During my newspapering days, no one was foolish enough to turn business decisions over to me: I was editorial through and through. I understood the business side and spent my fair share of time writing budgets and variance reports, but beyond that….
Nevertheless, I’ve had something rattling around in my head that I think it’s time to toss out for consideration, feedback, sniggering, etc.
What if the newspaper ad sales department was turned into a full-fledged local advertising and marketing agency to serve local businesses? The connections between sales folks and those businesses are already there and, based on the markets I’ve worked in, those are strong relationships. It seems to me there are many more services that could be sold to those clients: full-fledged multiple media advertising campaigns (involving other media, too), marketing campaigns, website development and SEO… there are a lot of possibilities, it seems to me.
The obvious downside is that if ad reps are helping clients build multiple media campaigns, money that may have gone to the newspaper will go to others, even competitors. But those ad dollars are slowly dripping away any way.
What it would do is set the newspaper up well to fight off competitors (heavily localized Google, etc.) by making its reps the go-to folk for marketing and advertising in the market area (see, I can talk like a business guy). And then there would be the fees from all those new services, possibly offsetting loses and even adding more to the pot for paying for the journalism.
As I said, it’s just a thought. Any feedback?
TAGS: NEWSPAPERS, BUSINESS, ADVERTISING, RETHINKING MEDIA
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