I wrote an article for MediaPost yesterday entitled Trade Marketing, or Trade-Off Marketing? Here's the executive summary:
- Online Publishers put a ton of resources into trade marketing, but very little into consumer marketing.
- There are a few good reasons for this:
- 1) Audiences at online publishers have so far grown organically, simply through growth of online users and an increase in their time online.
- 2) Consolidation after 2001 pared down the competitive landscape, leaving less incentive for publishers to invest forcefully in consumer marketing.
- 3) Up until just recently, publishers' problems were more of the advertiser demand variety than publisher supply.
- But now there's a landscape shift and online publishers face two immediate threats:
- 1) shortage of premium inventory
- 2) terabytes of competing content (and millions of competing content creators) in blogs, photo streams, vlogs, podcasts and whatever else consumers and small publishers produce
- I can't draw a parallel between online publishers and magazine publishers because there isn't one - Magazine Publishers have entire departments dedicated to consumer marketing and circulation. Online publishers don't put nearly the same resources into it.
- The MPA has events dedicated to circulation and consumer marketing, but no such events exist for online publishers.
- I conclude with the vague threat that publishers better be aware of this shift and begin to allocate more resources to consumer marketing, and that the industry infrastructure has to rise to support them.
I realized after writing this one that I write articles using the same tone template I used to use as a Jupiter Analyst. We called it then F-U-D, for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. This was 1999-2001. The market was skyrocketing, but at Jupiter we saw our roles in large part to point out imminent change and the impact they would have on organizations. It often comes off as being critical, and after I wrote yesterday I wondered if I'm being unfairly harsh against online publishers. This tone springs from an urge to be contrary - to point out pitfalls when everyone sees opportunity. We did this during the Great Exuberance of 1999-2000. I guess I see the need to do it again now.
I suppose I could balance my writing a bit, and intersperse the occasional accolade (great job on all that video content, guys!). While that's certainly my style as a manager, I don't know that it serves much use to publishers who read my work. And I doubt the editorial staff at MediaPost would find it as interesting, frankly.
I read The Big Moo on a plane yesterday and one of the points that one of the 33 authors made sticks with me. He/She said, "Ignore the critics, but listen to the critcism." The author says that these critics are just trying to make noise and get noticed, to goad somebody into a public debate. Never mind them, but pay attention to what they're actually accusing you of - there may be some truth there that you can learn from, if you can get your ego and defense reflexes out of the way.
So if it helps, ignore me. Maybe I'll be easier to listen to that way.
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