You Want to Do What? A Guide to Help Local Publishers Make Smart Decisions - and Avoid Bad Ones

Are you in danger of missing the forest for the trees?

In our travels we regularly speak with publishers who have visions of the future of their business that are, shall we say, somewhat misguided. I always applaud action over inertia but I pride myself on educating publishers (even those we don't work with) and when their vision is fueled more by hype than reality I want to jump in.

In order to judge where you should invest your time and resources it's important to understand the key pieces of the changing media landscape.

Below are a list of things we often hear publishers "want" but which would fail to realize results. Let me be clear, many of the items below are great things they're just not the most important or urgent thing for local publishers to embrace and often require a support system of marketing, technology development, or simply customer support to maintain.

Growing Audience with a Digital Edition

Many of our publishers use a digital edition as a complement to print and we even train them to use our In This Issue (ITI) approach to maximize value and even drive SEO & Social Media benefits however a digital edition on it's own is significantly lacking. Why? How will people find it to read?

The ITI approach helps as does developing an email list of engaged readers but you see, this already has transcended beyond "a digital edition" to a digital distribution strategy and we've only scratched the surface. We previously wrote about The Problem With Your Digital Edition and want to encourage publishers to view a digital edition as part of a strategy but not a strategy in itself.

Ecommerce

Selling products and collecting some commission on the sale is a great idea, except... except, there's a lot of things. First, developing a storefront that people actually visit to make purchases is no small feat especially if you don't already have a strong digital presence. Moreover, where will the products come from? Sure, local businesses would love to have you sell for them however are they going to actively manage their own inventory and ensure orders are fulfilled promptly? If not, and they probably won't, then you're stuck both legally liable and your brand is negatively affected.

If you're thinking about selling your own products I'll ask: 1. do you really want to be in the retail business and 2. if you're selling mugs and t-shirts for your media brand are people really interested in sporting the latest fashion from their local community publication?

There are a lot of moving pieces with Ecommerce, it can be a money maker but it's not a quick-fix to digital revenue.

Mobile Apps

National Geographic, USA Today and People Magazine all have apps so I want one too. That's true however there are millions of apps out there, how will your local audience find yours in that giant haystack? See, apps require a lot of momentum to drive downloads and national brands have national audiences to entice. Moreover, when people download a big brand's app that app has a chance to both go viral but also rank in "trending apps" which further drives growth and adoption. As a local publisher these dynamics are not in play.

Here's some simple math: let's say People Magazine has a circulation of 3 million (disregarding multiple readers per issue) and 10% of those readers download the app over lets say 60 days then at the end of 2 months some 300,000 apps have been downloaded. Not too shabby! If you have a readerships of say 20,000 and 10% download your app you would have 2,000 downloads - pretty good (and highly unlikely) but still not enough to get trending or kick off a viral phenomenon.

Putting Content Behind a Paywall (or meter)

Like the Mobile Apps, paywalls have serious problems at the local level. I was talking with a publisher recently who I have a lot of respect for and he asked, "if National Geographic can put some of their content behind a paywall why can't I?" Great question, again it's an issue of scale. The cost to administer a paywall in addition to lost secondary benefits like SEO, social media engagement, and sheer reader engagement is FAR higher for local publishers scraping and clawing to capture mindshare than it is for NatGeo which has it's own cable channel for heaven's sake.

Again, let's do the math. If NatGeo creates a paywall they have an amazing distribution channel across all of their properties and a massive existing online audience base and existing SEO & Social Media followers. Even still if they convert just .5% (1 in 200 people) from their US audience of say 200 million adults to pay $25/year then their revenue potential is: 200M x .005 * $25 = $25 million dollars per year.

Now, let's look at yours: if you serve a community of 50,000 people and have the same conversion rate (again, good luck) then you're at: 50,000 * .005 *$25 = $6,250 per year. Not bad but not worth it, give your content away to anyone who will read it and share it and tap into other local revenue opportunities. After all, there are things you can do locally to drive revenue that NatGeo can't begin to touch!

Don't want to do "digital" for fear that it cannibalizes legacy business

This is the inverse of doing the wrong thing, that is, the wrong thing by not doing. If you're a legacy publisher then you have established brand, audience and business relationships i.e. an UNFAIR ADVANTAGE. Use that and evolve. Print isn't dying but print only businesses are - sure, digital is cannibalizing print to some extent but that's happening whether you're selling or not. If you don't have a good answer to digital questions, let alone a viable solution, how can you sell against it? You can't, and you lose credibility in the process.

Digital is a great opportunity for local publishers to bring the community together and grow their business in the process by extending what they do in print in new ways not merely replicating it. It's already happening all around you, stop fighting the current and ride it.

In business school we talked quite a bit about understanding the root cause behind an issue - don't treat the symptoms treat the cause. I remember one simple technique to help suss out the root issue is called the 5-Why's Technique, basically keep asking why until you get the real issue. We intrinsically do this in throughout our lives in normal problem solving but often neglect it or are not regimented enough when it comes to professional matters.

How can I tell if my idea/vision is a good one?

Here are a few simple questions you can ask though you can always go back to 5 whys in general. I want "x", why do I want "x"? Well, it provides "y", why is "y" important? And so on...

What are your objectives?

What is the value to readers/advertisers?

How will you promote it and drive traffic?

Who will do what and when? Can anything be automated, outsourced, or crowdsourced?

Are there any secondary benefits? SEO, Social, brand growth, lead generation etc.

How does it fit with our mission as well as our current efforts or activities?

Is there a strategic advantage or does not doing it introduce a strategic disadvantage?

How will it be sold and monetized (some things need selling even though they're free)?

And finally, be mindful of the words of Borrell Associates and the risk inaction brings to local publishers:

"The digital pureplays will continue to 'tune their business model and sales approach precisely to the needs of the market, without prejudice or interference,' according to Borrell. 'They won’t kill legacy media companies, but they will sap all their growth.'" - NetNewsCheck