FOLIO: Section Blogs by Sales and Marketing

How To Promote Online Events

Jason Fell — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:18:16 -0500

Online events, such as Webinars, are a cost-effective ways to build your business. Unfortunately, too many are promoted poorly because they’re not promoted enough. This approach leaves money on the table and hinders the growth of your customer file.

However, you can capture those lost dollars by developing a strategic online campaign—a series of coordinated messages fired off during a specific timeframe. Each message or “contact” builds on the previous efforts, giving the series momentum and intensity.

A campaign gives you added advantages: Multiple opportunities to reach prospects, an ongoing conversation rather than a single hit-or-miss contact, the chance to bond with your audience and build a mutually beneficial long-term relationship.

Campaigns can be roughly divided into three stages: Before the event, concurrent with the event, and following the event. Here’s a recent case study to illustrate each phase. Weiss Publishing has become a master at selling with campaigns. Their Weiss Global Forum, a video conference scheduled for August 13, was free, but was nonetheless promoted relentlessly, creating exceptional value in the minds of readers. In addition to emails, it was also promoted in the company’s free daily e-zine.

The campaign began in earnest nine days earlier with a dedicated email sent on August 4. Prospects received a new email almost every day thereafter. Each message employed a different hook: Tying the video to timely news items, emphasizing the historic significance of the topic, trumpeting the credentials of the speakers and so on. The emails also counted down the hours until registration closed.

The second stage began the day after the video aired. Weiss sent an email with an invitation to view it for those who missed it or wanted to see it again. To keep interest high, they issued daily emails and framed their messages with a variety of classic direct-response techniques: Teasing prospects with highlights from the video as a way to sample it, asking registrants for their feedback to forge a stronger connection with their audience, and then sharing that feedback in yet another email and gaining social endorsements at the same time.

Of course, each contact was an effort to get new people to register, but these messages went a step further: They also contained genuinely valuable information—a key element for building long-term customer loyalty and distinguishing them from mere “sales” efforts.

The third and final part of the campaign began on August 17 with an announcement that the video would go offline on a specific date. Besides spurring action with a deadline, the messages also relied on time-tested psychological tactics to get a response. Whereas the first stage of the campaign pushed the greed button (secrets for prosperity to be revealed in the video), these emails stoked the prospects’ fear of missing out on something momentous (the risk to their well-being by not registering, guilt-tripping them for failing to respond to previous invitations).

In this final round of messages, another kind of countdown clock was used.

By all accounts, the campaign was a success. More than 18 separate contacts were used, excluding e-zine ads. The loyalty of existing Weiss customers deepened and the goodwill of future subscribers was established. In short, rapport was created that will likely lead to more sales whenever Weiss promotes a paid event.

But even if you don’t have the resources to mount an extensive campaign, you can still reap significant benefits. For example, KCI Communications enacted a more modest campaign for their paid Webinar; yet they were able to sell 133 slots and picked up a few additional sales after the event.

This brings us to the question of whether you should archive your events.

Many marketers keep them available indefinitely. Since they’re great lead-generating products, their long-tail viability can be exploited. Others maintain a one-time only policy. If you don’t archive your productions, then make them more exclusive by emphasizing the scarcity principle in your messages: Prospects more sharply crave the things they can’t have. Use that to your advantage.

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I’m Not Giving an Inch

Jason Fell — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:32:02 -0500

Did you ever read “Sometimes a Great Notion” by Ken Kesey? Yes, the Ken Kesey with the psychedelic bus. Before the Merry Pranksters and after his successful “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Kesey penned this novel, one of the great works of American fiction, a sprawling tale of the struggles of a northwest logging family, the conflict between brothers, the small independent logging company the family owns and their fights against larger timber interests.

The most recurring metaphor in the book is fighting progress, alluded to in the form of the Stamper family home, which is built on a bend of a great river that is constantly eroding away the property. Over the years the Stampers built a crude series of barriers, wired posts and piers to prevent this from happening, but the river is relentless, as rivers will be. Some of the most vivid passages in the book portray the father and older brothers’ attempts to keep the river from destroying the property, typically out in the night in vicious storms, lashing the piers back together, fighting the river of progress, the river of change. The book was made into a film starring Henry Fonda and Paul Newman, with the tagline embodying the philosophy of Henry Stamper, “Never Give an Inch.”

So, what does all this have to do with magazine publishing? Out west last week, I was pitching print (along with our online properties) to marketers who thought I had landed there from another planet. To one, print was so alien that he took a genuine interest in it. It was a novelty. More and more marketers start conversations by letting you know that they’re not doing print as a matter of fact. Many of my competitors and fellow high-tech publishers have given up, letting the river flow, and you can see the results in the steadily eroding group of high-tech titles still in print. I can’t quite explain why, but like Henry Stamper, I refuse to yield. I refuse to bend to the times, to just accept the advertiser’s misguided notions that print is dead and not even worth talking about. While I’m happy to sell a few white papers at the end of the call, most of the time I’m taking them out to the woodshed to disabuse them of their anti-print bias—whether they buy it today or not.

It’s up to those of us in the industry to stand up passionately for what we believe in and what we know to be true. The easy days of print as an accepted medium are over. Washed well downstream. But we know people are still reading our publications, and becoming aware of and interested in companies through the print ads. It’s up to us to lash together the arguments and fight.

We’re deep into contract season and I’m getting on planes to visit customers. And I'm not giving an inch.
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Boating Industry, Magazines Less Buoyant This Year

Jason Fell — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:57:10 -0400

In this down economy, it isn’t any big surprise that automotive and financial have been two of the hardest-hit markets. Out of the 12 advertising categories tracked by the Publishers Information Bureau, they saw the steepest declines through the first nine months, with ad pages falling 47.3 percent and 47 percent, respectively.
Another industry that’s taken a beating this year is boating. I was reading the editor’s note yesterday on boating trade publication Soundings Trade Only’s Web site, written by Bill Sisson (he was my editor when I worked as a staff writer at Trade Only’s consumer-side sister Soundings magazine a few years ago—he now oversees editorial for both titles). In it, Sisson looked back over the last 12 months, detailing the dramatic impact the down economy has had on the boating industry.

One takeaway I found, well, astounding:
The job loss estimates are staggering for an industry our size. By some accounts, as many as 200,000 jobs—perhaps 75 percent of the work force—have vanished since 2005, with the vast majority of those coming from manufacturing.
And, inevitably, as that industry declined, so has the consumer boating magazine market. Through the first three quarters, the seven titles tracked by PIB averaged a 38.1 percent loss in ad pages. (I didn’t include Power Cruising since it folded in March). The industry average in ad page declines was 27.2 percent.

“When demand evaporated and wholesale credit became difficult to get, builders and dealers did their best to hold onto their cash,” Sisson told me of the declines in the boating industry. “Companies went into survival mode, shutting or slowing production lines, furloughing workers, cutting costs wherever they could, including their advertising budgets.”

Sounds a lot like what’s happened in magazine publishing. While Soundings has felt the same declines as other boating magazines (“we’ve held up as well as most, and better than some”), Sisson said magazine publishers in his market will need to keep a careful watch over expense control, as well continue to diversify their product portfolios beyond the printed page.

“Boating titles will need to develop a broad strategy for maintaining their current audience, winning new readers and viewers, and offering advertisers and other partners a 360-degree program for reaching target audiences,” he said.

Looking forward, Sisson hopes new products will help jumpstart demand in the boating industry. He said the industry is looking at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show next week as a barometer of sorts for how sales might fare in the coming months.

But are people actually budgeting for a new 40-footer this year? Maybe an Average Joe like me isn’t, but a die-hard boater might be, right?

Ad Page Totals Through the Third Quarter:
TITLE
2009 2008 % CHNG
Boating 320.26 648.30
-50.6
Boating Life
168.88 457.90 -63.1
Cruising World
625.19 763.32 -18.1
Motorboating
278.33 374.84 -25.7
Power & Motoryacht
674.55 1,531.79 -56.0
Sailing World
286.44
369.66 -22.5
Yachting
968.25 1,403.62 -31.0

Source: PIB

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‘Serious’ U.K. Publications Band Together for Marketing Push

Jason Fell — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:37:19 -0400

Is there a shortage of people reading “serious” magazines across the Atlantic?

Fifteen U.K.-based magazine publishers think so. They’ve formed the Cultural Publications Group, a joint marketing venture tasked with showing “the breadth of titles that are available at the more serious end of the market.”

The idea behind the initiative, so the group says, is to expose their magazines to a wider audience. Magazines participating in the collaboration include BBC Music, The Spectator, New Scientist, and The Week, among others.

Over the next several weeks, more than 1.3 million leaflets will be distributed (800,000 inside the group’s magazines, the rest in other magazines and newspapers) directing readers to a Web site where they can browse the group’s magazines and order subscriptions.

And, depending on how many issues are ordered, some subscription prices have been discounted more than 70 percent. One offer, for three issues of Lonely Planet magazine, for example, costs roughly $1.60. Another offer, for six issues of The Week, is free. That’s right. Completely free.

Haven’t we seen enough evidence that discounting subscriptions, especially during a time when advertising dollars are evaporating, doesn’t work? Sure, publishers get a few extra subscribers for a short time but what does it matter if they can’t turn those numbers into ad dollars? Selling a sub for pennies on the dollar (or a pence on the pound) doesn’t do much for a publisher’s bottom line.

To be fair, though, not all of the Cultural Publications Group’s subs are at bargain basement prices. For instance, while a three-issue order of BBC Music costs less than $5, a 39-issue order will cost more than $180.

And, the folks at Cultural Publications Group seem hopeful the effort will result in considerable ROI in terms of data sharing. “The value to the publishers is that it (should) help them gain more subscribers at a very low cost per order,” group co-organizer Don Brown wrote in an email to me this week. Brown—who serves as business development director for ThreePM, the company that built the group’s Web site and manages the subscription operation—was involved in an earlier iteration of the Cultural Publications Group from 2002 to 2005.

“All the magazines taking part are very savvy sub marketers and derive most of their revenue from their subscription income,” Brown continued. “The promotion allows them to cross sell to the other group members and to have visibility in media that they may not ordinarily be able to afford … The related benefit is that because all response data will be shared among the group, titles will be able to target the third party media that has been most successful for them.”

Interesting. So, might we expect to see a similar group pop up on this side of the pond, made up of magazines like the Economist and the Atlantic? I doubt it.
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Google to Make Publishers Rich with Display Ads?

Jason Fell — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:35:50 -0400

The news that Google will now broker display ads much as it does text ads is positioned by the company as being a way for publishers to make more money by selling remnant banner space. Here's the article in the WSJ [subscription only].

I have a few issues. First of all, many vertical niche publishers already have relationships in place with ad networks that suck up and sell all of their remnant space. For example, we partner with IDG TechNetwork and are generally happy. There are hundreds of other networks like this. But our experience and what I have heard from others is that the revenues from these sources just keep on dropping as inventory increases and advertisers demand more services for less cost-per-impression and cost-per-click.

As I have said before, the media business is suffering from not so much "dollars into dimes" but "dollars into pennies."

So, first, publishers are NOT going to make any significant money from this. (Four years ago we made $600 to $700 per month from Google adwords. More recently, it dropped to less than $100 per month. We have removed them from our site).

This experience, which is pretty universal unless your ad page view growth outstrips Google's decreasing returns, means that web publishers like us will tell Google to "take a hike."

I've also heard from customers—advertisers—that they are growing increasingly suspect of their Google adwords investments. As such, I don't even know if the idea will fly for Google. Not everything they do works.

Maybe by placing display ads on the blogs of individuals with day jobs who currently get no revenue for their efforts, they will be satisfied with a few hundred dollars per month versus nothing. But for professional Web publishers, for certain, the idea that Google is now going to make us rich is a joke.
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Report: P&G, J&J Lead the Pack in ’09 Print Ad Spending

Vanessa Voltolina — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:15:09 -0400

It’s no shock that TNS Media Intelligence’s U.S. Advertising Expenditures report, which was released Wednesday, showed print media continuing to see ad page rollbacks: specifically, a 20.9 percent total decline. Among the publishing sectors hardest hit were Spanish Language Magazines (-27.3 percent) and B-to-B (-26.7 percent), with Consumer Magazines faring better (or, less badly?) at 20.1 percent.
Despite another round of bleak numbers for the industry, one bright spot is that this data reports that global advertisers are still spending in print.
TNS Media Intelligence told FOLIO: that Procter & Gamble ranked number one among advertisers devoting the most advertising dollars to magazines in the first half of 2009, spending P&G spent $406.7 million. Despite topping the charts, P&G, as well as other high-ranking Johnson & Johnson, Kraft Foods and L’Oreal, ultimately spent less in the first half of 2009 versus the same period in 2008.
But recession-friendly advertisers Wal-Mart, Unilever and Campbell Soup Co.—ranking fifth, sixth and seventh in ad spending for 2009—did up their print spending. Wal-Mart alone grew from $120 million in 2008 to $128.8 million print advertising dollars this year over last, while others, including Time Warner and Clorox, bucked the trend.

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American Apparel Squeezed Over ‘Inappropriate’ Ad in Vice

Jason Fell — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:24:40 -0400

I’m surprised it took this long.

American Apparel, the mega clothing retailer known as much for its risqué advertisements as it is for its cotton t-shirts and underwear, has had an ad campaign banned by the Advertising Standards Authority, a U.K. advertising regulator.

The campaign, which appeared on the back cover of the U.K. edition of irreverent New York-based magazine Vice, featured a series of six photos of a “young looking girl” wearing the retailer’s “Flex Fleece” zip-up hoody. In the photos, the girl was seen “exposing progressively more skin in each photo in the series,” suggesting that “she was stripping off for an amateur-style photo shoot,” the ASA said.

In its ruling, the ASA banned the ad claiming it “could be seen to sexualise a model who appeared to be a child, under the age of 16 years” and concluded that it was “inappropriate and could cause serious offence to some readers.” In a statement, American Apparel said it agreed to stop using the ad, but also noted that the ASA’s assessment was in response to “a single citizen complaint.”

While I can’t say I’m shocked that American Apparel’s racy ads caught the ire of an advertising watchdog (and previously of film director Woody Allen), I find this story tough to swallow for two reasons. One: That U.K.’s big ad regulator would expend enough resources to ban an ad campaign based on just one complaint. And, two: Out of all of American Apparel’s advertising partners—online and in print—that Vice magazine was the platform for this controversy.

American Apparel’s half naked models shouldn’t be anything new for Vice readers. The retailer has been advertising in the magazine since its first issue launched in 2003.
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How Publishers Profit When Advertisers are Publishers

Jason Fell — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:48:11 -0400

A publisher client of mine lost a large media sale when a CMO said, "I have a huge social media presence and post as much content as you do. Why advertise with you?" How do you respond when social media tools enable all your advertisers to become online publishers themselves?

What publishers do (and always have done) that business cannot do for themselves (even in the age of social media) is to offer content as a third party. Chances are, your client’s content, no matter how great the volume, comes from their point of view. It will about their products, their customers, and told from their perspective. Their competition likely offers content from a different point of view. Where can all of their customers go for an objective perspective? Hopefully to your community/Web site.

Social Media Today CoFounder and CEO Robin Carey refers to this objective function as "being an honest broker of third party content.” Your social media centric clients will understand the value in this.

But it is not enough just to be an "honest broker." You need to leverage your content so you can deliver a benefit advertisers will pay for.

There are two essential steps:
1. You must become your markets content aggregator. As a third party content supplier you can credibly aggregate content in your market from all suppliers. No one of your advertisers can do this as they will hit resistance and credibility problems posting content from competitors. Some traditional publishers have problems posting a lot of content they did not create or influence. I say, get over it. If the law of the jungle is kill or be killed, then the law of the Internet is aggregate or be aggregated. Here is the really bad news; if you don't do the aggregation, another publisher in your market will.

2. Shape your content so you get 3rd party credit in "search." When people search for objective content as they enter a buying cycle will they recognize yours? “Search” never evaluates the quality or objectivity of an article. So you need to “sell” potential readers on this benefit who find you though search. For a moment, take the point of view of a Google searcher who has never heard of your brand but sees an article of yours in a search list. If your article is worded to indicate an objective perspective it will be opened over others. An article titled "The five leading buying trends in electric fans" can become "Our editors pick the top five buying trends in electric fans." Etc.
On the Call

Earlier this year I did a study for the social media website "The Energy Collective." In this post based on the survey we see that the community spits over the question, “Should the gas tax be substantially raised?” As an “honest broker” of content "The Energy Collective" supports all points of view.

For advertisers this is invaluable. Do you think the same divide would occur on a website/community built by the Sierra Club or Exxon/Mobile? Nope.

But If I were the marketing manager of either the Sierra Club or Exxon/Mobile where will I find new people to convert to my perspective? Not on my own website, I would need my message carried by an “honest broker.”
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The Race to the Bottom

Matt Kinsman — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:24:31 -0400

It seems to me as if media companies are falling all over one another in a race to price themselves out of business. First, print, with a few exceptions such as SD Times, is in a death spiral. We know that many many publications are on their way out. But it seems that media companies in jumping on the online bandwagon are so desperate for sales - any sales - that they are pricing themselves into oblivion.

Because there are very low barriers to entry on the Internet there are often dozens or even hundreds of places that an advertiser MIGHT find a buyer. Which websites are best?? Dunno, wonders the ad buyer, who then concludes that it must be the ones that generate the most clicks or have lower prices.

What about the hundreds of blogs or websites that might mention your product or be "on topic?" The popular solution has become the so-called Ad Network, which acts like a broker. Advertisers can place one banner with an Ad Network, and it'll appear on hundreds of websites. At the opposite end of the business, website owners can sell their "inventory" of banner spots via the Ad Network with no effort - especially leftover, or remnant, space.

Sound like win-win? It's not. It's lose-lose.

When websites - with their carefully crafted content, expensive designs and unique readers - become just another member of an Ad Network, do you know what they are? A commodity. An eyeball aggregator. Nothing more.

When you're part of an Ad Network, a click is a click is a click and the lowest price wins every time. Therefore, the Ad Networks, with the willing cooperation of publishers and advertisers, are slashing prices in an effort to compete with one another. A network I use recently told me their standard CPM (cost per thousand impression) for remnant space was dropping to 50 CENTS. That's one million impressions generating $500 in revenue. Who can stay in business for that? (We told them they were not to sell any remnant space on our site.)

Plus, the Ad Networks are now being asked to serve up certain sections, pages, niches within their website. Slicing and dicing. This means that a network advertiser will buy fewer impressions - less money for publishers - as it cherry-picks only specific parts of websites. Where does this end?

Maybe Rupert Murdoch has figured this out as he brashly said today, "ENOUGH," we're not giving our content away for free anymore: It's like a take-off on the New Hampshire state motto: "Give Free and Die" Oh I know, everyone says lead-gen is the answer - I don't think so. Stay tuned.

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Paid Content and Blog Sponsorships Generate Highest E-Profits

Jason Fell — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:13:14 -0400

The wisdom of paid online content is still debatable but blog sponsorships and paid content are the most profitable e-media revenue streams, with more than 50 percent of respondents saying they see a profit margin of more than 30 percent from these two products, according to the 2009 FOLIO: E-Media Survey.

However, just eight percent of publishers sell sponsorships against blogs and only 28 percent offer paid content.

Of course, that doesn’t mean blogs and paid content are generating significant revenue at this point. Paid content was the fourth largest e-media revenue stream for magazine publishers today (banner advertising remains the largest).

However, 32 percent of respondents said banner advertising was the least profitable e-media revenue stream, generating profit margins of less than 10 percent, followed by online directories.

The 2009 FOLIO: E-Media Survey tracks e-media performance for magazine publishers including fastest growing revenue streams, product pricing, product investment and e-media profitability. The survey will be available in full later this year.

Most Profitable E-Media Revenue Streams:
Profit Margin > 30%+

Paid Content
50%
Blog Sponsorship
56%

Least Profitable E-Media Revenue Streams:
Profit Margin < 10%

Banner Advertising
32%
Online Directories
30%

Source: 2009 FOLIO: E-Media Survey
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Social Media is Now Your Business

Jason Fell — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:30:42 -0400

The findings of my recent study, "The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications,” should give traditional publishers a reason to take another look at social media. Results showed that social media is used as a general communications tool in public relations and marketing, but is evolving into a major tool of customer engagement.

Research found that companies are now looking to social media as a primary way to engage their customers, enabling lead generation, immediate customer contact and customer interaction.

As content publishers, consider that all ads and sponsorships sold are for this same goal; customer engagement. If social media becomes a primary way that this happens then you need to be a part of it. Luckily, a lot of what goes into building social networks is about leveraging focused content. That’s something publishers know a lot about, and should see as an opportunity.

The Social Media Shift

This study, to my knowledge, is the first to measure a coming shift in how companies will use social media. There are several factors driving this trend.

First, with more people spending time on online social media sites and companies are realizing a lot of their customers can be found there.

Second, the shift to online communications has made it easier for potential customers to dodge traditional lead generation and sales strategies. Social media can help break the ice.

Finally, a recession is causing every company to rethink its customer engagement strategy.

The report offers an overview of the shift toward uses in social media as well as measurements specific to Twitter and social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. (I had the good fortune to interview social media gurus Brian Solis, Shel Holtz, Dan Schnabel, Ari Herzog and Dan McCarthy.)

For publishers, this is a real opportunity and an important trend to get in front of.

Click here to download the full report.
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National Geographic Rolls Out $19.99 Custom Cover Initiative

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:49:59 -0400

MyShot, National Geographic’s popular social hub that allows users to submit and vote on photos, and YourShot, the related submission site—have been two of the magazine industry’s few unmitigated successes on the Web.

Now, the magazine is offering readers an opportunity to customize the cover of a special print issue—National Geographic’s Your Shot—that will feature “101 of the best readers' photographs submitted to National Geographic magazine over the past three years.”

Wired, you might recall, was one of (if not the) first national magazine to allow readers to customize a cover.

The July 2007 project—funded by Xerox—netted Wired great press, but pulling together the issue, as one former staffer told me, was a “logistical nightmare.”

National Geographic, though, might be looking for some incremental revenue, too. Via the press release:
Looking for a unique Father's Day gift? One that fulfills the fantasy of having a favorite photograph featured on the cover of National Geographic magazine? This month, National Geographic is publishing a special collector's edition, National Geographic Your Shot, featuring 101 of the best readers' photographs submitted to National Geographic magazine over the past three years. Starting Monday, June 15, readers can create and order a unique, customized cover of this special issue, using a photograph of their choice, by going to ngm.com/your-shot-special. The customized version makes a perfect gift to memorialize a special family snapshot.
The custom cover option for National Geographic Your Shot will be available to order, online only, for $19.99 plus shipping. The issue goes on newsstands with a standard cover on Tuesday, June 30, for $10.99.

The 144-page issue, with a trim size of 7"x7", also will also contain advertising—from HP, Fuji and Energizer, among others.
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A 48-Year-Old Looks for New Publishing Industry Job, Finds Age Discrimination

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:59:37 -0400

Last week I met a former colleague at Starbucks—or, as one Facebook “friend” put it recently, the 2009 version of a Depression-era breadline—for a cup of coffee.

The colleague, who I will refer to as “Jill,” was recently caught in the undertow of one of her publishing company’s (sorry, “media” company’s) recent downsizings. “Jill” is an outstanding seller and sales leader. A divorced mother of two beautiful girls—ages 11 and 14—she has produced great top-line results everywhere she has been employed. The love her customers and staff members have for her is exceeded only by the degree to which they respect her. She is, of course, very concerned for her future and that of her daughters.

“Jill” has been hunting for a new gig for the better part of six months now. Her CV and phone demeanor have earned her a number of face-to-face interviews. Because we have known each other for close to 20 years, she was quite open about her job hunting experience.

She has interviewed with Web publishers, ad networks and magazine publishers, but she is not close to landing. She had been well-compensated, but given the present state of media and the economy, she has articulated her flexibility in this regard. I believe her. This woman is a straight-shooter. About half-way through our meeting, she said something that sort of took me by surprise. This vital, smart, attractive woman felt she was encountering ageism. She is all of 48.

Now, I know that age discrimination exists, but if a person with the ability to sell jets to airline companies—she was offered such a position a couple of years back—is being denied employment due to her age, then our industry has truly gone off the deep end.

One hiring manager at an ad network told her that the position for which she was interviewing—director of advertising—was perhaps a bit too complicated for her. Come on dude, you guys are not splitting the atom over there! Anyone with an average IQ, degree of creativity and some desire can succeed in the world of digital ad sales. Great leadership, on the other hand, requires much more.

In tough times, leadership is everything. As a bit of a sports geek, I can site numerous instances of championship teams that won the Big One precisely because they had experienced veterans guiding less experienced players during crucial moments. Rarely does one see a team of rookies and early-career players win a championship. If I need someone to lay down a crucial bunt in the bottom of the eighth or drive a team downfield during the game’s final two minutes, I would prefer to rely on a veteran that has done it numerous times.
Take heed of the analogy, media world, some of you are in the bottom of the eighth or the final two minutes. Simple logic dictates that if someone has done the job many times, they have done so successfully or they would not have had the opportunity to do the job so many times in the first place.

Advertising is often perceived as a young person’s game, but skills such as steadiness in the midst of a storm, true customer-centric behavior, asking the right questions of prospects, motivating staff, forecasting and managing up, down and laterally only get better over time. George Bernard Shaw once said that youth is wasted on the young. He was so right.

So, hiring managers, the next time Jill shows up on the other side of your desk, throw all your preconceived notions away and take the blinders off. Look at her accomplishments. Monitor her passion and intellectual curiosity. We all saw Susan Boyle at age 48 set the world on fire and become the next big thing. Did you know that Ray Kroc didn’t begin to build the McDonald’s brand until he was 52? Did you know that Handel didn’t write the Messiah until he was 68? How about Roget publishing his first Thesaurus when he was 73 or Grandma Moses picking up her first paint brush at 76?

You get the point—48, 49 or 60 for that matter are truly meaningless numbers.
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Top 10 Reasons Print Should Remain a Vital Part of Your Marketer's Mix

Tue, 26 May 2009 13:20:17 -0400

Considering that my company publishes a national magazine for college-bound teenagers, you might think the title of this article paints me as self-serving.

Maybe you think I am trying to preserve print because it’s our company’s core product. But even though our printed magazine brings in the lion’s share of our revenue, it’s not why I’m trying to convince you that print is still tremendously relevant.

Actually, our company is much more than print. We are a Web site, an online community, an e-mail marketer, an online newsletter. We have a social media presence, we instant message with our readers, and oh, we print a magazine, too.

But here’s something that may surprise you.

Besides delivering great content to our readers, branding opportunities and leads for our advertisers, our magazine is also an amazing traffic generator. In fact, our magazine is the number-one driver of traffic to our Web site. It’s like buying keywords, only better!

The magazine also drives traffic for our advertisers. Third-party research shows that 60 percent of our readers visit an advertiser’s Web site after viewing their ad in Next Step!

I am going to pitch this list to David Letterman for his show. But just in case he doesn’t pick it up, I’ll share with you my “Top 10 Reasons Print Should Remain a Vital Part of your Marketing Mix.”

10. Print provides differentiation. How many of the millions of Web sites out there have a print magazine to drive traffic to it? The vast minority, I assure you. Print vehicles provide a unique strategy to drive traffic to your online marketing.

9. Print offers incredible branding. Nothing makes a brand more recognized than a beautiful ad in a glossy magazine. A well-designed ad is an engaging experience for readers. And by the way, according to a recent MRI/Next Step poll, 55 percent of teens say they pay a lot of attention to print ads.

8. Print makes introductions. Print is a great party host because of the talent it has introducing readers to your brand. An effective print ad stands in the crossroads between readers and advertisers. And your keyword purchases become more effective if customers have already been introduced to your brand.

7. Print readers are focused. It’s hard to engage in other media when you’re reading a magazine. In the world of multitasking—where people are texting, e-mailing and listening to their iPod while watching TV—it’s hard to get noticed. But it’s hard to do anything else when you’re reading a magazine! In fact, according a survey done by Ball State University, magazines are the exclusive or primary medium 85 percent of the time they are used by consumers.

6. Print travels. A magazine is your companion wherever you go: your favorite chair, your bed, an airplane—even your bathroom. A laptop on the porcelain throne just does not offer the same experience.

5. Print sways trendsetters. “Influentials” (those who sway other consumers) are themselves influenced by print. Check out this influence ranking, from the MRI Survey of the American Consumer:
1.   Magazines: 61 percent
2.   In-store: 58 percent
3.   TV: 55 percent
4.   Newspaper: 53 percent
5.   Radio: 44 percent
6.   Free samples: 39 percent
7.   E-mail: 26 percent
4. Print drives users to other platforms. According to the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, 47.2 percent of shoppers are most likely to start an online search after viewing a magazine ad. Our own research shows that more than 75 percent of nextSTEPmag.com users type in the URL directly—which they likely got from reading the magazine.

3. Readers are receptive to print. Fact: People remember effective print ads. In fact, magazine ads have the second highest receptivity of any media, second only to TV. But try to “TiVo” a magazine ad!

2. You can pass along print, and it has longevity. Magazines get shared and passed on in households and among friends. And they stick around. Check out your own coffee table. Any magazines there that have been hanging around a few years? Have you ever tried to share a Web site in a dentist office?

1. Print is a lead-generation tool! Used correctly, print drives leads to your prospect funnel. Good print vehicles have a mechanism to deliver targeted leads to their advertisers. (Yep, we have one too.) So at the very least, consider print a unique, effective lead generation tool!

So there you have it, the top 10 reasons why print should remain in your marketers’ media mix! The world is changing fast, and you have to keep up. Your ability to combine the new with the proven will determine your success.
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How Much is a Magazine’s Content Worth? Part One

Tue, 26 May 2009 12:22:38 -0400

I love magazines.

Despite most days feeling like someone pushed the self-destruct button and we're all scrambling for the escape pods, I will always love them, especially and above all, the printed format.

I'm no fetishist or luddite, though, and while I tend to favor print, my definition of a magazine is platform neutral. I've worked in magazine publishing for over 15 years now—from audience development to advertising sales, freelance editorial to events planning, corporate to D.I.Y.—and stand firmly with the digital generation that's purportedly out mugging elderly newspapers in broad daylight, and striking fear in the hearts of cowardly and superstitious magazines in the middle of the night.

Seeing subscription offers like the one above for Fast Company and Inc.—two solid print magazines devaluing their editorial content at only 75 cents an issue while simultaneously making it all available for free online—I think that the death of the current ad-supported model is inevitable and, arguably, a good thing.

Portability and endurance are two theoretical advantages print magazines have over their digital competitors, but the ability to deliver engaging, focused and original content cheaply and on a consistent basis is much harder to do in print than it is online, where expectations are lower and the exchange rate is more favorable. Paradoxically, magazines' own online presences are, more often than not, commensal partners at best, if not outright parasites.

In a typical ad-supported print magazine, even the best editorial intentions are constricted by the costs of printing and postage which are subsidized by the diminished and ever-fluctuating advertising revenues that ultimately dictate page counts. They're further contradicted by mixed messages about the actual value of the content itself, as in the insulting subscription offer above.
My Relationship with Print Brands

I was doing some Spring cleaning this weekend, and part of it involved going through the ridiculous piles of magazines that had accumulated around the house over the past several months—a wide range of titles reflecting personal interests, competitive research, random newsstand browsing and "forced-free trials." While sorting them into save and recycle piles, I was struck by how many of them I hadn't flipped through yet or even recalled pulling out of the mailbox, including some of my supposed favorites.

The pile of unread copies of the Atlantic was perhaps the most galling. I often note it as one of my absolute favorites, and yet its exemplary collection of well-written, long-form journalism rarely gets more than a quick flip-through when it shows up in the mailbox, set aside to read when I have more time that never seems to materialize.

Coincidentally, I also subscribe to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish (via Google Reader and, for a short while, on Twitter), but the volume of content he generates can be overwhelming, and I've found myself lately only skimming headlines and rarely clicking through to read full posts. While his purposefully fleeting bits of data, links and reflexive commentary are of a higher quality than some magazines' feature articles, they're usually buried under his steady stream of content by the end of the day, unlikely to ever be seen again, except possibly via a relevant Google search somewhere down the road.

I ended up saving most of the unread copies of the Atlantic, fully expecting to read and enjoy them in the near future, partly from having the Atlantic brand and what it represents steadily drummed into my head every day, courtesy of Sullivan and Ta-Nehisi Coates' hyperactive RSS feeds.

Meanwhile, included in the recycle pile were several copies each of New York, W and Wired, three magazines I started receiving, unrequested, out of the blue a while back. New York and Wired weren't totally unreasonable guesses based on surface demographics—I'm assuming they both pulled me from the Atlantic's mailing list, or possibly the New Republic's—but I actively hate the former's editorial focus, and the latter is an occasional newsstand pickup whenever the cover looks interesting. W, though, made absolutely no sense at all and represents the kind of junk mail "audience development" that fluffs up far too many magazines' mailing lists for advertisers' benefit—missing rate base means make-goods and deeper discounts—and ultimately hurts them both in the end when complaints about a lack of ill-defined results leads to a vicious cycle of even lower ad rates and a further devaluing of content.
The Save Pile

One unrequested magazine actually made it to the "save" pile, thanks to my wife. Gourmet was sent to me—almost as much of a reach as W—but after a couple issues, she was intrigued enough that we might actually subscribe to it for real, assuming they don't just keep sending it to us for free.

Notably, I don't regularly (if ever) visit any of these brands' Web sites and wouldn't pay to access their content online, though Gourmet at least has the potential to develop a multi-platform option that would appeal to my wife.

I'm not a fan of using one's own habits as a benchmark, but I suspect there's a lesson here for publishers and marketers alike: impressions have nothing to do with engagement, and in the end, engaging content appropriately packaged will find its audience.

That's a victory for quality content curated with an emphasis on a specific community over generic demographics, but it poses a serious dilemma for publishers who are overly dependent on advertising and have conditioned readers to expect to pay as little as possible, if anything at all, to receive that content.

The one question so few publishers want to answer but can no longer avoid is, how much is their content really worth?

More on that later this week...
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TITLE	2009	2008	% CHNG
Boating	320.26	648.30	-50.6
Boating Life	168.88	457.90	-63.1
Cruising World	625.19	763.32	-18.1
Motorboating	278.33	374.84	-25.7
Power & Motoryacht	674.55	1,531.79	-56.0
Sailing World	286.44	369.66	-22.5
Yachting	968.25	1,403.62	-31.0

Profit Margin > 30%+
Paid Content	50%
Blog Sponsorship	56%

Profit Margin < 10%
Banner Advertising	32%
Online Directories	30%