It’s no secret that many newspapers today face crippling challenges as the Internet siphons away daily readers. One daily newspaper in Texas, the El Paso Times, has responded to this challenge by developing specialty publications for targeted audiences.

In El Paso, Hispanics comprise more than 80 percent of the population, so The Times has launched three new Spanish-language publications in the past two years — El Paso y Mas, Autos y Mas and TV y Mas. For those of us who haven’t seen any Spanish since high school, “y mas” is Spanish for “and more.” So El Paso y Mas, for example, includes not only news from El Paso proper, but also from the greater El Paso region and over the border in Mexico.

“These are all very different niche publications,” says Robin Montoya, group market development director for Texas-New Mexico Newspapers Partnership (TNP), which publishes the El Paso Times. “But they are all based on the premise that we can deliver information in a second language effectively if we know where the audience lives, what they are interested in most and what benefits their day-to-day life.”

To unearth that information about audience preferences and needs, Montoya ran focus groups to discover ways to differentiate the El Paso Times’ Spanish-language offerings from other publications in the area. The focus group process allowed Montoya to explore everything from color and layout preferences to content.

“[Readers] said they wanted news from Mexico without the constant focus on crime and death,” says Montoya, referring to the graphic crime coverage for which Mexican papers are sometimes known. “We found out people wanted kinder, gentler news heavy on family-oriented content and entertainment. That’s what we deliver.”

Montoya also hired Claritas, a marketing research company, to perform a segmentation analysis of the paper’s readership. This helped the newspaper make decisions regarding the focus and distribution of its new publications. For instance, all of the Spanish-language papers are totally advertising supported, and thus, free to consumers, so distribution takes place either by stacking the papers in racks on street corners or by hanging them from home doorknobs. The Claritas analysis helped Montoya decide, among other things, where to place the street racks.

“Most important, [segmentation analysis] assisted us with connecting the right advertisers to the right audience,” says Montoya. She hired a local research company to conduct door-to-door surveys to figure out exactly what content readers wanted in each publication. They found that the readers of Autos y Mas wanted to hear from advertisers with economical cars or easy financing offers, while the El Paso y Mas audience would respond favorably to ads dealing more with religious events or Mexican holidays. Later, Montoya mailed out a follow-up survey asking respondents what articles they tended to read and what changes they wanted to see in the editorial content.

Montoya has incorporated segmentation into other marketing plans. She recently used segmentation analysis to refine a direct mail acquisition campaign, identifying distinct geographic clusters that might be interested in different sections of the newspaper. The El Paso Times then planned a multi-tiered campaign using everything from direct mail to door hangers to street kiosk advertisements to communicate with each target segment.

As of last July, Montoya says, the campaign had generated a 1-percent return in targeted customers who signed up for a subscription. Direct mail was an important component in setting the stage for all other campaign elements. “We don’t do direct mail thinking that we will get thousands of responses,” she says. “But direct mail primes the pump. Without the direct component, the model doesn’t work.”

Growing a print newspaper’s subscriber base in a world of Internet, blogs and 300-channel TV is no small feat. Montoya attributes the success of her publications not so much to their Spanish focus as to the understanding of the content preferences and advertising needs of their audience — an understanding achieved through the integrated use of segmentation and focus group studies. Ultimately, says Montoya, it is content that drives the success of an editorial product.