchange, they upload a copy of the complete magazine so that the advertiser can be provided with an electronic voucher copy. They also receive a report, showing the titles that have run the advert, their locations and circulations and basic physical data such as format. Some of the titles even use a desktop publishing system provided by Oxbury Media, which further simplifies this process.
Costs are managed by either setting a capital cost or a budget and a geographical area combined with a cost per thousand rate you are willing to pay, based on the magazine’s circulation. The latter option is analogous to the pay per click model used in Google AdWords and similar online advertising models.
There is simply no other way of reaching this level of local media. Advertising and PR agencies do not have databases of these media outlets – because they would be much too costly to maintain. Media analysis and monitoring companies, like Cision, Gorkhana and Vocus don’t have listings of these kinds of titles for similar reasons. And even if they did, would you really want to be the one ringing hundreds of hyper local magazines to get media prices?
Integrating hyper local media into the marketing mix
Despite being unique, this method of targeting the hyper local media doesn’t stand alone. Like all kinds of marketing it can offer support to, and receive it from, other elements of the marketing mix.
Being seen to be investing in community projects can be a beneficial way of genuinely integrating a national brand into a local area, as can investing in new local businesses. For instance Oxbury Media, which also owns UKVillages.co.uk, recently launched a Save the British Fete campaign, which was backed by Boris Johnson, Dame Vera Lynne and the cast of Coronation Street.
As well as these kinds of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives, couponing at hyper local level can be made to fit with other media - by intelligently combining its messaging with that of national, regional or trade advertising and PR or by complimenting it with direct e-mail, pay per click or social media advertising.
Ultimately, the introduction of the hyper local media concept has made coupon and voucher advertising a real and valid medium again. In fact, they are now the closest thing to word of mouth available. If David Ogilvy were writing his confessions today, I’m certain vouchers and coupons would once more be one of his commandments. This is something which couldn’t have been said during the dark years of poorly targeted placements and pages of coupons building up in recycling bins.
Ends: 1066 words
Electronic copy: Get an electronic copy of this release by mail richards@stonejunction.co.uk or download from www.oxbury-pr.blogspot.com. If you want to stay constantly up to date on the latest news from Oxbury Media, paste the following link into your RSS reader, http://oxbury-pr.blogspot.com/atom.xml. If you don’t have an RSS reader, I can recommend the following free package www.sharpreader.net.
For further information contact: Jason Mawer,
Oxbury Media Ltd, East Barn, Fairclough Hall Farm, Weston, Hertfordshire
Telephone: +44 (0) 1462 790517
e-mail: Jason@oxburymedia.co.uk
www: http://www.oxburymedia.co.uk/
Press enquiries: Richard Stone
Stone Junction, 33 Kirkdale, Sydenham, London, SE26 4PN
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8699 7743
Fax: +44 (0) 20 8699 7743
e-mail: richards@stonejunction.co.uk
www: http://www.stonejunction.co.uk/
Ref: OXB001/10/09
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