Tag: alternative revenue

Local PI (per inquiry) – Top 5 Reasons to Start Today

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Local PI (per inquiry) is a program for community-based publications that are looking to meet the changing needs of advertisers in their local market. Every community has local market advertisers that want to buy newspaper ads but will only buy the ads on a performance basis (meaning pay-per-call.) In other words, local PI is a way for local publications to generate revenue from local advertisers that are otherwise more likely to continue spending their entire budget on search marketing and social media. Local PI offers community publications a way to stay relevant to the majority of local market advertisers.

At Mediabids, we have local PI already figured out for you. We handle all the paperwork, rate negotiations, ad traffic, call tracking/reporting and accounts work. Your publication runs the advertising and is paid a fixed amount per call generated. It’s that simple!

Whether or not  you’re struggling to replace lost print revenue with digital or alternative sources, here’s the top FIVE reasons to be considering local PI.

It’s Easy

Under any circumstances, it’s tough enough to sell advertising space. But now you’re also battling against several damaging mis-perceptions -namely, print is dying and too expensive. Local PI is entirely response-based (e.g. phone calls) so it’s easily more measurable and cost-effective for advertisers than most other local advertising options.

Also, Mediabids handles everything so local PI doesn’t cost you or your sales staff time or money. Your ad reps continue to focus on selling ROP and digital to their book of business.

New Print Revenue

Local PI is an alternative revenue source but it’s also new print revenues. To put it another way, it’s a new opportunity for you and for select advertisers in your market. The ideal local PI advertisers:

a)  May have tried print before but didn’t stick with it.

b) Were consistent customers for many years but are now reluctant to return your calls.

c) New businesses or advertisers that have always avoided print for one reason or another.

Phones Are Driving Everything

Local PI provides local advertisers a way to tap into the increasing use of smartphones and tablets by consumers. It just makes good business sense.

Mobile phones use has exploded over the past 4-5 years and people love to pick up the phone and call, rather than fill out an online form or email. In fact, roughly two-thirds of customers prefer to call versus other ways to contact a business. BIA/Kelsey recently reported that by 2019 businesses will get 162 billion more customer calls than they received in 2014. (Invoca, Call Intelligence Index 2016) Clearly, consumers are increasingly wired to call.

Bridge the Digital-Print Divide

Mobile phones are the proving to be the missing link between advertising and the customer. Seventy-nine percent of people ”switch devices during a single activity” – meaning consumers today move from one media channel to another and move from online to offline media channels quickly and with ease. (Invoca, Call Intelligence Index 2016) Local PI drives calls from print ads to local advertisers and print calls are by far the highest quality calls. The average call from a newspaper ad is over 3 minutes longer than an average call from TV and 2 minutes longer than an average call from an online display ad.

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Local Advertisers Get Results

According to the Invoca’s Call Intelligence Index 2016, the industries with the highest increases in call volumes are those with high value purchases or services where customers generally need a lot of personal service. The kinds of local businesses in these categories include home repair, financial services, insurance, health and wellness and travel. What does this mean? It means you likely already have a long list of potential local PI advertisers in your backyard.

Rolling all this up – you have advertisers that want measurable response and customers that are increasingly prone to respond to advertising via their phones. As a print publication, you want more print revenue but you need a way to overcome the usual objections to print – ”high” cost and a less competitive ROI. Local PI by Mediabids checks all the boxes.

Post by Jim Jinks.

 

 

 

Generating Ad Revenue in Print

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A recent article in The Guardian points to the challenges newspapers face attracting advertisers and maintaining ad revenue.  And yet millions of people are still picking up print editions.  Though the article comments specifically on the UK market, the same could be said of the industry here in the US.  But contrary to the sentiment the author suggests that “publishers must find new ways to convince advertisers that they have audiences worth targeting,” we would argue that publishers are tasked with finding alternative ways to monetize their product.  Convincing advertisers of the value of their readership is not enough.

While many have looked to selling digital advertising as their saving grace, there is another option.  A new revenue stream within the print property.  Per-inquiry advertising.  Yes, this involves publications taking on risk and shifting from their traditional model.  But if they are boasting engaged readership, shouldn’t they have confidence in their ability to drive response?

Advertisers are paying per response in other mediums, so is it really that unrealistic that they expect to be able to do the same in print?  They demand performance, measurability, and tracking.  Advertisers need to justify spending, after all.

Here are MediaBids, we believe in the power and value of newspapers.  Our President, Jedd Gould, has said “we at MediaBids feel very strongly that newspapers and magazines are a critical component to democracy in the United States…we really feel that without newspapers and magazines and the original content that they’re producing, we all would be worse off”.  When is this truer than in an election year?  Yet, we know the model is being threatened by economic pressures and changes in the advertising landscape.

Hundreds of publications have already adapted and teamed with MediaBids to run per inquiry ads.  While response varies widely depending on many factors such as advertising campaign and publication size, its undeniable these campaigns are driving calls and sales, thus delivering revenue to publications.  If you’d like to increase your advertising revenue and feature national advertisers in your publication, give us a call today at 860-379-9602 or learn more at https://www.mediabids.com/publication/print-advertising.jsp.

Limit Your Opportunity Costs & Raise Your Short-Term ROI

Money TreesEven if money did grow on trees, we would still be faced with decisions in business (and life) that cost us revenue or income, all the time. Really, the only question is to what degree or how much.

In economics this is referred to as ”opportunity costs.” It is the ”loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.” In other words, when we make a choice, we lose the value (however defined) of having made other choices.

Business owners and managers are faced with opportunity costs nearly every day. This is perhaps most acute in terms of hiring new employees – especially salespeople. The churn rate in sales averages about 28% a year, meaning if you hire four salespeople this year you are nearly certain to end the year with only three. As we all know, the time and costs associated with hiring salespeople are high. A quick Google search turns up a range of $120k to over $1 million per year, depending on the industry. These costs include salary, benefits, training and lost productivity (meaning new sales!) What seems to go unnoticed or under-appreciated, is the fact that the costs of generating sales -in the short-term- is likely to exceed the revenue from new sales, meaning your short-term ROI is negative or neutral at best. It’s a major challenge.

Media properties and publications face these same costs and challenges. Increasingly, print publications have turned to ”off the page” or alternative revenue sources; these include events, sponsorships, buying clubs, in-house marketing businesses, etc. Nevertheless, there is one alternative source that doesn’t require an upfront investment of time and resources, the opportunity costs are low and the short-run ROI may well compete with the hiring of a new sales rep.

At Mediabids, our alternative revenue, print advertising service has an upside potential (like other alternatives) but without the high opportunity and hard costs of other options. You simply select the ads and tell us the size/specs. You run the ads in your pages. We then pay you for the response. It’s that simple!

sales chartWe have several publications (particularly the ones that view our service as a true alternative revenue source) that generate over $100k a year. Keep in mind, this revenue is virtually cost free and relative to the costs of other alt revenue options (or the option of hiring a new salesperson), the short-run ROI is tough to beat.

Even if money is growing on trees, at your organization, the opportunity costs of alternatives to Mediabids’ alternative revenue, print advertising, are likely to be unnecessarily high. If you’re considering the pros and cons of your options in the alt revenue space, be sure to include short-run ROI among the variables to be evaluated.

Post by Jim Jinks.