Is 'Barter' The Key to Getting the Little Guy Back?

It is no secret many of newspapers largest advertisers are cutting back, going out business or in need of federal handouts in order to make payroll. One might argue waiting for these advertisers to come back is a hopeless venture and failed strategy. With comedy central operating at full tilt in Washington and no real leadership on the horizon, there is nothing in the economic outlook pointing towards much, if any rebound in 2009 or even 2010. The question then becomes, are you prepared to weather this storm that is measured not in months, but years?

That being the case, it is imperative we turn some major attention to those advertisers our industry has a history of ignoring; that would be the little guys. Yes, those pesky little businesses that in years gone by, we priced out of our pages, may in fact be one of the keys to our future survival. The real kicker is now the newspaper industry must go looking for them, and many of those shunned smaller little guys that have been uninvited to the dance in years past, may decide that playing hard to get can be fun. In fact, with economic conditions as they are, there may not be a price per inch, however low that will attract their interest. That being the case, how do we turn these lemons into lemonade before they are lost forever?

Here is a simple thought, one that I have seen used, one that works but has yet to be perfected to the level I believe is possible. In tough economic times and good times alike, many smaller businesses just don't have the available cash to advertise with any consistency, if at all. That being the case, how do we reach them and offer services that promote and grow their business while helping us meet our bottom-line goals and objectives. One word comes to mind, 'Barter'.

I began experimenting with barter a couple years ago with N2 initiative within our circulation department. The premise was that we wanted a circulation retention operation that was easy to build, promote and maintain. We wanted something unique and different than the normal 'reader reward' card and trinkets that circulation departments have a history of offering their long-term subscribers. We opted for a subscriber only Loyalty Website' which we called deliveringqc.com, but has since been re-purposed as www.ILValleyDeals.com.

We started by going to our advertising department to obtain a list of non-advertisers as our starting point for a list of those we would approach and solicit to advertise on our retention site. Initially, this online retention site would allow the advertisers to offer changeable coupons year round to our readers, would offer various auctions, e-newsletters and/or e-blasts promoting their goods and offers, it had a value vault where readers could come and get discounted gift certificates and mush more.

Best of all, we priced a full year on the site at only $75 per month or $900 for the year. Figured it would be an easy sell. Long story short, after 30 days of hard work, we only had 3 takers and the entire concept was in jeopardy of failure. Before abandoning ship, I decided that we needed to try a completely new approach; we doubled the price to $1800 per year offering it as barter.

Once again, long story short, businesses jumped on almost as fast as we could sign them up, barter was certainly something businesses could not only relate to, but they could afford. Now the big issue became, how do we monetize the barter turning it into hard cash that pays bills? The first year offered our share of trial and error, we had far more barter than could be monetize through the site. But we viewed this a small price to pay for experimentation.

Over time we have been perfecting our retention model at www.ILValleyDeals.com in such a way as to monetize the barter far more effectively. It now has a backwards auction platform, we are testing a very robust classified platform as you are reading this post, (the classified platform will tie into other like sites as well offering a viable option to Craigslist, see my next post on a worthy Craigslist opponent). We'll be offering our readers a state-of-the-art auction platform, this auction platform will be used to barter for print advertising (could be used to barter for online or digital advertising as well). We now offer video for our advertisers as well as many other innovations still on the drawing board. We will be relaunching this reader site inside of 30 days as a big part of our innovation initiative here in Ottawa. It is simply a readership site on steroids.

If you read one of my previous posts on the dying subscription model, you will see how this comes into play. We are attempting to mold a program for our readers that couples the power of print with the new pull of online into a new program that offers readers unlimited ways to save money, pinch their pennies and live fuller lives; while offering our advertisers the opportunity to help them do that thus furthering their business.

Is barter a perfect model? For some it will be! Is our version of barter the final and best idea? I think not. Will it allow us to gain business from those we have missed out on in the past? Without a doubt, yes! Will the barter model change over time? Absolutely, probably monthly as that is the key to new innovations, you must be ready to turn on a dime and move in different directions as the opportunities present themselves. This particular site isn't built to replace a newspaper website, it couldn't do that even if we wanted it to, it is built to fill a niche or void for our readers and users offering another place to spend their time and money while keeping them in our media fold so to speak. It is built to be inexpensive, easy to maintain and quick to implement without the need for IT or other departments who are already stressed to the max, that makes it a win-win for us.

I welcome any critiques of www.ILValleyDeals.com, as this is time to tweak and adjust as we prepare for a major in our market.