Local paper offers advertising savvy

Print isn’t dead, especially when you focus on your community said Warren Dews Jr. at the May 20 RCS CBA business meeting held at Abounding Love Christian Fellowship’s Community Room in Faith Plaza. Mr. Dews spoke about all the services the Ravena News-Herald and Greenville Pioneer offer advertisers in the 21st century, including many digital solutions. He said the papers reach 91,000 consumers a month in this market via print and online services. Eighty percent of those readers are under the age of 49.

Mr. Dews highlighted the papers’ online advertising options such as geo-tracking, which allows advertisers to target customers in an exact geographic area. Geo-fencing, on the other hand, allows advertisers to focus on a competitors’ market area. If you’ve ever been to a restaurant and start receiving a competitor’s ad on your phone it’s geo-fencing at work, Mr. Dews said. The papers’ in-house digital specialists can also assist with demographic targeting, social media advertising and content targeting, which are ads and content written and published with the goal of reaching a particular type of consumer.

(Photos: Warren Dews Jr., publisher of the Ravena-News Herald and Greenville Pioneer, speaks to RCS CBA members and guests at our May 20 Business Meeting at Abounding Love Christian Fellowship's Community Room in Faith Plaza.)

Other community marketing tools Mr. Dews discussed are the new Protect Local USA program, a service featuring goods and services sold by local businesses, and Local Eats, a free service for area restaurants that allows shoppers to order from a variety of eateries all on one bill.

Mr. Dews also spoke about the papers’ Community Conversation and Ask the Expert videos. He speaks with local people via a recorded Zoom meeting on variety of topics and publishes the interviews, which are widely watched.

Toward the end of meeting attendees discussed a special wrap that surrounds print editions of the paper that businesses, or organizations like RCS CBA, could invest in to get their messages out. Mr. Dews encouraged businesses with small budgets to consider the News-Herald and Greenville Pioneer as great advertising platforms using modern digital and print tools.

RCS CBA sends a big shout out to member Abounding Love Christian Fellowship for allowing us to use their new Community Room.