Business Ideas from the Community Newspaper
As a businessperson, you are constantly searching for new methods and techniques to expand your customer base. You need to constantly innovate to attract customers. Perhaps you can hold a sale and offer discounts or you can change your advertising strategy to better target the kind of customers you want. You may even alter your product or service to cater to a entirely different set of consumers.
However if you are looking for ideas to expand your business, it sometimes helps to go back to the basics. Simply talking to your customers, for example can be a source of inspiration. The trick here lies in listening to them carefully.
Most people are unaware that their community newspaper, can be an extremely valuable valuable source of business ideas.
Here are some sections of the paper that might enable you to come up with more effective business strategies.
The Style/Fashion Section
By reading this section of the paper you can usually get a very good idea of the trends in your community, even if your business doesn’t appear to have anything to do with it.
For example, if the style section of your paper is loaded with classy, high-end attire, this implies that your community consists of quite a few high paid professionals. How can this be of use to you? You can alter your strategy to better target customers with a more luxurious taste. On the other hand, if you see a lot of “old western” inspired themes in the style section, you can direct your marketing campaign accordingly.
The Arts/Culture Section
If your community newspaper does have an arts section, it can tell you a lot about your potential customers. The arts section is geared towards people that enjoy somewhat cultured activities, such as art museum visits and opera shows. The presence of an arts section tells you that there are at least a reasonable number of customers in your area with sophisticated tastes. Again, the information you glean from this is really up to you. If you think creatively, you can use it to alter your strategy and find new customers.
The Cars/Automobile Section
This is perhaps the most valuable section of the paper for your business, even if you are not in the car sales industry. The types of cars that are featured most prominently will tell you a lot about your community. Finding out what type of people usually buy certain cars, you’ll be able to narrow down your consumer profile.
The Booklets/Newsletters Section
While booklets/newsletters are almost entirely advertisements, you can use them in the same way as you do the other sections of the paper. Go through these carefully and see what types of products are most heavily advertised. This will tell you what products and services are popular in your area.
Another good idea is to actually do your own newsletter printing or booklet printing. Once you have a good idea of what kind of people reside in your area, and a good marketing strategy in place, design a newsletter or booklet and have it included in your city’s newspaper.