STROUDSBURG – Vincent DiFrancisco is a dedicated Facebook user. As the owner of Vincent’s Deli and Catering in Tannersville, he uses the site to help promote his business and connect with his customers.
He’d personalize his messages, thanking patrons for their business.
“I usually get a good response because it’s talk from my heart,” he said.
Then he learned there was a better way.
DiFrancisco hooked up with ThriveHive, a service operated by Gatehouse Media, the largest newspaper company in the country, and the parent of the Pocono Record. The giant media company created a digital agency, called ThriveHive, because mobile devices have become popular and powerful ways people access their information. And people are no more than an arm’s length away from their digital device and open up a wealth of ways to reach your customer.
“They showed me they could help me use Facebook through my company to boost our response,” DiFrancisco said.
Among its many functions, ThriveHive can allow ads to be placed when a user is within a certain distance from their establishment, known as geo-targeting. That makes the ads more relevant to users, who are already in the vicinity of the establishment and are seeking out a place of business.
“We put in a 15 mile radius to try to get people, show the ad to them instead of showing it to people 100 miles away,” DiFrancisco said. “It generated leads and visits.”
Thrivehive is a full function digital agency service that capitalizes on the latest technologies to target ads, user responses and media spending in the most efficient ways. It maximizes advertising investments. In the old days, an ad would go out to a wide audience, many of which would have no interest in the business. With ThriveHive, it can target ad dollars only to consumers who have expressed an interest in the types of products and services you offer.
It does so by tracking the user’s browsing habits, location and behavior, and matching those to products and services.
The Pocono Brewery Company in Swiftwater had a problem attracting customers. Its owner Silvio Vitiello said its web site failed to bring in leads.
ThriveHive tailored the site to optimize the way search engines like Google list his restaurant. Before, it was way down on the list when people searched for restaurants in the Poconos area. Now it’s more visible, generating more clicks to its web site, leading to more business and leads. That’s referred to as search engine optimization, one of the key elements of the service.
Ads for Vitiello’s restaurant now appear at the top of the search engine results page when people search for nearby Sanofi or Mount Airy. That’s the power of targeted advertising.
Like DiFrancisco, Vitiello also uses geo-targeting to draw customers.
“We have two things targeting the Water Gap on (Interstate) 80,” he said. “The ads that come up are working. We are able to actually know where the clicks come from. We can actually look at it and say it came from the Pocono Record’s program.”
ThriveHive offers full and mobile web site design, logo creation, on-target display advertising, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social media advertising, email marketing, interactive video, live chat leads, reputation monitoring and retargeting.
Larger corporations can afford their own media buyers, but smaller businesses like the ones that populate the Poconos do not have the budgets to maintain a full staff of on-line operatives.
Brodheadsville-based Keystone Auto Sales is another ThriveHive user.
“We tried to do some ad targeting around our area,” General Manager Matt Quaresimo said. “It helped people see our inventory when people were shopping for a car.”
Facebook has been one of Keystone’s most powerful digital advertising mediums.
“The ad targeting and proximity ad targeting would flash our ads to everyone around us so it would get people thinking,” he said. “And when they needed car service, they thought of us. We went from having no followers to quite a few.”
Keystone also used one of ThriveHive’s many services to generate leads for its auto sales and service businesses.
The company did some giveaways of oil changes and inspections through on-line contests. As a Pocono Raceway sponsor, Keystone bought 2,000 newspapers to be given away at the IndyCar Race last summer. The give-away generated over 800 leads.
“We work with one person at the Pocono Record, so it makes everything almost brainless for us,” Quaresimo said.
DiFrancisco, of an earlier generation, embraces the new technology.
“I am a very frequent social media person, but there is someone else here who’s young and is part of the new generation,” DiFrancisco said. “I understand it, I know it generates business, but I don’t know how to use it to generate it.”
ThriveHive is designed to work with all sized businesses, with solutions starting at $39 a month, so any business can afford it. It is set up so you can work with your usual ad salesperson at the Record.
For more information about the service, contact Pocono Record Digital Sales Manager Stephanie Fairbanks at 570-420-4374.