This is the fourth major financial downturn I have worked through (thankfully we are starting to see some confidence coming into the market again).
These downturns came about for different reasons but the consequences in the media industry are similar – reduced advertising spend and publishing businesses (of all types and sizes) finding it more difficult to reach budgets and achieve year on year revenue growth.
If your online business generates revenue through advertising, the last 12 months may have been challenging. Online advertisers generally reacted to difficult market conditions by redirecting spend from quantitative or ‘awareness generating’ results to more qualitative or ‘response driven’ results such as performance and affiliate opportunities.
Though we are starting to see an upturn, this is still the time for each online business to examine their business plan and determine forward their strategies. The commercial strategies you adopt and implement can place your business in the strongest possible position to navigate the end of the downturn and then meet the needs of a recovering market.
Here are some strategies to consider:
Motivate Your Sales Team
Even sales staff giving 110% cannot make advertisers spend money that is just not there or will not give them the return they require. It is hard for sales people to work to that capacity and not maintain conversion rates you would expect during stronger economic times. How are you keeping them motivated and informed about your businesses position?
Implementing Other Revenue Streams
What can you do to take your revenue reliance off advertising? A digital platform can be structured to generate many forms of revenue such as paid content, membership, retail and transactional models. What other revenue streams (both on and offline) are suitable extensions of your brand and are relevant to your market? Where can you build the knowledge and resources to implement, monetise and manage another revenue stream?
Advertising Placements
What qualitative-orientated advertising models could you incorporate into your website to meet the needs of advertisers requiring more response based results? As an example, generally, newsletters provide stronger click throughs than typical onsite display positions.
Training & Staff Development
The digital market is constantly evolving in line with the needs of your sites users and advertisers. How can your business benefit from training and up-skilling current staff to ensure they are following digital trends and you are following ‘best practice’ procedures?
Site Development
I rarely see a site which couldn’t do with some form of improvement, tweaking or evolution. What developments could you implement with direct impact on the audience and revenue you generate?
Understand Your Market
Do you have relevant information on your target market or website users which is of direct interest to your advertising market?
Advertiser ‘Usability’
Adopting strong processes and procedures to manage your advertising workflow can directly affect required resources and revenue. This can often be one of the easiest things to review and address.
Audience Growth
While advertising revenue may have been difficult to generate, your online usage patterns may not be affected. Media pundits have predicting spikes in online usage as people turn to more home based activities. What strategies do you have in place to maximise your audience?
Develop Better Relationships
How are you maintaining contact and gaining a better understanding of your advertisers needs? Even if they have reduced or stopped spending with you, how can you be first they consider when they are ready to advertise again?
Build Your Brand
Social networking and web 2.0 opportunities are among many cost effective marketing platforms which can establish and build your brand. What ongoing resources can you put in place to initiate, manage and optimise these channels for maximum results?
Though the past 12 months have be challenging, and we still have a way to go, online publishers should also view this period with optimism as advertisers have looked to onlines’ accountability and audience targeting capabilities, and have permanently diverted their spend from traditional media.
This is your opportunity to ensure the foundations of your commercial platform adapts to this changing media environment and you are prepared to enter the market upturn (it’s coming) in a way that gives you maximum advantage. You will then also have the ability to survive inevitable future downturns.
[Article first appeared in www.smartcompany.com.au Jan, 09. Updated for SNOBS: Sep 2009]
