Anyone in the newspaper industry has heard the mantra of local, local, local for years.

Every city has a Home Depot, a Denny’s and a Target. But it doesn’t have your favorite pizza shop or nightclub. These small, local businesses are what make all of our hometowns unique. And they are the ones most likely to be ignored by a newspaper’s advertising sales staff. Why is that?

Many of our clients report the same basic issues to us. They recognize the fact that a newspaper’s strength lies in its local connection - not just in news but in advertising as well. But their staffing and budget restraints force them to focus on and serve the needs of the big verticals.

Even a pure commission model is complicated. Devoting the required support, administrative and management resources may detract from those coveted categories of business.

Check the frequency

No one denies the necessary and appropriate focus on cars and homes and jobs. But think about this: How often does someone buy a car? A house? Change jobs? And how often does someone change their oil? Or repair their home? Or go to lunch with co-workers? For that matter, how often does a person go grocery shopping?

 

Individually, these Main Street businesses probably cannot afford a big ad buy. Even collectively, it will probably take a very large number to equal a single large account.

That isn’t the point. The model isn’t only about that monthly invoice.

Instead, it’s offering unique local content that will make your newspaper’s Web page a destination site.

You can do that by building a pyramid with a broad base of small merchants that drives the traffic to support higher revenue, but less numerous, regional and national retailers.

How? Coupons.

Coupons heating up

The coupon sector is heating up. Ignore it and the clock keeps ticking, giving more time for competitors to devise their own new online revenue models.

Doubt it? Here are just a few of the stories that made my in-box light up over the past few months:

*June 20: Yahoo! releases a new plug-in for Messenger that keeps coupon content always in sight for users of this very popular program.

*June 26: Cellfire announces its new system to distribute coupons via cell phones.

*Aug. 15: Google announced a deal to distribute ValPak coupons as part of Google Maps. Google Maps also now include a free, simple, self-service interface for merchants to create their own coupons.

Coupons are used by businesses of all sizes, but they’re often the bread and butter for smaller merchants. In-paper advertising, especially in larger markets, is just too expensive - or at least too scary - for them. A shared direct-mail piece, or even better, a free program through Google, is more to their liking.

The good news

The market is fragmented with many players, both local and national, competing for the small merchant’s advertising business. The good news for newspapers is that none of them has the local promotional power, and feet on the street, which newspapers have.

Although the Google announcement may seem quite threatening, there is still time. Most small business owners are extremely busy (that’s why it’s called a busy-ness) making the pizza, coordinating schedules, etc. They just don’t have the time to learn about some complicated Google Maps program and then actually spend the time to make the coupons.

If Sally Nailshop has an ad program in place, it’s probably because some ad person orbited the store for a month to land the business.

And it probably hasn’t changed much since she opened up her first shop over on Elm Street in 1982.

But that’s not the case with New Sally. New Sally is scouting out locations, and getting her business license, and building a marketing plan that includes online marketing.

Given time, they’ll all be New Sally.

The bad news

If you don’t have staff, you can’t knock on Sally’s door. If you don’t have appropriate online tools in place, you won’t get New Sally either.

Although we strongly recommend having staff to service this market segment, we recognize that just isn’t possible in many cases. But you still can build an online coupon marketplace by assembling the core pieces from a number of sources, including:

*In-paper. Your paper is full of coupons each week. You could build an online coupon for these merchants (taking advantage of all the Internet has to offer) or the print ad could be ported to online. A number of companies provide these services, or you may have the internal resources to do it yourself.

*Create a print coupon book. The print component could add enough revenue to justify the effort. The online component helps make the sale and kicks in additional, nearly costless, revenue.

*Self-service. This may be your best option for the smallest of businesses, especially if you cannot add staff to mine the strip malls. Promote the tool heavily, and not just by slapping up a banner ad. Remember, New Sally needs you to go after her. Consider targeted direct mail and telemarketing. You can develop a good leads list by just gathering all the coupons that arrive at your house each month.

*Smart partnerships. A number of companies already have coupon content and would love to have you as a distribution partner. Be careful. Make sure that they actually have a good number and variety of businesses in your market. Other companies can provide you grocery coupons or coupons good for online-only entities.

*Go out and make that sale. Finally, identify larger entities that distribute coupons and don’t advertise with you. Establish the relationship with the coupons - it’s low risk to them - and grow it into a much larger commitment. You might make this a call center initiative or a way to increase territory value with a three-day sales blitz.

Jeff Beliveau is vice president, newspaper operations for online coupon provider Boodle. He can be reached at jeff@boodle.com or 619.228.2026.