How community notice boards can improve your local area marketing efforts | #399

Joe

We have fun in it.

Tim

What do you say, you have fun in it? No, doubt. What’s the fun part?

Joe

It’s very exciting, it’s challenging, it’s never know days the same.

Tim

You know I’ve looked and interacted with those noticeboards at the front of my local IGA. for many years and I honestly subconsciously thought that that’s just nice of the footy club I’d have put that there.

Joel

Someone’s looking at our notice boards?

Tim

I say someone’s to see to my podcast. Where the ideas come from

Joel

I think that the Joe.

Joe

Probably out of necessity I think. I was looking for something to get involved in and couldn’t find work. That was L.R. to what I wanted and saw an opportunity and it grew from there. So it was really out of a figment of imagination.

Tim

Right. You hadn’t seen anywhere else? It was just like, so what was the original idea, can you remember?

Joe

Going back 15 years maybe. But it was I think something to be able to give local exposure. I thought is a half foot traffic area and being under-utilized and yeah how can it be used to the benefit of all parties and kind of out of that came the idea of marrying local businesses to a target market.

Tim

What are we doing at the time.

Joe

I was in the meat business.

Tim

Of course, you were.

Joe

I’ve always been on the chopping board.

Tim

Now you’re on the notice board. Boom, boom. So, you’ve had this idea. So, you know with respect it is challenging from what I understand you’re going digital but the idea in its current form probably hasn’t changed for 15 years.

Joe

The form hasn’t changed. The background and medium and the processes have moved beyond belief.

Tim

Okay so let’s just explain the premise of the idea. It is a noticeboard that sits outside local supermarkets, 650 of them around Australia for locals to post piano for sale ads and for the odd business to spend some money a little, on an actual ad. Is that right?

Joe

In a nutshell.

Joel

That’s the fundamental process. The key is that it’s an opportunity for the community to engage with each other. The local customers. And then for local businesses to be able to engage by promoting their business on the board.

Tim

Okay. All right you must’ve seen some pretty funny ads in your time.

Joe

I think we’ve seen a cross section of ads. Oh, look I think that is, just trying to think of an ad that was humorous. We had an ad and one is where the logo of a business completely unreliable, it was a hairdresser for that matter and when the when the logo arrived in our design team’s inbox. Our design, it caught us over and said, Joe can you come and have a look at this and just see if you can approve it and have a look at the design and it was a cartoon impression but it was a little bit below the belt. In the context of the way it portrayed a female’s body. I mean this is a hairdresser okay. Absolutely nothing to do with their hair.

Tim

So, you approved it.

Joe

So, we put them in the bin in two seconds. So those designers wanted it. I can tell you it brightened up his day. Yeah So that’s probably.

Tim

You know from what interested me about this idea when I came across it was the fact that it’s local area marketing and its most raw I suppose. We live in a very virtual world these days, Facebook and podcasts and all that type of stuff. And this is just back to basics isn’t it? It’s almost like we’ve forgotten that people walk to the supermarket and potentially buy things.

Joe

I think probably fundamentally Tim, one of the underlying factors that’s contributed to the success of the program is the fact that it is very community based. Its community based for the supermarket who wants to build to show they have a huge media presence, so the board becomes the community statements so to speak. The local population’s able to interact with each other non-invasive. So, it’s a very easy medium to use. There’s no pressure. People can interact and look at it and it’s come on and off all the time. It’s also for local businesses to get a local community presence for them to highlight these services to their very local market and they’re working and operating in. So, it’s really a triangular approach with the pinnacle of each point the triangle being very specific to each category and taking care of it quite well.

Tim

Beautifully simple business reps’ numbers around. You got 650 boards around Australia. Revenue? Staff?

Joe

Well I think the most the most amazing number is that we actually reach approximately 6 million customers a week and that’s Australia wide. It’s amazing. It’s really mate, this incredibly powerful. Numbers vary up and down. Team is up and down. We have a very stable team which is great.

Tim

So how many on the team?

Joe

At the moment about 16.

Tim

16? Salespeople mainly.

Joe

Most probably half and half.

Joel

Yeah and national sales teams so we’re good. We’ve got a sales team in just about every state. And covering the width and breadth of the country from Port Douglas to Kalgoorlie to…

Tim

What do you charge? What’s the ad cost on the board?

Joe

On average and ad wouldn’t cost more than a cup of coffee a day.

Tim

Really? I like the way you’ve done that. You’ve got to buy a year’s worth or a month’s worth?

Joe

Oh, it varies as various terms, you know business coming for a short period maybe six 12 months, 18 months some have been on for 24 we’ve ever with us for five years.

Joel

Tim, the good about this is its exclusivity. You don’t have your competition on the board so you if you’re a child care center, you’re the child care center that featured. So, you’re a real estate agent, you’re the one. Any other form of local area marketing generally with your competition. And you know people have to work out through the minefield. Who do we go to? It’s just you. Your brand is the focal point.

Tim

You’ve got a 78 percent renewal rate, is that right

Joel

Between 70-75 percent renewal rate.

Tim

That’s extraordinary. Is it because you think it’s working or because the advertisers are too scared to give it up because the competitors will take it

Joel

I think there’s a combination. I think that 50 percent of my advertising works, I’m just not sure which 50 percent. And I think that speaks true for us in the sense that you’re not spending a lot of money and you’re in position, you’re in prime position, you’ve got a virtual shopfront to your local target market and it’s not costing you an arm and a leg. If you measure and you measure properly, you’ll be able to see that we’re getting. The very first advert that I personally sold is still on the board seven years ago. A martial arts karate business for kids. And I can tell you in a seven year, it was probably one of my hardest sales. It was the first one, obviously.

Tim

And it’s the hardest, why? Did Joel still give you a commission on that?

Joel

Joel was reluctantly paying me. And it was a tough decision for them. Is this going to work? You know, what are we spending, our money is tight. We’ve got a very tight budget. We’re a small business and seven years later are they still there.

Tim

What’s the sales pitch when you walk into a martial arts firm or you know, a business or real estate agency. What do you tell them?

Joel

Well I guess the first thing is who’s your target market. Who are you looking to, where’s your customers come from. And invariably it’s local. It’s the people who shop at the store. It’s the mums. It’s the dads. It’s the kids. It’s the family. It’s your house, about your health. It’s the people in the store. If they are your target market then it’s an absolute no brainer.

Tim

You’re sold.

Joe

One of the things as well, I think a Joel has a really good point. It’s that there’s so much variety to this medium. It’s so flexible. And local businesses use it as a little shopfront, as onsite. It’s quite amazing. We had we had a solo business who took a penny from us. They had a competition. And they use that to generate leads, an unbelievable lead source. So, what they were doing is getting local businesses, local people to take interest in their product, sold locally, generated locally, and it was all a local campaign because they operated locally and that’s where they wanted to capture their market. So that’s one way of doing it. And many businesses use it to highlight promotions and specials and where they’re growing and their growth and their community presence.

Tim

Why are there only 650 of them in Australia?

Joel

Well I think that primarily we work closely with the RGA supermarket group and so we obviously have their number of supermarkets that they have.

Tim

Did have a deal with them that says we can have a bit of wall space out the front?

Joel

Yeah. So, we have to have a relationship with the store, exclusivity in relation to their community notice boards and we are a supplier of the store. We provide a solution to what is typically a messy community noticeboard.

Joel

And not every store has the space but every store has an ability to be able to have a board up. So we’re growing.

Tim

But you could be in arcade, shopping centers you could be in car parks.

Joe

One of the big things Tim is sustainability. It’s for us to be able to really deliver a fantastic product that is manageable, that we can manage correctly. And I think we see a lot of our business that we deal with huge expense. They’re not able to control their expansion and therefore things become very difficult to manage. We’ve really focused on making sure that every product we have is perfectly maintained. It has a return on the investment for both ourselves and the local advertisers for the store. Every aspect of your boxes ticked.

Tim

How do you manage, do you have a merchandise that goes out to all these boards to make sure that there’s, you know?

Tim

That’s a great question, Tim. Because it’s a real plus in our business and I think it’s an incredibly proud of. It was a huge challenge for us when we started of getting an organization to maintain these boards for us. Not one business that covers Australia as we do. They are but at huge cost and whatever. So, we engage the local disability organizations. Charge them to manage these boards for us. So, we’ve supplied work to them. These are people who would be unemployable normally. Yet they have careers, these varying degrees of disability and we have given them work and we have actually provided an unbelievable change in their lives. These people get up in the morning, they’ve got a reason to get out there. The store enjoys it because they see this reaching done to the local disability organisation and in many respects, there’s a lot of synergy between what the store does in that organization. That’s really helped us tremendously and from that we’ve obviously grown and developed a merchandising infrastructure.

Tim

What a great solution to what would have been a problem, an expensive problem really. You sell a medium, two parts of that equation. One is placement and that’s pretty obvious you get to place your out of the noticeboard. The other one is the message that you put on there and I see this all the time with adverts with small businesses who want to advertise. They select the local newspaper for example then go, I put the ad. Do you provide any advice or guidance?

Joel

Yeah, I think that’s again a good question because we were asked that question a lot by our advertisers and without trying to give a marketing lesson to our advertisers. The most important thing is, less is better. Simple, keep it simple, keep the message clean. In fact, I was talking to an advertiser this morning we were visiting is because there’s too much happening on the screen. He wanted to show all his products in double quick time. So, we really talk about a call to action, a measurement, if they can to be able to track and see if you’re a fitness gym mentioned this for three reasons personal training sessions.

Tim

You are about to expand bit, were you are in the middle of explaining the business. Now you’ll be about to finally go digital, goodbye analog. So, you are now going to have a plasma screen sitting in the middle the notice board. Does that mean you can now run as many ads as you want to and the size of the business is about to quadruple

Joe

Well we don’t know what’s going to happen to the business but definitely we’re providing advertisers with what is now an exciting year and that’s digital. The out of home advertising space is growing substantially. It’s where businesses need to be. And we’re giving local small businesses a chance to now really feature their businesses visually with moving images and with the flexibility of being able to change their message in a very short notice.

Tim

In digital out of home, second fastest growing media category in the world? Yeah. You’re at the fore front. You’re at the bleeding edge. Who would’ve thought.

Joel

We’ve worked hard and we’ve got a long way to go. But it’s exciting

Joe

What is very interesting Tim, is that the switch to digital has actually been a fairly easy transition because we’ve done real due diligence on our boards. We’ve maintained the product, we’ve got the right real estate. So, by putting the screens on, it has really enhanced what we’ve already had and we’ve built on depth a very solid platform. So, going into digital is almost like a sub-natural extension of where we should be.

Tim

So, is there a big mission control room, big dark room somewhere down the road with thousands of IP like NASA wouldn’t it?

Joel

It’s actually not easy to manage but with technology these days, you know you can just about do it from anywhere.

Tim

Yeah right. Look I think it’s a great story. What do you say to a business that is struggling with their local area marketing besides buy an ad on one of your noticeboards.

Joe

I would set it to reach out. I think the most important thing that any business can do is to reach out. Reach out to their client base all the time. Communicate, be up there, just put their name out there. You know many businesses say, oh there’s too much which is going to go in one medium. It’s too expensive. But the real reality is John is spending 50 percent on advertising without knowing 50 percent too much or too little, not knowing where it’s going. Every business has to continuously reach out. They’ve got to keep the name in front continuously. How they do that where they do it. What mediums they use is reading up to them depending on what they spend and what they’ve got available. But I think you know from our perspective, their ability to reach out is very, very good from a local perspective and that’s why we can offer them.

Tim

Well I never thought it was a business. Now it’s clearly a business. Well done and I wish you all this success with noticeboards systems expansion into the digital age.

Joe

Very exciting stuff ahead. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Tim

Good on you fellows. Thank you. Great story.