The dire straits our industry are rushing down have me thinking like a businessman, not just a "journalist." And one thing I keep coming back to is the need for us to master self-service, search-based advertising.
Google and Yahoo are stealing and eating our lunch on this. It's the only way to get back any piece of the massive amount of classified advertising dollars that went to the C'list and some other Monsters.
Here's a post from Mark Glaser's MediaShift blog on the subject.
Mark interviews Stephen Gray, managing director of the American Press Institute's Newspaper Next project; who wisely points out that newspapers need to help local businesses reach customers at the moment they show interest in a product or service. (Searching for "shoe repair"? Here are the cobblers in your neighborhood.)
But the thing is, it doesn't pay to send sales reps out to service the contract of every cobbler in the county. Instead, we have to make it super easy for Joe the Cobbler (sorry) to select, pay for and post his own ads on our sites. The Orange County Register and its publications are doing it.
Look at it this way: Google doesn't employ commissioned ad salespeople. It has machines and code that perform that job. We're going to have to have the same capability to keep up.
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Yes, we are way behind the curve on this one. Even MySpace has classifieds ads now!
ReplyDeleteAnd here is another service that will take your classified ad and post it for you on (they claim) hundreds of search sites, including craigslist, Google, and oodle, as well as other niche sites such as trulia real estate search and AOL autos.
Even Walmart is posting ads!
But the bigger problem is that all of these sites offer their ad posting services for free. How can we compete with that?
By charging a little bit, not as much as we used to charge; and using that fee to increase the quality of the advertising. (See post below, on narcotics for sale on Craigslist.) I can see the TV ad: "Sure, you can advertise for a roommate/your car/etc. for free. But you know, you get what you pay for." With the image being of a time-wasting loser's transaction.
ReplyDeleteWe'll probably also have to create a better, easier-to-use service, which isn't easy.