Who Says Newspapers Can't Offer Pay-For-Perfomance Advertising?

One of the real disadvantages newspapers and other print products have when pitted against the online is the ability of online industry to show results as measured by click-through, page views, downloads and actual sales online. How can newspapers overcome this small disadvantage and take the offensive? I say small disadvantage because while online competitors can monitor all the above and much more, due to several reasons, the results for online advertising are still pretty dismal at best. It's great to be able to track the click-throughs, page views and all the other bells and whistles offered by online. However all that is really worth tracking are the dollar signs registered on the cash register window. Those dollar signs are proving to be a bit illusive, even for the online folks.

Now I realize many will argue the disadvantage is much more than small, in fact many will argue that it is quite huge. Small or large, not sure it really matters as the bigger problem in my mind is newspapers inability to measure and guarantee results; instead relying and trusting on the age old arguments of reach, market saturation and so forth. This past month, I have been lucky enough to be in a room twice listening to employees from Morris communications discuss their paid-lead program. While I am not convinced their current program or model will be the saving grace so to speak, I have been manipulating various versions or spin-offs of the paid-lead program in my mind. I believe their paid-lead program with some modifications could actually morph into a potential game changer.

Here's an innovative idea that may change the rules of the game back in the favor of the newspaper industry. It utilizes one of the remaining strengths many newspapers still have over their competition, that is they still dominate the eyeballs in most markets. I do believe that competitive edge will continue to erode if we don't provide a reason for the eyeballs to remain loyal - and news alone isn't enough to do that, there has to be financial reasons as well.

First, as most would agree, we need to target many non-traditional potential advertisers from the service industry; these could include but may not be limited to accounting, legal, plumbing, heating and air, auto repair, auto towing and appraisal services to name but a few. I believe the small business and non-traditionals may well be the key to our future.

Visit each of the potential advertisers asking them to tell us about their three best or most successful offers they have ever utilized to drive business. Once they have explained those to us, we then offer to run a FREE ad campaign featuring those offers throughout the next quarter. We explain that while we will be running the offer and teasers, we will not be advertising who is providing the offer. Now for the best part, the entire campaign is FREE with only one condition, they will pay us an agreed amount for each lead that we generate for them via this campaign. This could be anywhere from $19.95 to $49.95 per lead depending upon the services being provided.

After we have secured approximately 25+ different businesses in this fashion, we build a campaign targeting our readers. This campaign shows our readers how they can save money, deal with only honest and reputable local businesses without the hassle of calling people you don't know. Not only that, but we have screened them to assure they are what they say. The readers then call our number where we provide the name and number of the business they are seeking. We let the readers know they can contact them or we'll have the business contact them, the readers choice. After hooking up the readers and the business, we also follow-up with the customer to assure it was a good experience and then forward that informal survey from the customer to the business as a tool to help them better their service as well.

Lastly, in order to encourage readers to utilize this money-saving feature, the newspaper can offer their readers an incentive to utilize this service. Say a free month of the newspaper, a free one-year subscription to a list of 20-30 magazines such Sporting News, Forbes or what have you. (The cost to the newspaper for these magazines is only a couple bucks) Your imagination can run wild as you can offer any incentive that fits your program.

This idea isn't perfect as a matter fact this idea is still developing in my mind. I continually come up with new twists each day I feel might add to the potential power of this type of approach. But at the end of the day, we can not only track the success of promotion, we can deliver direct results to the businesses we have partnered with. And that is the only real measuring stick we need. The ad dollars will go where they get results. As with the other ideas I throw out, none will in itself save us from what the future may bring. But innovative thinking is the only path to a bright future - the business model we currently utilize will not survive; but that doesn't mean we can't.