Help yourself: Research that’ll wow advertisers

By MIKE HODGES and DONNIS BAGGETT

Texas Press Association

A market survey can be a powerful tool, but solid research is expensive — sometimes too expensive for an individual newspaper on a tight budget.

To help our members make the cash register ring, your Texas Press Association recently commissioned a statewide market survey that can be localized easily for your market. We think you’ll like the results.

Click here to find compelling data on how Texas newspapers remain the most dependable source for information on the goods and services that your readers need.

Example: 89 percent of newspaper readers vote in local elections and 78 percent of newspaper readers vote in state or national elections.

Another example: 60 percent of Texans say newspaper advertising helps them decide which brands, products and local services to purchase.

If you were running for office, or if you were selling cars or health care, how could you afford NOT to advertise in your local paper?

But wait, as they say, there’s more: On the second page of the stats, you’ll see how our expert data miners can drill down to provide sales sheets for your newspaper. Take, for example the hypothetical “Texas Star Weekly.” You’ll see that the Star reaches 68 percent of consumers who plan to shop for home improvement products or services in the next year. That information should make your local building supply owner or remodeling contractor sit up and pay attention.

TPA commissioned the survey as a value-added service to our members, and we set high standards. We insisted on a large pool of respondents to assure a low margin of error. We wanted an established and credible research company, so we chose Coda, a firm that’s worked for numerous other press associations and individual papers across the country. Coda surveyed 1,000 respondents, which is more than most national political surveys and thus has a statewide margin of error of only plus or minus 3.1 percent.

The survey findings were even better than we’d hoped. The results show (a.) how strongly newspapers stack up against our competition, and (b.) how to sell those market strengths to advertisers in an evolving media environment. Because of your TPA membership, you now have fresh sales resources at your fingertips to put to work in your hometown.

The pages in this edition of the Messenger are just samples of what’s available to you as a TPA member. You can access a Power Point presentation with all our statewide results at www.texaspress.com/surveys. To get localized sales sheets for your individual market and newspaper for only $300, contact Coda president Marianne Grogan at marianne@codaventures.com.

We deeply appreciate your membership in TPA. For more information, email Donnis Baggett at dbaggett@gmail.com.