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Since the year 2000, YS has been dedicated to creating community conversations to bring awareness to important social, political and cultural topics for Boulder County & the North Metro Region. 

Boulder County and the North Denver Metro area used to be little more than a conglomeration of mining and farming communities loosely tied together. In the last 20 years, the landscape has changed considerably as the once bedroom communities have turned into bustling and vibrant suburbs. Boulder County & the North Metro have grown from 150,000 people in 1990 to over 500,000 today.

The Yellow Scene Magazine was first in this emerging region, taking advantage of an untapped market. People are moving to the area in droves for the “Boulder lifestyle—without the Boulder address.”

Our readers have come to expect quite a bit from us since 2000 as the region’s premier source for politics, arts and entertainment, local news, and restaurant and drink coverage.

This is because in our 20 years of publishing we have never sold out the journalism-not even once. We take great pride in “the Great Wall of China” being the line between editorial and advertising.

Your Native Advertising Sucks and Why Content is Still King

With more than 70,000 copies being distributed each month from 104th Avenue to Highway 66, I-25 to the Flatirons, Yellow Scene Magazine is the largest publication in the region.

Lucky for us, this formula has worked for 20 years now, featuring the Best of 23 in 2023.

Our job? To make the locals feel cool about living here.

Yellow Scene Media Downloads

For information about Yellow Scene Magazine, Home and Hood, Colorado Brides and Babies Magazine, Yellow Deals,  and our Yellow House Marketing and Design Boutique.

YS Logos & BOW Collateral

Yellow House 

Expert marketing and design services for small businesses

 

One of the things that really sets Yellow Scene Magazine apart is our dedication to helping clients have agency-quality design and help with strategic planning through Yellow House, our in-house agency.

Yellow House can help with strategic marketing plans, graphic design, logos, brochures, direct mail and website development. We keep our prices local.

Here is a sampling of YS Ad Designs we have done over the years. It’s a small sampling but gives you a good idea.

The result? Over 100 awards statewide for excellence in both design and journalism and a following like no other—if you don’t get one in the first week, they will all be gone. Fortunately, nearly 50,000 homes also get us delivered.

Tips from the RedT:

We aren’t going to sell you advertising anymore.

Let’s talk Dirty

 

Know Your Audience-FREE Marketing Tools

  • Download our Marketing Guidebook – 30 years of education and experience in one booklet, designed for the small business owner. Never waste a single dime again. This helps you have a strategic plan!
  • Growth Objective Calculator  This is one of the most powerful tools for analyzing your business strengths and weaknesses. The GOC helps see the 30,000 foot view and the 300 foot view. It’s all the same stuff you would pay an agency for!
  • We would love to buy this book for every client and encourage all to get it, but since we can’t afford to buy the hard copy for everyone, we got you this digital copy!
    The 33 Ruthless Rules of Advertising – read it, it will save you thousands and help you make your marketing work better.
  • How to Survive Crisis as a Local Business

This 7-minute tutorial will make your marketing smarter and help save you money.

This 6-minute video helps you understand the difference between Internal, Direct & Mass Marketing, how they fit into the Purchase Funnel and how to craft a Marketing Strategy to achieve more growth.

 

Check out our YouTube Channel with our Marketing Seminar and Cannabis Symposium!

Yellow House, YS in-house agency, has 20 years of working with start-ups and small businesses. We know how to execute a campaign on a dime.

Yellow House Design and Marketing Boutique

“Where should I advertise to get the most response?”

This is probably the most common question asked by small businesses. To that we say, there is no one place. In fact, starting your advertising this way is also, commonly, the formula for failed results. A much better question to start with is:

How much do I want to grow? 

Then, and only then can you begin to map out a strategy.

Here’s why:

First, establish a market position.

Then you establish a plan. A Growth Objective Calculator can help with that. I am attaching an example of how to use one. But any advertising without a strategic plan is spray and pray. Using a GOC you can figure out the cost of advertising, demographics of source, and how much you should spend. Obviously the more you spend (with a well thought out message) the more growth. 

The most successful business strategic plans have primary and secondary platforms in all three stages of the Purchase Funnel. 

I have been in advertising and media all my life and these are some of the basic premises I have learned. 

The three biggest reasons advertising fails:

• Lack of a clear benefit

Most people write cookie-cutter ads. Logo on top, some bullets. This only tells people you exist. Sorry, but who cares? Tell them WHY you exist to help them. A well written ugly ad will always get more interest than a pretty ad that is dumb. Tell a story. 

A.I.D.A. Attention, Interest, Decision and Action are the four basic premises of the Purchase Funnell. 

Salespeople have no magical spells. We communicate. Your advertising is hiring a salesperson. Therefore,  it is important to understand the purchase funnel. 

Mass Marketing reaches people in the early stage. Think of it as leaving thousands of voice mails. This is the influencer stage.

Direct reaches people in the Decision-making stage. Your website, networking, are all direct marketing tools. 

Internal marketing is the most important because it costs more to get a new customer than keep an old one. 

• Lack of commitment

Buying the smallest ad possible and running it one time is not testing anything except your patience. He who owns the mind owns the market. 

As with all human communications, repetition is key. This is just how humans are. Better to adapt your marketing to how humans operate than expect a miracle from your one ad. 

• Poor Positioning

Are you advertising yourself as Mercedez Benz when you are really a Hyundai? 

Are you spraying and praying? 

Are you analyzing the demographics and distribution of the platform you are choosing? Like really analyzing? Know Thy Audience. 

Finally, Don’t Ask people how they heard of you. You are wasting your time. They don’t know and they don’t know they don’t know, so they make stuff up. 

He who owns the mind owns the market. An Equity Position is how to own the mind.

Here in Colorado the largest furniture store in the state is American Furniture Warehouse. EVERYONE knows Jake Jabs-he is in all his ads. He has tigers too. I highly doubt anyone goes to the store and buys a couch and says, “Jake, it was channel 2 at 4:30 ad that brought me in.”

The milk mustache campaign with the celebrities has never advertised on TV. It is a print-only campaign. 50% of people polled claim they saw it on TV.

The recent Nike campaign with Colin Kaepernick launched in print. Yet social media created the extra buzz.

I have a jeweler who has ONLY ever advertised in my magazine. He has people tell him they saw him in the newspaper.

I know business owners want to believe people remember where they saw your ads, and sometimes they do, but most of the time we don’t. I can recall reading something but generally don’t recall where I read it-unless I am citing a source for an article. It is better to use analytics.

1. Make the product the hero. I have an orthopedic surgeon who advertises with me. Instead of featuring the nice doc, we feature a body part. ie. Hip replacement, knee replacement. Knowing advertising requires consistency, he will run each part for 6 months before changing. He says most of the time people don’t say where they saw the ad (once in a while) but he can tell because (in his words) “when I run the knee ad, my waiting room fills up with knee patients, when I run the hip ad, my waiting room fills up with hip patients”

2. Zipcode analysis

3. Floor traffic and phone volume.  Know your average numbers, run a well thought out campaign, and measure through growth.

But all of these require Knowing Thy Customer. There is a rule don’t change your ads based on where people say they saw it.

It is always better to know thy customer.

Books I recommend: 33 Ruthless Rules of Advertising, Little Red Book of Selling, Ogilvey on Advertising. They are bibles. I am also including a free Marketing Guidebook I created for small businesses, from these sources and 30+ years of experience. I am also including a TIPS sheet I am working on adding to it.  

It is one of the best primers for the business owner. I wish I had written this book. Each chapter takes about 2 minutes to read.

 

Check out our Publisher speaking with Community Before Politics regarding the COVID19 impacts on small businesses.

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