Let’s face it: publishers have never really been known as early adopters of digital technology. In many cases, we’ve been dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age, resisting opportunities to play at the same level that most of our key advertisers and many of our readers have been at for years.
Whether motivated by hubris, economics, or lack of interest, this reluctance to embrace technologies has left many publishers having the wrong conversations with key advertisers who have long since moved to alternative media suppliers.
Big retailers have added online stores and are adopting data driven marketing strategies that are replacing traditional advertising activities. This data collection mindset has turned traditional newspaper advertising customers into digital marketing competitors. Retailers reasonably wonder why they need a newspaper website when we have invested so heavily in their own online presence. Moreover, as retailers adopt data collection and build customer persona/profile strategies, publishers who are not prepared to collect audience knowledge and build audience segmentation data that can be leveraged by today’s retailer will find themselves left out of the marketing conversations altogether.
The transition to data driven marketing is not limited to the big box retailers–SMB retailers in your market can access similar technology via third parties or suppliers. Even on “Main Street”, retailers are increasingly moving “ad dollars” from legacy media to customer direct digital activities.
Publishers’ can catch up in the knowledge race, and offer national and local advertisers access to valuable reader data, audience intelligence, and segmentation that maps directly to advertisers’ data driven campaigns. Critically, for small and mid-sized publishers, adopting personalization, local audience segmentation, and interest/intent data of local audience is inexpensive and easy to manage For local advertisers, publishers who can offer a level of sophisticated audience data to local retailers can set themselves apart from the competition and recapture local and national marketing dollars. But before you can win the knowledge race, you need to be IN the knowledge race.
