To any business large or small, local or national, the ability to connect with your customers is a key factor to your success.   Generally large national or even large local businesses have a wider range of economically feasible advertising options available to them than the smaller local businesses.  For example, a newspaper ad in a major paper may reach hundreds of thousands of people if not millions.  The cost to run that ad may be economically feasible to a large local or national business such as an auto dealership or a national department store.  But is that same advertising strategy realistic for a smaller local business?

Chances are your customer base is relatively close to your business in geographic terms.  Possibly all of your customers are within five miles of your location, with the vast majority within a mile or two.  

Would you pay for an advertisement that reaches 500,000 households within 30 miles of your business when you really want to reach 1,000 households within 2 miles of your business?
Local newspapers are certainly a better option however, the basic problem still exists.  With local papers you may be paying to reach 20,000 households in a 10 mile radius.  Bottom line, you’re still paying to reach 19,000 households who have very little chance of ever becoming your customers.  

The Number One Goal in advertising is reaching the target segment that truly represents your Customers and Potential Customers.  NeighborHubConnect Business Solutions provides you with the tools neccessary to accomplish this Goal.   And not only does NeighborHubConnect provide you with Laser Sharp Target Marketing Capabilities, we are able to do so at an Very Low Cost.
How low? Well, let’s do a little comparison.  Below are some advertising options generally available to local businesses, they include: direct mail and local newspapers.  I’ve included links to help you verify these costs if you wish.

Direct Mail (Source:www.controlbeaters.com)

First let’s look at the biggest advantage direct mail has to offer.  Direct mail allows you to target market very effectively, right down to the household.  
Now let’s look at the typical costs:

Taking into consideration just these costs alone, your average cost per household contact is 60¢.

Newspaper(Source:Newspaper Ad Rates)

Attempting to identify some of the advantages of newspaper advertising I would have to say the ability to reach a large number of households over a reasonably large area would have to be one of them.

The Costs:
In newspaper advertising you pay by column inch.  There are typically 4-8 columns per page.  A column inch is a one inch segment in one column. Obviously pages with fewer columns would produce larger ads per column inche provided consistent page sizes.

The average cost for a column inch in a small local paper is $20.00.

So to run a 1 column inch add the cost is $20.00, a 2 column inch add would cost $40.00 and so on.

So let’s say you really want to reach 1,000 households located within 2 miles of your business. You decide to run an ad 2 inches high that spans across 2 columns.  Your hope is the ad is large enough to catch the reader’s attention.  

This would represent a four column inch ad and cost $80.00.

Now if you take the newspaper’s circulation number into account, let’s say it is 20,000, you have a cost of less than ½ of one cent per household.  However 19,000 of those households are located too far from your business to ever be your customers, so what is your effective cost per household, in other words the cost to reach the 1,000 households who represent your customers or potential customers.  That cost is just shy of 9 cents per household.  Not bad compared to direct marketing.

For newspapers nothing would change, the cost would still be $80.00.

For direct mail, the cost would drop to $60.00.

And for NeighborHubConnect your cost would be $2.00.

Now ask yourself, “How many additional sales do you need to generate to cover $88.00?
How many to cover $42.00?
Finally, how many to cover $2.00?

Also consider this, if you have a website, you can list it in the direct mail piece, the newspaper ad and the NeighborHubConnect advertisement.  Directing customers to your website is a great way to provide addition information to your customers however, only NeighborHubConnect ads provide the ability to click on a link and go directly to your site.  You can’t click on a mail piece or a newspaper listing.

Here is another point to consider: Timing.
Let’s say you wanted to run a special on Friday.  When do you run the newspaper ad, Thursday?   Maybe Wednesday?   If you run it Wednesday will your customers still remember it come Friday?   Do you wait until Friday and hope they see it?   Do you run for several days leading up to Friday increasing the probability that the ad gets viewed while also increasing the cost?  

Let’s say you place the same ad with NeighborHubConnect on a Monday for the upcomming Friday.  
First, targeted households that have selected the text or email notification options will receive a notification of the special within minutes of the ad being placed.  In addition the ad is inserted into the “Business Specials Calendar” for Friday.   Once the ad is placed, it is available for viewing, meaning if someone wanted to check and see Friday’s specials on any day leading up to Friday they could.  You can’t do that with a newspaper ad.  For newspapers, if you run the ad on Friday, there is no way anyone can see it until Friday.  On Friday your special is listed on the NeighborHubConnect home page under “Business Specials”.   The Home page is the first page NeighborHubConnect members are directed to when they sign on.  Every time a user signs on your listing is displayed.  Ask yourself this, “How many times throughout the course of a day does a person go back to a newspaper they have already read”?