“Where should I spend my precious advertising dollars and get the most bang for the buck?” This is the number one question our clients ask us everyday at The Crouch Group. I plan to dedicate the next several blogs seeking to offer what I hope is an honest analysis of the pro’s and con’s of the different medias that are available to Denton business.
For over 100 years the biggest dog in the fight for advertising dollars has been the Denton Record-Chronicle and for good reason. As the local newspaper the DRC has commanded a large share of the Denton market for many years. However newspaper as we have known it is dying and the industry is struggling to find how to be relevant for a younger demographic that gets new and information elsewhere. The DRC is still plays a significant role in the Denton community with approximately 17,000 daily subscribers. (Sunday subscribership is approximately 20,000) The newspaper business has been losing subscribers at a rapid rate, the good news for the Denton Record-Chronicle that they aren’t losing subscribers, the bad news is that in they aren’t growing either.
There are thousands of visitors everyday on the Denton Record-Chronicle website, unfortunately online DRC advertising has not proven itself. (I was in a seminar the other day with an online newspaper company, PegasusNews.com, where they said that longtime traditional media is struggling with online advertising because they are trapped protecting their traditional product and the associated revenue.) The bottom line on the Denton Record-Chronicle? While it remains an important voice in Denton , it is losing market dominance particularly with readers under the age of 50, the market penetration in the south Denton area is very soft, and the new people moving to Denton are not likely to become Denton Record-Chronicle subscribers.
Other newspaper options for Denton include:
The Dallas Morning News — Too expensive for most local businesses and overkill in the marketplace NT Daily – Focused on North Texas Students Area Weekly Newspapers — Community specific, but in the newspaper business these are the papers that seem to be thriving. i.e. Lake Cities Sun, Krum Star, Sanger Courier, Pilot Point Post Signal, and the 380 News.
One other emerging newspaper option is PegasusNews.com. This is a very interesting “Pure Play” (they are an online newspaper only) which has 400,000 unique users each month in the Dallas Fort Worth market. Their penetration in the Denton area is growing and I think that over the next year the awareness level of Pegasus News will increase dramatically. Right now the rates are very reasonableand the ability to geo- target ads should mean that it will remain an afforable option.
The traditional newspaper is struggling. Locally our community needs the Denton Record-Chronicle to buck the trend of most daily newspapers. Once upon a time advertising options in Denton always began with the Denton Record-Chronicle and then everything else. That is no longer the case in Denton and in future blogs I plan to address television advertising options (primarily cable which is more competitive than it used to be) Billboards, Direct Mail, Yellow Pages and emerging options.
