St. Paul Pioneer Press

Newspaper opens doors to advertisers by offering targeted buys

Many newspapers across the country have felt their advertising revenues squeezed by increased competition from other papers and new media. But the St. Paul Pioneer Press has discovered how to meet the opposition head-on by maximizing value to advertisers with targeted marketing services. The 203,000-circulation daily newspaper, one of two major papers serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul market, needed a way to convince advertisers that it could deliver a lucrative audience for their products. When an upscale furniture retailer named Gabberts Furniture sought new customers in St. Paul, the Pioneer Press used Claritas Mapping and the PRIZM segmentation system to find readers who matched the store's typical customer profile. After sponsoring a contest to attract leads, the paper analyzed the lifestyles and buying patterns of the prospects to map the subscribers with the greatest likelihood of buying from Gabberts. As a result, the Pioneer Press landed a sizable account to distribute weekly ad inserts to half its circulation – a sale that lured other advertisers to the paper's targeting power.

Objectives

• Increase advertising sales by repositioning the newspaper as a targeted media
• Demonstrate how a retailer can reach new customers by identifying "look-alike" prospects among newspaper readers
• Develop a profile of prospective customers, applying Compass^™ and Claritas Mapping to illustrate where they live, how they live and what creative message they respond to
• Produce maps and survey reports of where likely customers live within the paper's circulation area to target the ad sale

Implementation

• Created a Database of Store Prospects -To build a customer database for Gabberts, the St. Paul Pioneer Press sponsored a contest that offered a chance to win dinner and theater tickets to those who registered at the retailer's showcase home in St. Paul. The sweepstakes was only advertised in the Pioneer Press- through five quarter-page ads which allowed the paper to collect 1,400 entries from readers with an expressed interest in Gabberts.
• Analyzed the Interested Readers - The newspaper then classified the respondents by PRIZM cluster and identified four target groups of potential shoppers: Rich Country Couches, Small Town Family Table, Affluent Suburban Settees and Older Ottoman Couples. A syndicated survey characterized all four groups as both heavy newspaper readers and upscale consumers. They tended to travel abroad, buy luxury goods and carry plenty of credit cards - qualities that play into the store's frequent flyer promotion program. Moreover, the paper demonstrated how the profile of these Pioneer Press readers aligned with that of the retailer's customer base in Minneapolis.
• Mapped Where the Prospects Lived - Creating maps and reports of the reader target groups, the Pioneer Press showed Gabberts how to reach top prospects with advertising inserts in only half of the paper's circulation. The newspaper also demonstrated why its competition was incapable of reaching the St. Paul customers Gabberts wanted.

Results

• New, Impressive Account - Appreciative that the Pioneer Press had served up a targeted, cost-effective way to reach potential customers, Gabberts signed a major annual contract to place weekly inserts in the paper to the specified areas. The deal also reduced the ad revenues of the paper's rival – a major coup in a competitive market. "We'd gone after Gabberts for years," observes Brent Lawrence, marketing strategist at the Pioneer Press. "To management, landing that account was the sale of the decade."
• High Return on Investment - The key to success for the newspaper was creating the customer database from 1,400 contest entries. Yet the paper's only out-of-pocket expenses were $300 for the dinner-and-a-show prize, the space for five quarter-page ads and the in-house time spent entering database names and analyzing the prospects using Claritas Mapping and Compass.
• Increased Business from Other Advertisers - Gabberts reports an up-tick in customer traffic pegged to the Pioneer Press advertising and remains pleased with the insert buy. Equally important, Gabberts' presence in the St. Paul paper has led other upscale advertisers to add the newspaper to their media mix. "We just can't wait for ads to show up at the door anymore," says Lawrence. "Now we have to show advertisers that we can deliver the right customers for their business."