AUTHOR: Russell TITLE: Fast Forward to the Past DATE: 12:51 PM ----- BODY:
The more I watch the evolution of new (online) media, the more convinced I become that it's simply the rules of old (print) media re-invented by people who never spent any time in the old media business. As just one example of this, consider the current and heated attention being paid to call tracking. Call tracking?

Yes, the "most measurable medium" appears to be coming to grips with the fact that people continue to use the telephone to transact business, so counting click-throughs doesn't tell the whole story in terms of advertising performance. Hence, the sudden interest in what used to be called "key phone" programs. Advertisers are issued dedicated phone numbers to run in their online advertising, allowing them to measure the number of calls generated by their online ads. It's a simple, powerful concept, but it's hardly new.

I got my first look at key phone programs at Thomas Publishing in the early 1980's. At that time, Thomas routinely offered to pay for a dedicated phone number any time a prospective advertiser expressed doubt about the value of advertising with Thomas. It was a powerful sales tool for the Thomas salesperson, effectively saying to prospects "let us put our money where our mouth is." Few prospects turned them down. When renewal time came around and the salesperson heard the all-too-common objection "I didn't get any calls," the Thomas salesperson would pull out the telephone company records for the dedicated phone number. Faced with concrete proof of performance, the advertiser almost always shifted from whether to renew to the size of his renewal program.

Key phone programs were incredibly powerful. With over 1,000 key phones in use at one point, Thomas Publishing even talked Columbia University into doing a study of them. One particularly stunning result: key phone numbers would continue to generate significant numbers of calls, sometimes for years after the advertisements associated with the phone numbers stopped appearing.

So why all the heat around call tracking? It seems that some online pundits are proclaiming it a bad move for advertisers because if advertisers don't consistently use the same phone number, they won't be correctly captured by automated harvesting software, which apparently relies heavily on matching records based on telephone numbers. If true, this sounds like one more place where new media can learn a lot from old media, which has long been successfully matching records even when there are -- gasp -- no phone numbers present at all!

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----- -------- AUTHOR: Russell TITLE: Sell What They Are Buying DATE: 10:57 AM ----- BODY:
A fascinating new study called "Main Street Goes Interactive," from Borrell Associates takes a thorough and much-needed look at the advertising practices and attitudes of the so-called SMB (Small and Medium Businesses) segment - a poorly understood and fitfully researched pool of over 14 million U.S. businesses that collectively spends many billions of dollars annually on advertising.

In many respects, the SMB market is a victim of its own label: it's hard to draw too much insight when you lump small manufacturers and distributors, retailers and even restaurants into one undifferentiated group. At the same time, the Borrell study is more focused, and many of its top-line findings track well with research we've seen from data publishers surveying their own markets.

The Borrell study places SMB average annual revenue at just $212,000, with average annual advertising spend of $5,671. Where are these businesses spending those advertising dollars? Most typically in yellow pages, direct mail and coupon-based media. Perhaps not surprisingly, SMB's are migrating to the web, with 11% of the advertising budgets now spent online, up from 4% just three years ago.

A key study finding is that SMB's see the cost of building and maintaining their websites as part of their advertising expenditures. This insight is useful in helping to inform us how SMB's think about advertising, but ultimately it's a distinction without a difference. For most SMB's, their website is their capabilities brochure and/or their catalog. When I send out direct mail, I don't separate out the cost of the artwork and the paper and the printing from the cost of the mailing list and the postage. It's all an advertising expense to me. And that's apparently how SMB's think as well.

The more important point is that websites are now central to the advertising strategies of SMB's. According to Borrell, two-thirds of SMB's plan to spend more on their websites this year. It's also important to note that SMB's are fans of online directories and search engine marketing.

This study documents what an increasing number of savvy online data publishers have already discovered (think ThomasNet and Martindale-Hubbell among many others): the best way to buttress online advertising revenue is to help SMB clients improve their own websites, whether through design services, creation of online catalogs, providing SEO services, or even managing SEM programs.

SMB's are not sophisticated advertising buyers and they need assistance in this area. Those data publishers that are moving beyond solely selling online advertising to supporting SMB's with agency-like services for what SMB's consider to be a big part of their advertising activity - their own websites - have found both a warm reception and multiple new revenue streams. If you're not doing it, it's a strategy well worth considering.

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----- -------- AUTHOR: Russell TITLE: Getting Real DATE: 11:10 AM ----- BODY:
You've built an online service, something of a cross between eBay and ThomasNet. It's focused on facilitating B2B connections in the explosive China marketplace. It's so well received it generates over 10 million sales leads annually. That's just part of the massive success story that is Global Sources. And what does Global Sources do next? It launches a print trade magazine.
Okay, the Global Sources story is actually more complicated than this, but my point remains: with everyone working so hard to find success online, how is it that some of the most successful online players are making moves into print?

Consider another undisputed online success story: TechTarget. Born online, it now has not one but three print titles now. And they serve high tech markets of digital natives, where the conventional wisdom would suggest print should be long out of fashion.

My absolute favorite example is still Search Marketing Standard, a new print trade magazine serving SEO and SEM professionals. Even those whose profession is to show others how to market and sell online still apparently want to receive their information in print.

It's easy to say, "hey, if companies will buy ads and people will read it, why not do a print magazine?" Fair enough, but that doesn't get at the bigger question: what drives the enduring appeal of print to both advertisers and readers?

Quite likely, there are multiple drivers, many of them quite banal, that work to make things look more complicated than they really are. But one factor, and I've heard this from both publishers and advertisers, is that print "makes you more real." Think about it. Anyone can create a website cheaply and easily, but few can afford to publish a print magazine. It speaks to commitment, substance, authority and influence on the part of the publisher. Advertisers say basically the same thing. The print medium lets them be more creative and deliver more complex messages. Just as importantly, a full-page print ad lets an advertiser stand out from the crowd, and demonstrate substance and commitment that's a lot harder in the pay-per-click online world. In short, print lets both publishers and advertisers make a real statement. And generate real business, which in turn generates real profits. And that's real good.

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