“The media and our culture push us to build something for everyone, to sand off the edges and to invest in infrastructure toward scale. But it turns out that quality, magic and satisfaction can lie in the other direction. Not because we can’t get bigger, but because we’d rather be better.”

These are the wise words of marketing guru Seth Godin, as shared in his blog post, “The smallest viable audience.” As a brand that’s built its reputation on creating amazing magazines for and about a very small, select group of exclusive readers – the homeowners within the neighborhoods we serve – we couldn’t have put it any better than Mr. Godin.

Over the last 20 years, it’s become even more clear that narrowing our focus to a small but mighty group of readers is what allows our free magazines to be hyper-relevant and highly appreciated.

We don’t create a single Stroll magazine with the intention of getting it into the hands of just anyone. They are built with love (and lots of time and energy from our Area Directors and support teams) to be enjoyed by the people who call their particular neighborhood “home.”

Seth Godin goes on to share in his blog post, “When you strip away the alternative mantra of ‘you can pick anyone, and we’re anyone,’ then you have to lean into the obligation of being the sort of provider that people would miss if you were gone.”

The stories and photos we share in our award-winning magazines cannot be found anywhere else. They are all about, and even largely contributed by, the readers themselves – from stories of travels to cherished family recipes to breathtaking wedding photos. This is hyper-relevance at its best and the key to why our readers (and the local businesses who wish to get their message in front of our readers) would miss us if Stroll didn’t exist.

The part of Seth’s blog that resonates with us most is when he explains that “specificity…sets the standard for producing work that people connect to and are changed by.” Connection has always been the word we’ve used to describe what we do. Stroll not only connects a specific group of neighbors together through storytelling, but connects great local businesses with potential customers through the power of niche print media and digital marketing.

Seth ends his post with the question, “What could be better?”

If you ask us, the answer is nothing.