“The only way to save journalism is to develop a new model that finds profit in truth, vigilance, and social responsibility,” Phil Meyer.
A few years go everything was sweet. Newspapers served a purpose and partially paid for their staff and printing and distribution through the advertising they got.
But then Google came along and websites and smartphones and lots of that local advertising money went elsewhere. The printed media didn't figure out a response quickly enough and many of them have gone down the pan...which is a problem. Not just for local democracy but also because businesses used to do well advertising in these media and could do again...
Media owners need to de-risk their product
The risk of advertising is still high... the advertiser will always ask the question "will it be worthwhile to advertise". The advertiser pays to buy space in the media...he's not buying leads or response. He's simply buying access to an audience, that the media owner has defined in terms of size and profile.
The advertiser is the one who is testing the product by advertising in it every time his advert goes in.
Furthermore most advertisers aren't professional copywriters and designers. These small to medium sized companies often rely on the media owner to design their adverts for them.
This is a problem because the media owners put their junior people on this task and secondly they don't have any tracking facility in place to help design responsive advertising. In other words they are not specialists and have no real financial incentive to benefit from creating successful advertising.
See what the typical frustrated media sales peson has to say about not knowing the outcome of advertising...
This is why so magazines and newspapers are getting squeezed for advertising revenue. They make it too difficult to advertise in them.
Advertisers won't bother advertising if it's too difficult or risky to make a decision.
At best, they'll ask media owners to prove the value before they commit (i.e. Google pay-per-click) or they'll navigate to media outlets where they can measure the results easily. At worst, they'll find a way of working without printed media.
Advertisers realise if you can't measure the effectiveness of advertising budgets, you can't manage it and if it's difficult to prove that these media work then they'll simply stop using it.
How media owners can sell leads via a pay-per-call model.
Let's say that there's a golf holiday company that always advertises in Golf Monthly. (The rival). The media owner tried almost everything to get them to use their Golf World magazine but nothing seems to have worked so far.
The holiday company is in business to make money so any telephone calls from potential customers you can send his way would be welcome. So as owner of Golf World this is what you say you can do.
"How about if we prove the value of our Golf World magazine to you and you only pay for the number of calls you receive directly from the advertising placed in our magazine?"
I guess he may say "that's interesting, tell me more".
You ask him the value of a qualified enquiry, "what's a phone call from a potential customer worth to you?"
He tells you he is selling £1000 per person golf holidays and his margin is £200 on each holiday. "Well, I guess as most bookings are for 4 people at a time then a phone call is potentially worth £800 profit to me".
You then say "ok, how about we charge £80 for every unique customer call that we send your way? That's only 10%of your profit on one 4 person holiday - does that sound fair?"
He thinks about this and says "so you are telling me you will run an advert without charging me and you'll only charge me when someone calls me directly as a result of that advert and that charge will be £80?" -
You reply, "yes that's right, £80 per unique customer calling you. And what's more, we'll both know who is calling you because we are going to give you a unique phone number where we can both monitor the results of the advertising and you'll even be able to capture any missed calls or engaged calls because you'll get an email if someone hangs up!"
He then has to say that he does not want to pay anything to get any more business and that he is happy not knowing how his advertising with Golf Monthly is working because they are using the old smoke and mirrors technique of ABC and Readership figures!
The point is that media owners can start owning an advertisers direct response marketing. And if an advertiser is not a multinational brand, all advertising needs to be direct response.
When the media owners help advertisers measure their expenditure across all media outlets they'll become a partner rather than a media outlet.
Media owners will get called for advice. The power shifts to media owner because they are the expert.
The advertiser grows his business, he gives your more money and importantly more time and trust.
Smoke and mirrors marketing is on its way out. Admeter call tracking software has seen to that.
Media owners need to ensure that they can deliver measurable advertising for customers and there is some unique phone software that can now do this at low cost.
Media owners should never have to sell a "late page" at a low rate ever again.
They'll know the value that a page is really worth in terms of calls to a customer that takes that page.
Media owners will be able to help customers create better adverts because they'll enable testing of full page, half page, quarter pages and different ad treatments.
In short, media owners must embrace the risks attached to direct response advertising and help clients de-risk marketing. Because if the media owner doesn't do it, the advertise will.
- If you're a media owner and you want to start up a pay-per-call media business that will revolutionise your finances please call us.
- If you're an advertiser in media then please get in touch to find out what your advert is truly worth.
Please email graham.pollard@admeter.co.uk
P.S. We have set up directories with local newspapers where clients just pay per call. The beauty of this is that once you have captured phone numbers from customers with these directories you have an opted-in list that can be sold to other advertisers. It's Groupon by phone.
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