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Can Newspapers Be Saved? Part 2: Potential Solutions
By John Keister | April 3, 2008
In my last post, I discussed the state of the union for newspapers. As we all know, the newspapers have struggled to move their businesses and revenue online, and they have struggled to do it in a way that does not cause massive disruption. This has been discussed and agonized over by a number of writers and industry people in the past decade. In fact, just since my last post, I saw an article in the New Yorker magazine from Eric Alterman titled “Out of Print” (The New Yorker, Mar 31, 2008) where the author wonders “who will have the distinction of publishing America’s last genuine newspaper. Few believe that newspapers in their current form will survive.” He goes on to talk about the success of such online news sites like The Huffington Post, which are seeing strong growth in usage and ad dollars while maintaining a much lower cost base than traditional newspapers.
It is clear that we will see continued upheaval at the newspapers: some will work to evolve their strategy and embrace online, some will consolidate, and some will fold. From a strategic point of view, some newspapers have embraced the need to change their approach, to diversify and to create an online presence. You have examples like the Washington Post diversifying with Kaplan, New York Times acquiring About.com, etc. So now that we see some newspapers building an online strategy, what is next? As some of these forward-thinking newspapers regroup, reorganize, reshuffle management ranks and eventually poke their head out of the fox hole, they will face a variety of important questions.
Today, let’s look at one important question facing companies like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others: how do you recharge and begin to rebuild your advertiser and revenue base?
Here is one path forward for rebuilding advertising revenue:
1. Defend your advertiser relationships! The newspaper’s largest asset is the advertiser relationship. The advertisers trust their newspaper sales rep, as that rep has been working with them for years or decades. It is natural that they would look to you to evolve how they spend their advertising budget. Tell them you are building a plan to give them targeted offline and online exposure.
2. Build an advertising package for your advertiser that includes targeted Google and Yahoo! traffic. To be relevant to your advertiser in the online world, you need to include Google and Yahoo! in your package. For example, a newspaper might consider a bundled advertising package of the offline newspaper, online newspaper(s), Yahoo!, Google, and other online traffic that can be targeted to the city or regions that each advertiser cares about. Don’t count on the offline and online newspaper alone to be enough. Supplement with targeted search traffic, since that is where the volume is.
3. Make the phone ring! Most local advertisers want the phone to ring. So make sure there is a pay-per-phone-call component or call tracking component to your packages so you can prove the value when it comes time for that advertiser to sign a renewal.
4. Keep it simple! It is important to keep the online packages simple so that your salespeople and the advertiser do not get confused. “We have three packages: Calls, Clicks or Both. You can spend anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 per month. And we will provide you with monthly reports on your campaigns.” This alleviates the pain for an advertiser to have to think about managing and tracking their online marketing budget, which most businesses do not have the time or experience to do effectively.
5. Invest in training your sales team! No sales team will effectively make the transition to selling online (or the offline/online combination sale) without extensive training. This investment in training is critical to your success, and it will require a material amount of time and money to get it right. If your sales team can become trusted consultants to your advertisers, helping them with their online and offline marketing, you will win back these relationships.
6. Incentivize your sales team to sell online! They will fall into the trap of selling what they know, which is offline. If you incentivize them to sell online, they will follow the money, they will learn how to sell online and in the end, their advertiser accounts will be happy about the additional online exposure they are getting.
So let’s suspend disbelief and assume that someone out there sees an ounce of truth to what is discussed in this post. Where does a newspaper go for help in rebuilding relationships with advertisers, building these packages, supporting clicks and calls, training the sales staff? Well, there are a number of service providers. There are larger players that have some scale, and there are a lot of upstarts that have nice powerpoints but have no experience in delivering large numbers of advertising packages effectively. Buyer beware. My own biased opinion is to talk with Marchex, as we do all of the above, and we do it at significant scale.
Topics: Newspapers, Call Tracking, Local Advertisers, PPCall, Advertising |
April 4th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Everything you say here is true and there is one more thing newspapers must do to succeed online: they most think vertically.
Most newspapers are horizontal enterprises whether in print or online. That is, they give readers/visitors a bit of information on a broad spectrum of topics from national and international news to prep sports, community issues and the local fishing hole report.
Most Web sites offer viewers a huge amount of information on a very narrow topical spectrum: TheKnot.com gives you everything you ever wanted to know about weddings, Edmunds.com on cars, etc.
In order for the newspaper sales staff to sell successfully they need newspaper Web sites targeted enough to meet advertiser needs. Those sites must have a robust vertical content environment that attracts the right kinds of eyeballs — eyeballs of the advertisers’ potential customers who are likely on the site in the first place due to their intent to buy.