It is no secert that Newspaper sales across the country are down and newspapers are having a hard time adapting to new technology and customer trends. In this post I am going to use Fargo’s local newspaper The Forum as an example for my Newspaper Marketing Ideas.
The Forum has been around a very long time and because of that it has seen the twilight years of journalism come and now go. Some of its most prized sources of revenue are drying up and even disappearing completely. I can’t blame the people who are shifting their advertising dollars away from newspapers into other sources. When you get better value elsewhere, it’s only natural to pursue it.
Issues facing newspapers
One of the newspaper’s bread and butter sections is the classified section. The problem is some guy named Craig came up with an idea of a free online classified website. It took a while but now people are using it, a lot, even in small towns.
My girlfriend runs a dog running business in Fargo and is a former employee of The Forum. In an attempt to drum up business and clients, she took out a classified ad in the paper and waited for the clients to roll in. It cost her $140 for a one-inch by one-inch ad. Nothing happened. People just don’t look through the paper for certain information anymore.
The natural progression was to post a free listing on Craigslist about her new service. Sure enough, she got multiple calls, emails and clients from this free website. Can you see a problem here?
This is a problem for all the newspapers that make money off classifieds and ads.
The good news for newspapers sales is that most are small and pretty local. This is a great opportunity from them to mimic the actions of Craigslist and others and get people to their own website by offering a similar service.
But how will they make money by offering this for free? Simply, they won’t, other than through paid ad placements on those listings. For example, businesses might be interested in newspaper advertising where related companies have posted free listings. A little competition, perhaps.
At the top of its site, The Forum boasts having 9,308,484 pages for November 2009. All of North Dakota has approximately 641,000 citizens, by the way. All that web traffic is great for The Forum, except anyone going to its web site for the first time is greeted with a wall garden (login form). If you’re not a member, you must become one in order to read the article. I simply hit the back button. What a shame.
I bet that out of those 9 million “pages” viewed on The Forum, the number one page is its login page. How can that possibly help generate revenue? It doesn’t. One time I visited drudgereport.com and noticed an article about an Ozzy Osbourne concert in Fargo and how the local police used the concert to nab wanted criminals by offering them free concert tickets.
Drudge Report gets over 600 million hits a month! So, all of those people reading Drudge clicked to see The Forum’s story about Ozzy and instead they were greeted with a login screen! Epic FAIL! How many of those people do you think registered to read the article? I bet 1% did.
In fact, if you do manage to register, you were automatically re-directed back to the home page, requiring you to go back and find the original link to the article you wanted (I believed this has been fixed now). Most people aren’t that patient.
Newspapers’ sales are losing ground to other services that are free and widely available. This means that much more time and emphasis have been placed on newspaper marketing ideas. What we forget is where all of the newspaper customers originated from. Their rock solid demographic has changed dramatically. I can’t remember the last time I looked a phone number up in a phone book, and the same goes with newspapers. We rely on the Internet for all our information.
Newspapers once had the ability to call each and every one of the residents in their town through Newspaper Telemarketing. But as more and more people ditch their landlines for unlisted cell phone numbers, this has made it even more difficult for newspapers to reach the younger demographic.
I can think of a few ideas that would help newspapers to be able to compete and continue in the coming century:
Charge much more for printed copies of the paper.
Let’s face it. Newspapers have extremely high overhead with paper, gas, electricity to print, a big building and distribution centers to heat/cool. I would charge appropriately for the honor of having a printed version of the paper. As people quit paying the higher prices for the printed version, scale back the overhead to match.
Capitalize on the brand of the newspaper by focusing on local/regional news only.
The best thing newspapers have going for them is their local brand and recognition. They should leverage that by only providing local, relevant news that people in the surrounding area will highly appreciate. Local and hyperlocal blogs have been springing up in every town across the country for the simple fact that people love their local sports, travel, news, dining, nightlife and the like.
Why waste time with national or even regional news at all? Make the paper completely local with news no one else offers. Ditch the world news section.
Imagine the savings each paper would have by not paying the Associated Press and other sources for the use of articles from outside the area. I believe The Forum pays roughly 2-3 million a year for the honor of republishing AP articles in its daily newspaper. How many jobs and overhead could be eliminated by focusing on local news only?
People have the Internet and TV/Satellite for national and world news. It’s a fallacy that local newspapers have to republish national and world news. I can’t recall a national article I read in The Forum that I had not already heard two days before on Twitter and the day before on Drudge Report.
Open up the classified section
Make the classified section of your website open and free to the public like craigslist.com. Your newspaper already has the traffic and trust and most newspapers are in smaller towns and communities that don’t yet have a functioning Craigslist page. Right now, people in small towns have to look to the nearest mid to large city if they want to use Craigslist.
Allow people to post for free for x number of days and then charge them to post for longer periods of time or with featured preference like ebay.com listings. This way people with a coffee table can get rid of their goods and those who want more permanent exposure can have it at a cost. Locals and outsiders will use your brand to facilitate their transactions and bring traffic, recommendations and so on.
Open up contributions
People love to be heard and share their ideas with the world. Give them the ability to do so. Employ an editor to read over submitted pieces and publish them to the rest of the community. This will add more content to be searched by more people to increase overall exposure, relationships, drama and just about everything else you can name.
This process can be made easy by auto filters for submitted articles. Filter for correct content type, foul language, formatting and so on. Article submission sites use this software all the time to ensure a uniform format to articles and content being submitted. Then once the articles pass auto checking, a person reviews and either approves/rejects for correction.
This process allows for a community to have hundreds or thousands of extra articles written for their site every year. Meanwhile, you collect revenue from the ad placements, gain extra traffic, links, etc.
Employ successful local content producers
One of the smartest things AOL has done in the last couple years was to buy up and enable further already successful blog sites. It simply looked at sites that were already successful and poured in resources to help expand those sites’ growth and revenue. This can and should be done on a local level.
There are bloggers in the area of every newspaper who are operating a successful blog about any subject you can imagine. Pay these bloggers to do what they do under your umbrella. You gain their readers support, interaction, favor and can possibly send them much more traffic, increasing their/your revenue, traffic and the circle continues.
Pick up the top 10 bloggers and their sites in the area along with their readers and now your local papers is attracting attention from all over the world. Here is where local pays on the world stage.
Triple the opinion section
Another newspaper marketing idea would be to expand the treasure trove of free content and participation known as the opinion section. People love to voice their opinions, and people like to hear others complain. Why not publish every letter to the editor and every editorial that comes in rather than picking and choosing? There’s nothing unique to a community quite like the opinion section of its newspaper.
Newspaper marketing
Newspaper circulation has been in decline for the past two decades, and signs for the future are not looking good. In order to increase newspaper circulation, more emphasis should be placed on marketing. Newspaper marketing jobs might be the only newspaper jobs available! Still, other newspapers outsource their marketing to a newspaper marketing agency. Either way, newspapers need to make big changes.
Conclusion
Eyeballs matter. Get the eyeballs and you’ll have newspaper advertising dollars. Newspapers used to be the only source of news for an area, but that has changed. Newspaper sales show how much the industry has changed.
Newspapers now have to fight for their readers now against everyone nationally, locally and worldwide. Focus on what you know best – your local community – and you can’t go wrong. When you have a solid base, expand into other areas. Tap the local talent because those are the people who matter the most to you. Can your newspaper compete against Drudge Report for world/national news online? No, so compete where you can win and focus all your energy there.
It would serve newspapers wisely move to a method of advertising control and brokering verses relying solely on subscribers. If newspapers combined marketing magazines, billboards, and local niche website such as blogs all the way through mega sites like Facebook. They would better serve their advertising base, by increasing exposure and managing advertising dollars across all local platforms.
Journalism isn’t dead. Journalism has more opportunities than ever before, but the energy has to be focused where it can make the most impact. That’s survival!
*top image from http://andygreenhaw.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/newspapers1.jpg
Tags: Business, Business Models, Marketing, Marketing Ideas, Newspapers, The Forum
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I think you nailed it on the head, saving their own skin starts with them. If newspapers cant see the need to completely change how they generate revenue then they will eventually fail. Often times in other countries journalist are seen as authorities on subjects and offer their opinion to the pieces they write. This makes things much more interesting, I believe we could use the same in our own publications. I spend probably a year thinking on this idea because the forum drives me crazy with their walled garden to their content. If everyone hits that dumb login page and leaves they lose and I don't think they get that. Thanks for stopping by and checking it out.
Wow Josh, you really have thought long and hard about this. I “was” a member of the traditional fish wrap old school journalism crowd many years ago (mid 1990s) and could see then that people (mostly younger) were getting their information from places other than print. In those days, it was 100% AOL.
Anyway, the problem you have is that traditional print journalists/editors have not let go of the past. They believe that people want quality and well written, AP Style Book approved, reverse pyramid information. This is old thinking and is the cause for their demise.
let's face it, the jouranlistic quality in most newspapers is far and above better than most “local blogs” but like you said, eyeballs matter today, and there are no eyeballs on fish wraps.
our buddy Steve has a really vibrant local blog in NC, and he produces mostly video stuff in online ezine format… he has garnered big attention.
Long story short, newspapers need to get off the high horse and allow web 2.0-like interaction in their online spaces…and in addition, learn to INTERACT with their readers in that online space. no longer to we want to be spoon fed info… we want to comment and be a part of the story.
Old school media doesn't get it.
BTW– big sites also have this problem. Time mag online is the same way. ugly red and white site and no way to comment on the articles.
Bleh!!!
AL
I think you are correct in saying that print media uses social media to their own peril. The value has to be there in order for people to begin to jump back in. But in the case of The Forum above. I thought it would be nice to subscribe by rss to the latest news articles which was fine until they started broadcasting ads through their rss every 5th article.The same thing happened with their twitter account. They got blasted by their twitter followers for broadcasting these unwanted ads right in their face and they quickly changed back. I am sure in both of these cases The Forum said hey look at these eyeballs lets sell them stuff. But in this social world we live in people matter and people are quick to change if they don't like something. The old model is broke and I still believe that there is enough time to change but is running out quickly.The fact remains that social has almost a zero cost to entry when compared to buying trucks, paper, ink and whatnot. I'm willing to bet a lot of their employees are on Facebook all throughout the day (gf used to work there) and those employees could be engaging readers and fans vs updating their status. People like to talk, share and participate and will to your benefit it they find it in their interest to do so. I also thank god I don't have to manage the mess that they are in. I feel most is due to the lack of change. Thanks for stopping by and getting another long winded response.
Interesting article with an interesting perspective. My question is is it too late to fix the problem? You see, considering the very high overhead that these newspapers have and considering the “costs” of ads that populate and manage the overhead, you have to think that they are in a lose/lose situation….
You lose subscription numbers, you have to lower your advertising costs…
You raise the rates to adjust for this and don't increase value, you stand the chance of losing more subscribers and lower the margin once again.
I think that there are a lot of newpapers out there that are using social media, all to their own peril. You see, if the value ain't there (and let's face it, if you can get the same information online for free, the value simply isn't there), then the decline will continue.
So, the bigger question is how do you increase the value for both the advertisers that pay for spots and the readers that purchase the newspapers?
Personally, I dunno and thank god that I am not in the paper business in this day and age. There will always be people that will prefer print over reading it via your smart phone or laptop. But as this group shrinks, you have to wonder what “value” the advertisers will place on print.
Good article Josh…I like the ones that make me **think**….
I'm in the process of moving country – and have just sold items ranging from a car to a washing machine via the local site gumtree.com.au – total cost of advertising nada/zero/ziltch. Craigslist is not as popular in Australia – gumtree is brilliant for both buyer and seller – especially for hard to move items like fridges – you can geographically limit your search to see only items within Xkm of your Y suburb – necessarily in Perth which stretchs 50km in both directions! I earlier sold a more specialist car (an older 4WD) and that didn't sell thru gumtree – I ended up paying $60 to place it in a speclaist weekly car trader mag. I never considered using the local paper because all their car section is dominated by commercial operators – my little ad would neve be seen. In NZ the largest real estate website is trademe.co.nz (I local site which was started up when someone smart realised that eBay was "too small" for them (he was bought out by a major newspaper chain some years ago – rich at 25 – nice!). They now charge several hundred dollars to list a property but are significantly cheaper than the local real estate cartel's website – and allows private listings … Advertising on the web also breaks local trade monopolies. I don't know the figures in the US but an display ad in the NZ yellow pages (phone book) will setup you back around US$3k – a year – I find my yellow pages useful for supporting my laptop at the right height – what do you use yours for LOL
For certain things like cars the newspapers still hold some weight but that is slowly eroding. I believe the number one reason that websites are far better for listing and getting results is simply due to how quick it is. I can run a search, hit ctrl+f type in my keyword and find every listing I want on the page. The same goes for finding a phone number online. I hit ctrl+t (open a new tab), type in the business I want the phone number to, hit enter, .5 seconds later I see the phone number and call. How long does it take to look it up in the phone book? or Classified sections? That is why people don't use those table props. They are way to slow for our attention span. We want info and right this second anything longer and our attention is gone.I hope the moving is going well for you and the family thanks for stopping by.
this really has turned out to be a great discussion IMO. Another thing to consider is the classifieds being used to advertise jobs. These days, you can post on multiple websites, including the biggies like Monster and CareerBuilder for less than $50. Big corporations buy "seats" to these sites at huge discounts and post hundreds of listings.Compare that to posting a 5 line job opening in your local newspaper at around $1500 (that's what I would pay here in the Chi).you know what is even funnier about that? … just all the required legal mumbo jumbo like "equal opp employer" and all that would take up 3 of your 5 lines! ROFLThe other issue: most newspaper job listings these days are inundated with "get rich quick" MLM garbage and very few "real" job listings.Sheesh, it's a wonder that ANY newspaper is in business anymore. I think once all the baby boomers are gone, there will be no one left to get a physical newspaper.AL
I would think the way the economy is right now you could post a job via homing pigeon and still get a response. I agree with you and your statement about papers disappearing with the boomers. I read this 2 years ago and think they are going in the right direction…
Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/business/medi…
Damn Josh, why don't you make my job harder?? Hee-hee. Let those 8itches just keep doing what they've been doing is what I say.
Saw that you had joined our Facebook Page. That's cool brother. 2010 may shape up to be a good year for us. Dude, this was one of your best articles. They are all good but you really spent some serious time on this one.
Thanks, what till you see the next one. Going to be one for the books for sure
Well I did at least point them in the right direction. Oops forgot to link hyperlocal blog your way. Fixed. I had intended to.
I personally prefer reading a real life paper than something online. I have a hard time focusing on a screen for too long a time. I agree with you that their insisting on people to log in is defeating the purpose of winning people over. It's much like insisting people log in to leave a comment. Most won't and you've lost a potential reader/promoter/customer.
I personally prefer reading a real life paper than something online. I have a hard time focusing on a screen for too long a time. I agree with you that their insisting on people to log in is defeating the purpose of winning people over. It's much like insisting people log in to leave a comment. Most won't and you've lost a potential reader/promoter/customer.
Hey Josh , I am a big fan of printed paper aswell, I love ebooks ect,but i still print them out instead of reading it on the screen. And when it comes to newspapers i would never consider using an Online One the printed one is just much much better
I think that 20 years ago when newspapers where in their hayday racking cash hand over fist they had no idea what was coming. They should have started embracing the internet much sooner. About 8 years ago when it because very obvious that the Internet was only going to be getting bigger they should have put some more eggs in the Internet basket. The papers that figure it out will be 100% digital soon and still providing good content. Being digital will mean having a much smaller staff but with the same ability to reach their communities.