Content Marketing Today

3 Reasons Marketers Must Become Publishers

Only One in Three Buyers Her Age
Are Reading Newspapers

If you are like an increasing number of marketing professionals, you are finding it more and more difficult to justify significant marketing investments with media companies that used to be mainstays of your campaigns. You may be looking for alternatives.

Here are 3 fundamental reasons that organizations just like yours are shifting their marketing efforts from traditional advertising to content marketing. They are becoming trusted content providers. You can, too. Here’s what’s going on and what to do about it.

1. Change in buyer attitudes toward traditional media. Today’s Internet-savvy consumer looks everywhere for essential content in order to make smart buying decisions.

In the last few years, buyer behavior has changed dramatically. Your buyers are now increasingly knowledgeable about what they want to buy. They aren’t surfing aimlessly, hoping to be influenced by marketing messages that arrive out of the blue. And they aren’t sitting around waiting to hear from you. They have no time to waste, and they deeply resent unwanted advertising messages. In short, buyers don’t want to be sold. They want to make up their own minds based on their own information-gathering. Therefore, buyers need content that makes them smarter and more knowledgeable. Vendors who provide that content will win.

Moreover, your buyer doesn’t care if the content comes from traditional media organizations. They are open to learning from and acting on quality content, whether it comes from media veterans like McGraw-Hill, CMP Media, NBC, CNN or NPR — or from a custom publication, a newsletter, a company website, a favorite blog, or an RSS feed. The stranglehold that traditional media held for decades is quickly evaporating as savvy consumers seek out the best and most timely information wherever it is and I they can find it.

What You Can Do About It:

You have the opportunity to replace formerly vital media choices with your own high-quality content. Become the new thought leaders among your many prospects who are completely open to great content from new sources.

2. Advertisers Get Less Value as Quality Circulation Declines. Publishing companies drew strength from their unique ability to deliver target demographics on a myriad of definable markets. They invested millions of dollars in developing high-quality circulation that closely matched the marketing targets of advertisers. They were able to tell the advertiser exactly who read the publication, what kind of company they worked in, what kind of products they bought, and how much money they spent each year on those products.

Shrinking circulation budgets have eliminated much of that core strength. Particularly in the business-to-business marketplace, media companies are shrinking their publications’ circulation. They may also collect demographic data less often and ask for less information.

Similar and irreversible declines are hitting daily newspapers with very few exceptions.

Daily Newspaper readership has plummeted between 1970 and 2006 according to the Newspaper Association of America.

As of 2006, only 35% of 18-34 year olds are daily newspaper readers.

November 2007 saw reports of continued drops in circulation averaging 2.5% for the top 538 U.S. dailies as reported by the New York Times. Some of the biggest suffered even worse declines:

• The New York Times daily circulation fell 4.51% to 1,037,828 and Sunday plunged 7.59% to 1,500,394.
• The Washington Post was down 3.2% to 635,087 and Sunday was down 3.9% to 894,428.
• The Boston Globe tumbled 6.6% to 360,695 and Sunday fell about the same, 6.5% to 548,906.

Marketers May Reach More and Know More About Buyers than Do Media Companies

While magazines and newspapers offer less and less reach to buyers, wavering advertisers have built substantial databases of customers and prospects.

Smart companies of every size are using database technology to capture very detailed information about their customers and prospects including all-important e-mail addresses. In fact, many companies today have much better buyer information in their CRM systems than do the publications trying to sell them advertising.

In fact, one former colleague confided that a prospective advertiser pointed out that his company had four times the number of prospects in its customer database than the publication had in its circulation records. This four to one advantage left little incentive for the prospect to spend advertising dollars with his trade magazine–which had once been the ‘bible’ of his industry.

What You Can do About it:

You may well have access to more and better buyer data than your traditional media partners. You should consider targeting your database with focused content marketing efforts. That makes for a very cost-effective way to reach your very best prospects. Eliminate wasted distribution. Craft precise content marketing campaigns for well-defined sets of buyers.

3. Shrinking Media Company Budgets Reduce Content Quality. Corporations often have bigger budgets and more resources to find and pay for the best research and content in the markets they serve. Unfortunately, too many media companies have been cutting both research and editorial budgets.

Media companies in both business-to-business and business to consumer markets are facing a downward spiral in which reduced advertising revenues lead to cutbacks in editorial staff, and editorial pages, and in the circulation size of their magazines and newspapers.

The decline in newspaper circulation, ad revenues, and staffing size is well-documented. Among the many reasons for these multiple, interrelated declines is the fact that young people simply do not read newspapers. Sadly, the average age of a newspaper reader today is 60. That age group is hardly anybody’s idea of an ideal demographic. Young people have deserted newspapers for multiple venues on the Internet.

In a 2005 post on the Newsosaur.com blog, Allan Mutter, opined, “The decline in circulation, while no cause to rejoice if you love newspapers, could be a sign that publishers increasingly understand the need to scale circulation down to a core level of committed, valuable readers.” He also warned that, “But shrinking circulation isn’t necessarily a bad thing — as long as it stops real soon.”

Unfortunately, in the past two years circulation has continued to decline. Here’s what Mutter had to say in October 2007, “But the good news for publishers – that no one is demanding their liquidation any more – is also bad news, because it means they will be stuck tending to the massive and so-far insoluble problem of cauterizing the sales losses that have eroded profits at a quickening pace for the better part of two years.”

Bye, Bye, Business Sections!

As bad as it is for the giants such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post — things are even grimmer for local newspapers such as the venerable Akron Beacon Journal, whose business section is gone on weekdays but survives on Saturdays and Sundays. “We were one of the last papers to put the majority of stocks online. That’s where the users are,” said Bruce Winges, vice president and editor of the Beacon Journal. “If I had my druthers of course I would want a standalone business section. I don’t think the quantity or the quality of our business reporting has gone down, but the perception of the reader is that they have lost something.” (MediaLifeMagazine.com, Oct 17, 2007)

“The perception of the reader is that they may have lost something?” No kidding. Imagine if they eliminated the sports section and scattered sports articles all over the newspaper. Trying to justify the killing of the business section is every bit as damaging to the quality of content. It simply means that the Akron Beacon Journal and hundreds of its peers will be increasingly less relevant to an ever shrinking base of readers.

What You Can Do About It:

As media quality declines, look for the content gaps. Has your local business section disappeared? Perhaps, as a bank or insurance company you could step in with relevant content. Have your favorite trade publications disappeared or lost quality? Fill the void with solution-oriented content that your buyers still need. Buyers need content. Be the new provider.

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