Newspapers: Canaries

Newspapers are currently the media bellwether or “canary in the coal mine,” as the accelerating recession takes their decline in advertising revenues due to digital competition and pushes it into free-fall. Josh Marshall had a post on this today.

Folks (including myself) are bemoaning this development, because they know that the digital competition felling newspapers actually depends in large part on the content resources—reporting bureaux, wire services, columnists, and research—newspapers provide. Talking Points Memo needs its AP feed, originated and supported by newspapers, for much of its own content generation.

So what’s going to happen? Will (most) newspapers wither and die, drastically lowering the value of the content we get in the digital media that are left, without most consumers of news realizing it? I think so, yes.

But eventually the digital media should step up and rebuild; because there is a need for high-value news content. One NALM thing that usually goes hand in glove with bemoaning the demise of newspapers is bemoaning the eternal dumbing down of John Q. Public. But just because most news consumers won’t notice the difference doesn’t mean that those who are left won’t, directly or indirectly, be able to pay for better news content. It may just take longer than I’d like for this market need to reassert itself. It had to assert itself to begin with in order for these great news content resources to be built in the first place.

This is worth noting, studying, and learning from. Because what’s happening with newspapers now will happen with magazines shortly, television later, and eventually, in its turn, the Internet as we know it today as well.

Dialing up and Down the Business Goals

In amongst a bunch of gobbledygook with a few decent points halfheartedly mixed in, Max Kalehoff at MediaPost’s Online Spin throws out a true nugget:

[A]dvertisers are garnering the power to dial up or down according to their business goals --- for no other reason.

This is put a little gobbledygookedly, but it really is what I’m writing this blog about.

1. Formulate a business goal
2. Work out the marketing model to address that business goal
3. Figure out how to track the model’s success (and not only with instant-gratification metrics, which will severely limit your tools, not to mention your ability to judge results)
4. Launch the model and tracking
5. Brutally cut or modify the model if your tracking shows that it isn’t addressing the original goal

Why else would you ever do any marketing at all?

Definitely Titillated, If Not A-Twitter

Lest I begin to irrelevantize myself (among my current audience of one) with a seeming dismissal of Twitter in my post from Wednesday, let me say that Twitter is a great, pretty well buttoned-up expression and extension of its communications medium, texting. As such every marketer should be looking at it. My objection was to a story that classified a kind of a “Twitter campaign” as a branding campaign, because on ROI grounds, it clearly failed miserably in that context.

No, Outsell reminds me today that for P.R. purposes, Twitter clearly shows high promise in the B2B space—which to my mind strongly validates its strengths in consumer marketing as well. But for what? Any marketing platform should be applied, particularly in today’s threatening environment, just to those areas where the ROI is clear (not directly measurable necessarily, but clear) and good.

What such areas are there for Twitter? As Kate Worlock at Outsell put it, The capacity of Twitter to reach a group of users with a guaranteed interest in what you have to say is the core appeal (emphasis mine). So, once you’ve got a group constituted in Twitter, your communications with its members will be highly effective, at least at first before they tire of the group, Twitter, or both.

And there’s the rub. How are you going to get ’em in that group to begin with, and how do you keep ’em there? Don’t bore me by thinking that once your incredible fantastic brand/‌product/‌idea is in Twitter, Lots of people will come—one of my least-favorite most-used statements ever in marketing. No, we still have to ditch utter reliance on viral marketing to make Twittering work. More on that later.

Marketing ROI Needed But Not Understood

The Conference Board: Pressure is increasing to show return on the marketing investment, but no one really knows how.

Money graf:

Many [marketing] executives say they lack the technological resources necessary to measure these programs. Others say they are facing strong cultural resistance.

This is the game. Winners will rise while most are falling.

The Media of Communications with the Consumer of the Future

MediaPost today: A firm selling something gross is doing cool viral marketing! Isn’t it great?

It’s not till the third-to-last graf that we find out that, actually, the pest-control firm in question has had no measurable results from its blogging, videoing, Twittering, etc.—and isn’t planning for any.

One certain measurable result is that the marketing community is now exposed to this company, Truly Nolen. (I’ve linked to the blog so you can see what some of the fuss is about.)

But anyway, the short version here is that Truly Nolen started a blog, created a Facebook page and YouTube videos, and joined Twitter (which happened Monday; maybe it’s Twitter pushing the story). Net result, as far as I can tell? 100 quasi-leads in three months; 400 video impressions (for one video, anyway) in two months; and 53 Tweets, many from media contacts.

Well, okay, as a public-relations effort, it has measurable value. But that’s it—it’s P.R.—it’s not brand marketing, which is the section of MarketingDaily (sub. req.) where it appeared. This example doesn’t show how these are the media of communications with the consumer of the future, as Truly Nolen’ P.R. head puts it in the article. Far from it.

Widgets

Are widgets good or bad investments in a time of marketing scarcity? Widgets—“bits of the Web” you can publish, and give people the means to put on their own sites—have those two seeming advantages usually attributed to viral marketing methods.

• They’re cheap to make.
• They’re cheap to promote.

But these actually should read:

• They might be cheap to make, especially if you don’t need them to be good.
• They’re cheap to promote, especially if you don’t care if they work.

My point is simple. After you get the idea of trying a widget, plan out the entire widget you want to create, cost it—including promotion—and estimate its effect (on traffic, leads, sales, or whatever). If you want to use it virally, make sure it’s cheap enough to make that you’re fine with it having no impact. And if it has to be too cheap to be good, scrap it.