Meeting advertiser demand, EC Classifieds, the English edition of Spanish language shopper, El Clasificado, launches three more zones and starts LA County penetration.
Los Angeles – California. The idea to launch EC Classifieds to fill the gap left in print media by the closure of the PennySaver did not occur to Martha de la Torre, CEO of El Clasificado until June 4, 2015 – a week after hiring four top sales representatives from the Pennysaver. After visiting former PennySaver clients the objective was clear. Advertisers needed El Clasificado to target and reach English speaking Latinos, not just Spanish speaking Latinos. So on July 1, 2015, EC Classifieds launched in time for the Fourth of July shopping weekend with 95,000 copies in Orange County, Riverside and Bakersfield. The publication provided immediate results for advertisers.
Expanding to Los Angeles only one month after the initial launch was not part of the 2015 plan, but as Martha de la Torre said, “We had no choice. Our customers were demanding more cities for EC Classifieds.” The decision happened so quickly that most departments had only one week to prepare for the expansion.
“We are so proud of our EC team that has been able to pivot on a dime to sell, print and deliver three additional zones of EC Classifieds with such short notice,” declared Joe Badame, COO and Co-Founder. The new areas cover the East San Gabriel Valley, West San Gabriel Valley and West Inland Empire, for a total weekly circulation of 135,000 copies of EC Classifieds.
Now, El Clasificado is planning where to go next. “We are already getting requests for San Fernando Valley, Ventura and Lancaster. This clearly tells us that print is not dead nor anywhere near so,” said Liliana Zambrano, El Clasificado’s Sales Director. “We saw an opportunity and took advantage of it, and in just a few weeks, found ourselves having to increase our circulation in order to connect more advertisers with the English-speaking Hispanic market. This is great news for us.”
The success of the expansion is due in large part to El Clasificado’s well-known award winning distribution system, which has been able to place the new English publication in just the right targeted areas. EC Classifieds currently reaches more than 50 cities in Southern California via 5,852 distribution points.
For Barney Harris, Vice President of Media for Confie Seguros, and one of the inaugural advertisers of the magazine’s launch, “EC Classifieds is a one-of-a-kind product as it is poised to fill the market void left by the PennySaver. Furthermore, as a print magazine it satisfies an essential need in as much as every company ought to include a print medium such as this in their media mix. This will be another touch point with the customer,” he said.
These great opportunities to grow in print has not hindered the company’s focus on digital. The cross-promotion opportunities with EC Classifieds has helped drive traffic to Quinceanera.com and ElClasificado.com, helping these digital assets reach record levels since July. The EC Hispanic Media digital network now has close to 28 million monthly impressions and ranked among the top 50 classified shopping sites in the United States according to Quantcast.com.
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