Borrell Associates Research Shows Digital "Pureplays" are Farming Legacy Media Sales Staff

We all know the media landscape is shifting and evolving before our eyes but a recent research report by Borrell Associates, a leader in local media research, suggests that digital "Pureplays" (a digital company not tied to a traditional media company) are poaching the best local salespeople from legacy media and paying a premium.

"There appears to be formidable competition from online pureplay companies like Yodle, Pandora, Yelp, ReachLocal and others. The pureplay managers in our 2013 survey reported an average starting salary of $54,100 for reps, which is about 50% higher than what TV, newspaper and radio managers were offering." - 2013 UPDATE: Assessing Local Digital Sales Forces

Terry Heaton also commented on Borrell's report at Report: Pureplays Using Legacy Media as a Farm System for Sales Staff and astutely identifies a number of core issues providing some great one-liners that surmise the situation:

"[many legacy media companies] believe they are competing with only the other media companies in town are missing the real nature of the landscape. Google, for example, is actually competing with local media companies, taking enormous sums of cash from local markets everywhere." - Terry Heaton

ReachLocal meanwhile is hiring and churning a tremendous number of local salespeople, at face value that may seem like a problem for them but it's part of their strategy to retain only the best performers. What this means is that those turned lose are often scooped up by local media yet they're not exactly the reps that are setting sales records. Meanwhile, the next round of hiring is happening thus removing the top performers and plugging them into the ReachLocal machine.

"It’s hard enough to compete with those you know, but when you’re not even aware that somebody is eating your lunch, that’s a real stumper." - Terry Heaton

Of course, the challenge is that ReachLocal is a publicly traded company with years of experience training, selling, and fulfilling digital solutions for local businesses so legacy publishers have a lot of catching up to do but they still must deliver and grow what they do best - print, radio, tv etc. We've said for some time that local publishers have an unfair advantage because of their existing brand, salesforce and relationships but are failing to capitalize - well, the Pureplays are gaining ground in those areas. Now, more than ever, waiting to make digital a vibrant part of your business is a mistake.

The problem is that running a business, keeping track of the trends and incorporating them effectively into your business so that you can execute is not only non-trivial it's significant. That's where Locable comes in. We're the digital experts on your team, we provide training, sales support, marketing collateral, an unmatched publishing platform that makes running a local site fast, easy and effective and an ever growing playbook that enables you to add easy-to-implement practices that enhances what you already do rather than requires you to add more to your staff's workload.

Contact us to learn more about how Locable can make you more profitable and engaging simply by amplifying what you already do.