Types of Local Advertisers (and Prospects)

When we talk to publishers about embracing digital the concept of cannibalization often comes up. While print cannibalization can definitely take place when you sell digital the "wrong way" when you sell digital the right way you maximize your profitability both online and in print.

Potential advertisers are everywhere, do you know where to look to grow your business?

More importantly, if you, as a leading local media provider, are not driving the digital conversation (or even participating in it) then you're allowing anyone in your community with a website, a media service or an interest in making buck come in and sell against you. And there are a lot of people selling against you - think: Yellow Pages and their various digital offerings, Yelp, Groupon, and to a lesser extent Facebook and Google to name a few.

What forward-looking publishers are realizing is that cannibalization is a risk to their business, it's failing to lead the conversation and discover new ways to deliver value to customers.

Already buying digital

These are businesses that are already spending real money on digital advertising and marketing. Borrell Associates estimates that some 40% of local advertiser budgets will be earmarked for digital in 2013 up from 25% in 2011. What would growing your revenue by 25-40% from your existing advertisers do for your business?

This is a question you should seriously consider. While you must have a viable and valuable solution, digital doesn't come with the same cost-structure as print and so a greater portion of digital revenue can be enjoyed as profit!

Many of your advertisers fall into this category so they are already spending money on both your print product and some other digital advertising - they're just waiting for you to ask them if they'd like to see the dessert - ummm, digital - menu. Seriously, this epitomizes low-hanging-fruit.

Interested in buying digital (may or may not already know it)

This subclass of advertisers may not currently be very invested in digital but they're thinking about it, looking for solutions, and being actively sold to by people trying to get a cut of your revenue. By nature, they're interested in both print and digital and take a pragmatic view of advertising and marketing, as such they're a great prospect for your digital solutions.

Your unfair advantage, your audience, gives you a leg up when selling digital and can make this a very short sales cycle. Conversely, they're still at risk of being sold by a digital-only shop that digital is better than print (rather than different, delivering value to a different part of the purchase funnel) and, thus, not presenting an integrated package to them could result in you not only failing to grow your business but losing them as a print client which would be doubly bad fortune.

Note: In both of these initial cases the immediate opportunity enables you to sell more to existing customers which is why we train publishers on the "dessert sales approach" whereas the next option is not in the market for print and thus we use an "appetizer sales approach"

Will "switch to digital" or Only buy digital

We all hate to see it and it's generally a bad business decision for them but some people are going to cut their print spend. Period! We at Locable believe in Integrated Marketing Communications and train you and your team to sell the virtues of both print and digital but sometimes people want to only do the latest and greatest.

So, no matter what you do these people are going to stop advertising in your print product (have some already?) and you have a couple choices: lose them as a client or deliver a digital solution. In reality there's a third option, offer an integrated campaign and play to their desire to embrace digital and social media but justify the added expense by incorporating print - meet their needs and yours all at the same time.

Another way to look at this is that average community publication has 40-120 advertisers and serves a community of 1500-4500 small businesses. Some 80-90% of the local SMBs are never going to buy print so the only opportunity to drive revenue from this massive client base is through digital solutions.

Not interested in the web et al.

Finally, you have those folks that are never going to buy digital. There isn't much opportunity here though we have seen publishers have success in introducing social promotions with a strong print piece to deliver and extract more value but these folks aren't going to give you much upside or be a risk of loss... until the owner retires or sells the business.

The "I Need Help" Class

This is the little appreciated class of businesses because they're hard to prospect and have a somewhat violent reaction to spending money on advertising because they don't understand or appreciate the benefits. They also represent a class of business that can become incredibly profitable and loyal. These are businesses run by passionate operators who know they are poor marketers and need help. In this case, local media delivers tremendous value from being a marketing authority though this implies they have authority over all of the current options at play.

Moreover, this class can be expense to prospect and so engaging them with a self-service option (digitally) or exposing them to things like social promotions as a consumer on Facebook is your best bet to engage them - they need to have a reason to come to you. In a sense this is a shadow class because they're hard to quantify however we've seen a number of publishers tap into this class of businesses through revenue-generating activities - that's a win-win!

Are you a local publisher who is looking for help charting your digital future? Talk with us today for a free consultation