SME News Q4 2018

SME NEWS / Q4 2018 47 Leicestershire’s Definitive Community Publication successful, Steve emphasised the publication’s demographic and the effectiveness of local businesses advertising directly to local families. “Soar Valley Life is successful because it offers an affordable way for any business or organisation to promote what it offers to the majority of households in the area of Charnwood. Our costs are kept to an absolute minimum by being able to work from home. The messages we carry in our pages are presented professionally and attractively amidst all the interesting and relevant information. We have always been a bi-monthly publication – we produce one magazine every two months and then split the distribution, North and South over that two-month period. This also allows us to split the cost of advertising over such a large distribution area over that same two-month period. By careful planning and imaginative feature writing we create a shelf-life readability for the magazine so that the adverts, features and information are still as relevant at the end of the two-month cycle as at the beginning.” “We are different to any other media source in our area and offer a greater reach, better and longer lasting value to our customers and a fuller and more diverse experience for our readers than any other single publication in Leicestershire. There are no zones to worry about and in most instances our single monthly advertising cost is lower than our competitors single zone price. Per magazine delivered we are lower in price at all advertising sizes than anyone else.” Perhaps more impressive is Soar Valley Life’s success in light of the decreasing popularity of certain sectors of print media. They are thriving where countless others have failed or are struggling. This can be down to the canny management of the magazine, and its dedication to its core audience. This is a magazine for the people of Leicestershire by the people of Leicestershire. It’s their mission and ethos. Steve fundamentally agrees: “The fall in popularity of directories such as the Yellow Pages and Thomsons Directories has given rise, in part to the success of accessible free publications like Soar Valley Life. We know many of our readers rely on the local information contained to find product and services relevant to them. We also have all of our advertiser’s details in our online business directory and a lot of our readers rely on that to source products and services they need.” “Because of the numbers we deliver we are now being noticed by many of the national agencies who work for the larger corporate enterprises – Co- op, Hilary’s, Davidson Homes, Loughborough Schools, British Heart Foundation, Waitrose, Toyota, Kia, Cost Co, NHS, to name but a hallowed few of the ‘big ones’ who have adorned our pages. We also run limited free and subsidised adverts and features for volunteer charities who are represented in the local community. A few of those we have helped are The Great Central Railway, Sileby Vikings, Sofa, Peter Le Marchant Trust, National Childbirth Trust, Air Ambulance, Charnwood Arts, The Little Theatre, Frenzy Youth Theatre, Loughborough Town Hall, Kilworth House, The Bridge, Apex, The Loughborough Cancer Self Help Group, LU Arts and the RSPCA.” Regarding the advertisements specifically; “We pride ourselves on our design service, offering all advertisers a free design and update service. Our design team adept at creating adverts from scratch for new businesses and can help them take those first steps in business with help on line, in print and social media, and they can have a web page linked to our on-line business directory as part of their single monthly advertising payment.” Since day one we have always made our magazine available on line and you can view the latest magazine by following this link:- https://issuu.com/soarvalleylife Finally, we arrive on the topic of the future of Soar Valley Life. This year has been a time of growth, especially with all the new building development in the Soar Valley now running at more than a thousand new dwellings per annum, so Steve and Mary refine and capitalise on the formula that has made the magazine a success since its inception. The year ahead heralds a time of rebranding, and of modernisation. In his closing comments, Steve discusses where the platform goes from here. “Apart from more of the same, we are busy re-branding our business with updated graphics, increasing our distribution numbers up to 40,000 every two months and yet reducing our lowest cost advert down to £20 per month + VAT. We launch all of this in our first magazine of our eighth year. The new low-priced advert will be branded as EAZY ADZ and will populate our printed business directory which will be completely re-vamped to include simple contact details of all of our advertisers. The EAZY ADZ will herald another first for us – new advertisers will be able to input their details directly onto our website and complete the transaction in a single simple operation. This will automatically trigger our design service to create their advert and send it to them for their approval. All new EAZY ADZ advertisers (as do all main magazine advertisers) also get free entry onto our online business directory and for a small monthly fee they can have their own web page in our online business pages all professionally designed by our web site consultant.” Soar Valley Life embodies the very spirit of community, offering a hub of information for the local families of Leicestershire. In just under seven years, the publication has become the definitive local publication in the county, with a future that looks well assured and set in stone. (Well paper anyway!) Contact: Steve Johns Company: Soar Valley Life Address: 1 Burton Road Sileby, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE12 7RU, UK Telephone: 01509 813125 Website: soarvalleylife.co.uk Email: steve@soarvalleylife.co.uk