Jacobson: We can out-compete Craigslist

Janet DeGeorge wrote,

Hi Steve
Your questions “why is there so little classifieds innovation at newspapers”? Let me help with that one.

As a classified consultant for 8 years who has examined hundreds of classified sections, interviewed thousands of sales people and studied the website of papers in all most every state, I can tell you why there is so little innovation.

1. LEADERSHIP. There are no longer core leaders in the classified industry. In the last century, there was a core group of leaders through a society called ANCAM where innovation was the name of the game at the conferences and the conversations that followed. There is nothing like this any longer. This was blended into NAA many years ago and the NAA Classified Conference has been watered down to MEDIA EXCHANGE blending everything except editorial into one conference. I just returned from this. There was one panel on Classifieds and it was placed at the last hour of the last day when most had left. Otherwise there were no presentations on Auto, Real Estate, Employment or other key categories like there use to be. No discussions with the President of the Board of Realtors on what they need from the newspaper industry. No speakers from top Auto Dealers on how we can help them at this time in the economy.

2. COPYCATS. Newspapers copy one another especially in classifieds. And they end of copying from newspapers who are failing in their classified market to begin with. One of my jobs as a consultant is to bring innovation to a newspaper by keeping up with all the great new products vendors are producing. But the first question I hear is “who else is doing it”. The frustration among vendors who are creating new products for classifieds is enormous because of this one question. Without risk, there is no innovation.

3. MINDSET. Newspaper advertising leaders on the whole, are not innovators, they are sales people at heart and this is not a mindset that produces innovation. Focus is on making goals on what worked “last year”.

4. APPROVAL PROCESS. Many newspapers make the process of getting any new idea through the gauntlet of approval a near exhausting and demoralizing process. There are newspapers that cannot make their own local decisions on what to sell online because it’s all conducted through “corporate”. And at the corporate level, “risk taking” with new innovations in classified is not the name of the game.

5. KNOWLEDGE. Internet savvy is not part of many advertising executives makeup. I sat at lunch with a VP of Advertising of a very large paper just two years ago who asked me what YouTube was…rest assured, getting something like the social networking Craigslist does on their site (and the reason it took off in the first place) is something few newspapers will risk or even understand. While many of us are on Linked In, few understand the powers of Face book, My Space, and the rest of the social networking power sites. But this is where the younger demographics are that newspapers say they want to reach.

6. STAFFING. I worked with a paper in Bogota, Columbia. They have 120 people in their internet division and 13 niche websites all making loads of money. Most newspapers, even the biggest ones, have a handful of personnel on the sales side of their internet site. Smaller papers, it’s one or two sales reps, one webmaster, and maybe an internet director. Just keeping up the status quo is a daily grind.

7. TALENT. The top internet talent is no longer in the newspaper industry. At first, having a “newspaper” website on your resume was the holy grail to a web designer. Now it’s the kiss of death.

8. SPENDING MONEY. There are SURE things out there in the classified innovation world…mapping with ClassifiedConcepts.com that also has an interactive online component. SO COOL for open houses, garage sales, anything that can be mapped, and a SURE THING to build revenue. Leads and Renewals with RangerData.com that tracks your expiring ads and finds new leads and SHOWS YOU THE MONEY in the first day, Gadzoo.com a ready built and FUN Pet website. And even with proven results, many newspapers resist getting these products. And they are SURE THINGS!

9. VIDEO PRODUCTS. Newspaper classifieds are already losing this market to competitors. A company called TourFactory.com has almost 50,000 real estate videos on YouTube that they sold to Realtors. My company in partnership with Alan Jacobson built classified video sites in 2007 for our customers in order for them to own their classified video market before someone else did. (RealPeopleRealStuff.com and VideoJobShop.com). The concepts of selling classified video ads outside of the “Up sell” that DMC does so well, is so foreign to classified sales reps and their managers. We are finally seeing some light that newspapers are starting to GET IT, but they could have owned their video market two years ago, now they have to fight for a piece of it.

BOTTOM LINE
Perhaps there has to be a designated “innovative” newspaper that starts fresh. Webcams in the newsroom with live reports as the reporters come from the field, an advertising department using only the newest products and incorporating only the best trained sales reps, a print product that is designed for today’s time strapped reader, an internet department who’s goal is to own the business community by building websites for their customers as part of the first step of an overall advertising plan and a marketing department that actually has a real budget to promote.

A real dream for sure.

Link | March 18th, 2009 at 2:06 pm

Karen Dimmick wrote,

I agree with Jim - it is time we had an improved “Craigslist”. I’d like to see it be able to handle classifieds that don’t have a local market too. For instance, if you want to sell tickets to a conference or training program that the majority of the audience travel to attend, it seems crazy you can only place the classified in one town - which one do you pick?

Link | September 12th, 2009 at 1:46 pm