How The Local Directory has grown from 3,000 copies to over 110,000 copies every month!

15 Oct How The Local Directory has grown from 3,000 copies to over 110,000 copies every month!

Nisha founded and launched The Local Directory in 2006.  The print run for the first ever edition was 3,000 and was delivered only to residents of Amersham on the Hill. Thirteen years later and we have grown considerably, now distributing 13 editions of the magazine over large areas of Buckinghamshire & Hertfordshire. These days our monthly print run is over 110,000 and we deliver to 13 towns and surrounding villages – hard to imagine all those years ago!

Like any business there have, of course, been ups and downs. But we are delighted to say that The Local Directory now employs 10 staff at head office and over 150 magazine distributors!  It only seems like yesterday that Raj was the only one tramping the streets of Amersham doing the deliveries himself.

In a previous life, Nisha was a book-keeper looking after the finances for several companies. But following a conversation with a friend that had launched a magazine elsewhere, she decided to launch a similar magazine in Amersham. Since then, her greatest pleasure is to hear how the magazines has helped so many local businesses to grow – and many advertisers are booking in annually, never missing an issue.

That’s one thing that we try to do really well at The Local Directory. We take our time to ensure that we have carefully curated and arranged the design and print of our magazines; the local community information, editorial and articles as well as placing all our customer adverts strategically to ensure they get the best response.

The door to door delivery of all our 110,000 magazines can be quite a challenge but we‘ve got it down to a fine art.  It‘s organised like a military operation and the whole team find it hugely rewarding to see all 110,000 magazines and leaflets leave our warehouse.  We can then track every single delivery with our very detailed GPS tracking app to ensure that every one reaches it’s proper destination.

We know that local people love The Local Directory  – simply because it stays local! The local community and the business community thrive as a result.  But this isn’t just a fluke – we really put our time into them to ensure it happens. We look carefully at the industry their business is in and where they are based. Then we try to understand what they want to achieve from advertising with us – apart from new sales enquiries, off course. Once we understand these first two things we recommend the right advert size for the their budget.  Most importantly we also advise on what the advert should say to get maximum results. 

Finally, and most importantly, we advise on the best way to measure the response from the advert. This means working with the advertiser to track the trend in new business leads over a 4 or 6 month period.  This tells us what advertising messages are working best, which is obviously vital information for the business.

When we have a new advertiser join us, we are keen to learn what their level of enquiries is to date, so we can tweak the advert or advertising package to grow those numbers ongoing.

If you want to be a part of The Local Directory community, then get in touch!