Welcome to the world of snake oil sales and online gimmicks. Everyone seems to have a solution, or at least an opinion as to how the newspaper industry will ultimately monetize the web; the problem with all the current solutions on the table is that none of them has really panned out. Yes, some ideas are certainly doing better and have stronger merit than others; however none offer the reward large enough to change the rules of the game. Along with this, we are seeing great new technology coming online that offers at least a glimmer of dim hope, but once again, no real hard evidence or better put, dollars attached, that make any meaningful difference.
I am sure some idea or technology will come along at some point in the future that can offer more than a glimmer of financial hope; but until then, if things don't change rapidly with our current business model, we'll continue to see the erosion of what was once a great industry. That said, what can we do now to at least slow the erosion that has overtaken the industry?
First, let's stop arguing over if offering our content for free online or if locking down the website is the correct course of action; that is the TOTALLY wrong argument or question to begin with. No one argues that giving away for free what costs us a arm and leg to create is shear business stupidity and destined to fail. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that. Now, before all those proponents of giving everything away for free rise up in arms, let me add to this statement. I am NOT saying that we lock down our websites and charge for the content, that strategy is as gravely flawed and will also leave the emperor exposed.
A side point that needs to be pointed out however. We can theorize all we want about impact of locking, not locking and so forth, however it should be noted how Walter Hussman of the Arkansas Gazette has chosen to address this issue. His process of not giving away for free what he produces at a great cost is hard to argue with from a circulation perspective as his results show a 10 year fairly stable circulation number. Yes, he has experienced some ups and downs, but most newspapers would give an arm or leg for the stabilization of the circulation numbers he has managed to maintain in his core market.
That said, I still believe that we are having the entirely wrong argument and Walters model will substantiate that. Despite the great circulation record, I suspect that Walter is in the same boat as the rest of us and whether his site is locked down or not really may not matter as his ad revenue and thus entire business model is still bleeding profusely. That said, we must look beyond the circulation impact, because despite the circulation you may be able to maintain; the real financial pressure comes from the perception of the advertisers coupled with the current economic meltdown which is accelerating the financial perfect storm. So what do we do?
First, I would begin by changing our current print /online relationship model and moving away from the mirror philosophy we currently embrace. I would start by eliminating a few items from the online site that appear in print. Examples might include, but aren't limited to cutting out the police blotters and crime scene, change the stories to offer different length and versions of the stories online versus in print and vice-versa. In a nutshell, give people a reason to visit both the print and online products. How you go about doing that may vary by market, but you must give them viable reasons to visit both products, having a mirrored product really offers no incentive to do that. But one thing Walter's model does give us is strong evidence or credence that having information only available in print and not online can help stem circulation declines.
Secondly, we must understand that alone won't be nearly enough. I would start finding new things to post online that would be interesting to our online visitors. I would find cool links to various topics that may be of interest in your market. Create a Youtube clip of the day, become a local aggregating site of non-print information. Create a blog roll exclusively for local bloggers, have your reporters and editors visit the chat forums and participate a few minutes each day. I heard one idea where you even promote the reporters and newsroom folks as experts in certain areas. Anything that provides audience interaction will be a great addition to developing the community you need to harvest. Many aggregating sites do quite well financially, why not take that model and be the local aggregating site everyone turns to?
Thirdly, expounding on the previous job of creating a robust community within your community that isn't necessarily tied to your newspaper. While content is king, the type of content is critical. We need to embrace citizen contributions to our site, whether that be as citizen journalists or just community sounding boards, the fact is that people love to see people in their community online. One need look no further than OhMyNews.com out of South Korea, started as a citizen journalist website that morphed into a spin-off print product. Oh and by the way, that spin-off web print became the 4th largest print product in South Korea after only a few years. I believe that online offers unlimited opportunities to create a community no one else in your community has the ability or bandwidth to do; we need to capitalize on this opportunity before it might be to late.
All that said, I don't pretend to have all the answers to this serious issue, I only am willing to throw out ideas and give things a trial to see what might resonate with our community. I get a kick out of those still clinging to the hope that more research and focus groups coupled with a task force will solve the problem; hope they unfortunately learn to late makes a very poor business strategy. The real keys are the ability to move quickly, the ability to adapt to market changes on a dime as well as the ability to change and follow one's intuition are paramount to succeeding in today's economic climate. We can all hope for the day focus groups and task forces are back in style, but until then it is a whole new world in which we are forced to operate, so let's get on with the task at hand.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, February 2, 2009
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.
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.
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