Sunday circulation was up 5,405 copies or 3%!

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/innovation/article/treat-referrals-like-a-sales-force-instead-of-a-happy-accident-ivana-taylor

Here’s an example he cited:
“PepsiCo, which spends many millions of dollars on marketing every year, is just one example. During Internet Week in New York, I helped lead a project for which we hired nine “social communicators” (some of whom were traditional journalists) and built out a suite of blogs and social media tools, including a Twitter feed, a YouTube channel and a proprietary app, to cover the week’s events and, PepsiCo hoped, reach an audience of influential people in digital media and marketing. PepsiCo has done similar projects for the SXSW festival and said it is planning more in the future.”

The representative from Pepsi went on to say, “we are going to shift the mix of dollars from what might be a hundred percent paid advertising to something less traditional.”

The author gives a couple of other examples, and there is no doubt that he has spotted a growing trend. While he sees this trend as a threat to traditional media, I see it as an opportunity.

Later in the article he says, “I believe the trend will extend to local merchants, too. What happens, for example, when a local business that might have spent a few thousand dollars a month to attract customers via local circulars or news blogs instead decides to spend some or all of that money on its own digital media, attract its own audience, and glean all that data for itself?”

The problem with this is most small business owners we talk to have neither the expertise nor the time to pull this off. If they decide to go down this road they are going to need help from credible marketing services companies that can develop and optimize websites, create copy, provide social networking services, etc. That’s where we come in. We are doing these things for scores of customers as we speak and our client list continues to grow. And from a business model perspective, it gives our company access to “below the line” marketing dollars that we have never been able to vie for in the past.

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=174032

Fact is, we are already doing it.

Our digital agency, 1100 Broadway, opened for business a year ago and the lessons we have learned running a digital agency have taught us so much. The original idea was to provide digital and direct solutions for our customers. We have certainly done that. We have served 126 customers so far through 1100 Broadway and the list grows every week. 1100 Broadway revenue will be twice in the fourth quarter what it was in the first quarter. Most importantly, our customers are getting results. With a vastly expanded product line we quickly have realized that we have the ability to sell broad-based marketing solutions to customers. We have gone beyond our own products and services and we are now buying media for our clients, helping them with social networking and helping them track their results. Just this morning, we met with a client in an attempt to sell them our “agency of record” services for their ten-state operation. The customer was quite impressed with all of the services we can offer. We are finding ourselves having these types of discussions more and more with our clients. While we have a long way to go to diversify our company we are more confident than ever that we are on the right track.

Wouldn’t it shock some people if we were the next IBM?

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/dchase/200911/1794/

http://www.autoremarketing.com/ar/news/story.html?id=10257

“Engage in something far more powerful than a vendor relationship by transitioning to a collaborator.”

World class customer service means providing our customers with excellent solutions that solve a problem – in our case – that means helping them sell products or services or getting their phone to ring or improving their brand or hiring employees, etc.

Let’s be honest, this has not been a hallmark of the newspaper industry. Yes, I think we do a good job building relationships with many of our customers. But those relationships must be focused more than ever on providing our customers with well thought out plans and ideas. We want them to like us, but more importantly, we want them to view us as a business partner that is looking out for their best interests.

Our focus on broad based marketing solutions means we are better poised than ever to provide the type of service described in the article. My responsibility is to make sure we do this effectively.

Read the article on providing excellent customer service now.

We believe that we need to offer BOTH good self-service tools along with customized programs developed by local experts. Agent 1100 is a good example of this and we will be launching more new tools in the coming months.

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/innovation/article/are-you-ready-for-the-trend-toward-marketing-automation-anita-campbell

http://www.urlzen.com/wyt

Yep, that’s not a misprint, our Sunday home delivery circulation is growing in the 17 counties of our MSA. Allow me to provide some details.

Earlier this year, we made the decision at the Tennessean to pull back on home delivery in several outlying counties. It just didn’t make sense to continue to lose money on newspapers we delivered in those counties. However, we set up several agreements with wholesalers in those areas and we have been able to recover 68% of what we stopped delivering. And, due to how we arranged the wholesaler agreements, we did so profitably.

But our main focus is on 17 core counties in our MSA. These are the counties most important to our advertisers and, in July, we made the decision to invest a significant amount of money for sales and marketing efforts to grow circulation in these counties.

It’s working.

For the first week of October, Sunday home delivery circulation was up 129 copies versus last year. This last Sunday, we were up 1,649 copies.

And it’s not just the sales and marketing efforts that are making a difference. Good journalism, like the story Jaime Sarrio did on Sunday, October 4, about misuse of credit cards among Metro School officials is earning rave reviews from readers. The feedback from that story along with others tells us that people are hungry for good investigative journalism and will respond by buying the newspaper when they think we are doing a good job.

We will continue to update the circulation numbers in the weeks and months ahead.