Online Newspaper Sites are Great for Local Small Businesses

One of the things that has been tough in the past couple of years for small business owners is the fact that print newspapers are declining in popularity and readership and have become less effective in driving new customers to your location or service business.

People haven't stopped reading the news - they are just getting their news in a different format - which is evident in the growing percentages of people reading online newspapers.

I love online newspapers as a vehicle for small businesses to use to promote their products and services. Why? Because it combines my 2 favorite advertising ingredients - you are able to target your message and you are able to track your results and measure your success - two key factors of any advertising campaign a small business embarks upon.

Check out this info posted by Kristina Knight in yesterday's Biz Report for more stats on the popularity of online news sites.

clipped from www.bizreport.com Online marketers looking for a new demographic don't need to travel far and wide. They simply need to visit - and advertise with - a newspaper website. Why? Because newspaper readers are more likely to shop, research and interact online. And because the audience for newspaper websites is growing at nearly twice the rate of the general Internet audience. According to figures from the Newspaper Association of America, more than 59 million users or 39% of the general Internet population visited newspaper websites during each month of the first quarter. That is a 5% increase over newspaper web traffic during Q1, 2006. During the same time period, the general online audience grew only about 2%. With their proclivity to shop, research and read online, newspaper website visitors are clearly a good group for advertisers to target.