WRITTEN ON May 11th, 2009 BY peter AND STORED IN Leaflet Distribution, Targeting

Tags: directory distribution, hyperlocal, Leaflet Distribution

Another day, another tale of newspaper job cuts. It seems a day cannot pass at the moment without another indication of the malaise afflicting the industry, and few commentators predict anything other than a continuing spiral for some time to come yet.

Attracting much less attention - outside the online community, at least - is the rapid growth of so-called hyperlocal newspapers. But there is growing evidence that this may just be the model to preserve local journalism in our digital times. Perhaps more importantly, the business model appears to be one that could appeal to advertisers.

Newspaper group Associated Northcliffe yesterday announced it will be launching 30 new websites in the South West, initially targeting small towns that currently have no dedicated local newspaper or website. The new sites will be mainly generated by citizen journalists and bloggers, and will contain a sizeable social networking element.

They’ve presumably gone ahead with this six-month trial because hyperlocal sites are flourishing elsewhere. The New York Times is already doing it, and American sites such as EveryBlock, Outside.in and Placeblogger are flourishing. Closer to home, there are independent sites like Preston Blog as well as sites like Gazette Communities, operated by Trinity Mirror.

I completely agree that this is the way forward for the newspaper industry. These days, people don’t just want their newspapers to reproduce content they can find in a thousand places online. They want highly bespoke, ultra-targeted information that is directly relevant to them and their immediate vicinity.

There are huge parallels here with our own industry, relating to the distribution of both leaflets and directories. In the same way that advertisers will be able to use these new hyperlocal news vehicles to target people more effectively, we’re creating tools for advertisers and publishers to target householders in a far more effective way than ever before.

Our in-house SMART tool, for instance, enables us to identify clusters of likely customers and create extremely precise delivery rounds to cover those areas, economically and efficiently. We can even use GPS tracking technology during the distribution, to provide a level of accountability that was previously unheard of within the industry.

I don’t want to blow our own trumpet too much, but our customers are definitely seeing some really tangible results. So whether you label it hyperlocal or not, it’s a form of targeting we’ll definitely be pursuing.