Last summer Linda Pierre, online ad manager at the 90,000-circulation Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida needed new revenue to make her goal and grow her online business. She also desperately needed a way to get more than the 10 cents on a dollar for online advertising that newspaper websites normally can command.

In short: She needed a game-changer.

Pierre knew that many people choose Daytona as a destination for their weddings. In fact, more than 3,300 weddings are held annually in the area. She also knew that these brides, grooms and their families spend a ton of money on the event. The average wedding in Daytona Beach costs $26,741, according to The Wedding Report, the wedding market-research company. That makes bridal an $89,181,235 market in Daytona, a market the newspaper was barely tapping for ad dollars.

Like mot newspapers The News-Journal traditionally carried engagement and wedding announcements, but the number of announcements had declined in recent years. Pierre believed that using her website and harnessing the power of social media could attract more young people to the News-Journal site and generate significant ad dollars.

“The first thing a woman wants to do when she gets engaged is tell the world!” Pierre said. “It’s common today for couples to hire photographers who shoot dozens of photos for their engagement, but the newspaper only allowed one photo, usually the pretty standard head shot of the couple. That’s just not going to cut it anymore.”

So Pierre looked for a way to offer couples something more using the web. She wanted her site to feature the love stories of local people getting engaged and married with tons of photos and information. She also wanted everything to be shared via social media because she knew sharing the news among friends and family could create buzz that would boost traffic back to her site.

Her staff already was stretched to the max. She knew she couldn’t build her ideal site internally, at least not quickly and cost effectively. Instead she partnered with Content That Works to implement Brides365 in her market.

“We liked Brides365 because it gave us the ability for local brides to post great announcements with interesting stories and unlimited photos,” Pierre said. “Plus when brides start the 14-month process of planning their weddings, they want all of the information they can get their hands on. Brides365 delivers that with daily updates and news, information, galleries and videos from all over the internet.”

The $30,000 Payoff (so far)

Pierre is aware of the value of a couple planning their wedding to advertisers, she chooses to value price her ad positions rather than using cost-per-impression pricing.

“I figured that someone coming to our bridal site – who is absolutely going to spend an average of $26,741 or she wouldn’t be therein the first place – was worth much more to an advertiser than someone landing on our home page who may or may not buy anything,” Pierre said. “So we offered category exclusive advertising position at a premium price.”

Pierre charges $499 a month for 300-pixel ads on the right rail and $999 a month for the leaderboard on her Brides365 site. These ads include a premium listing in the bridal resource vendor directory and a 2-by-3-inch, full-color print ad in the paper.

Within a few weeks she booked $30,000 in annual revenue for the site — all of it brand-new revenue. Her goal for the first 12 months is nearly $100,000, all from a category that had long been neglected by the News-Journal.

Not only has the News-Journal found a way to generate new revenue at a full price but also a way to bring younger readers to their site. The paper is intercepting these newlyweds and soon-to-be newlyweds at a formative time and becoming an integral part of their lives. The announcements get shared on Facebook and Twitter, driving friends and family to the site to see the photos and read the news.

Newspapers often wonder why their once-a-year bridal section is withering. In part, the answer is that weddings happen every day of the week, every month of the year. They are no longer a June phenomenon. One in six couples actually meet online! Your website, coupled with the power of social media can help you tap into the potential in your market.

Weddings are a $65 billion industry nationwide. On average, a single business will spend $3,772 on advertising, totaling $1.91 billion in advertising spending per year. The average business serving the wedding market has gross wedding sales of $142,047.

At a time when newspapers need every dollar of advertising they can get; when they need online products that command premium prices; when they need to reach out to new younger people in the community, making bridal work online and in print simply makes sense.

I hear this objection a least once a week from one prospect or another. It is yet another example of how fear paralyzes our industry.

True, the large corporate owners of local media companies rightly continue to wring out costs from their organizations. Unfortunately, too often this translates into staff reductions, furloughs or both with no accompanying plan for growth. Not a week seems to pass these days without another announcement of some job cut.

In fact newspapers and their electronic media counterparts seem to be intent on cutting their way to oblivion, pursuing a downward spiral of negativity, to borrow a term from conductor Benjamin Zander. You’ll need a spare 30 minutes to watch this clip of Zander, but it’s worth your time if you want concrete proof that greatness starts with frame of mind:

Zander gives every student an “A” at the beginning of each class provided the student writes him a letter telling him who they will have become by the end of the course. He celebrates their possibilities rather than dwelling on what his students can’t do.

Leadership.

Leadership is the belief in opportunity rather than the fear of survival. Leadership is the celebration of optimism over protectionism — creating new jobs instead of eliminating old ones to hold on for dear life, for example. Leadership is believing that you and your team can do the impossible or at least the improbable. What’s happening in the newspaper business today is that extraordinarily talented, dedicated people are being stopped and held back because they are so anxious about their jobs and their futures.

When I was a kid my mother used to tell me, “can’t never did anything.” Of course she was right. Mothers always are.

“Can” requires vision of the possibilities. Possibilities are unlimited! Possibilities also can require bravery and faith. Still wouldn’t it be great if the next time we utter, or hear the words, “we can’t . . .” we stop in our tracks and ask, “What could happen if we do?” Obviously it may be bad things would happen, but it is possible that good things would happen in such abundance that they outweigh the bad.

If you choose to use our content in a niche category like bridal or to make holiday a year-round business, could you then redeploy your current staff to cover a local school bond issue or tax increase or that recent rash of burglaries — news of intense local interest? Would that make your paper or radio station or Tv station stronger, better? Could content from CTW help you grow your revenue from non-traditional advertisers? If you grew revenue enough could you increase the size of your team?

We all have a choice. We can choose to live in fear and negativity. Or we can choose to celebrate what is possible.

It’s time to give ourselves an “A.” We need to see the possibility that we can become a growth industry that creates more jobs than it eliminates again. We can start today.

Today’s standard mantra is local-local-local, which is an undeniably great focus. Indeed, hometown coverage closely followed by regional news is the price of admission for any newspaper.

However, I have been thinking a lot about how limited newspaper industry goals are these days. It is sad that many papers’ aspirations begin and end with local coverage alone.

For most of the last century, the Chicago Tribune  proclaimed: World’s Greatest Newspaper. There was something charming in the fact that back in the 20th century anything seemed possible. Col. Robert R. McCormick aspired to be the greatest, to deliver the world to his readers. Symbolically, pieces from sites throughout the world collected (some say pilfered) by McCormick are embedded in the walls of the Tribune Tower at 435 North Michigan Ave. in Chicago. You can take a world tour in minutes the next time you visit Chicago by just walking around the building.

Granted at most papers the reportorial staff has been cut to the quick and the news hole cut to the bone. Granted, too, back in the fat, sloppy 1990s many local newspapers depended far too heavily on AP covering national and international news to the exclusion of news of intense local interest. However, the pendulum may have swung too far.

This is especially true when it comes to online.

Most newspaper websites do a pretty decent job of reporting and presenting local news. Again, this is the price of entry, the reason why people visit local newspaper sites. However, local is where many sites stop. Apparently those in charge assume their site visitors would rather go elsewhere for world news or special-interest coverage.

Of course, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the local news site offers nothing other than local news, then customers (site visitors, readers, whatever you want to call them, but make no mistake they are customers) must leave the site to satisfy their wider interests.

The thing is, forcing people to seek information elsewhere is totally unnecessary. Today’s technology makes it possible for any site, no matter how big or how small, to be a very complete source of up-to-the-minute news, trends and views on virtually any topic. So why send people away when your site can be a one-stop shop for local — plus everything else?

The newspaper industry has been beaten down so often and so far of late that local seems to be all that’s possible. The Tribune no longer claims to be the greatest in the world, but it sure was a lot more fun when it and most every other newspaper in North America aspired to be a window to the world. The cool thing is the internet makes anything possible again!

In truth, however, aggregation is more friend than foe.

I am old enough to remember a time when the daily newspaper, augmented perhaps by half an hour spent with Walter Cronkite, provided all the news you needed in a day. As late as 1967 the newspaper industry delivered 122 daily newspapers per 100 households in North America, meaning that 20% of all households got more than one newspaper. Papers were vital. It was a great time to be in the newspaper business.

Of course, things have changed.

Newspaper consultant Jim Chisholm presented at the Inland conference on Monday. The next morning he allowed that he was disappointed after reading the New York Times. Why? “There’s very little international news, unlike the International Herald Tribune, which I read daily, and its reporters are all New York Times reporters!”

Fact is we have laid off so many people, slimmed down the pages both in size and in quantity so much, and focused so intensely on “local” that no newspaper today is a complete go-to source for all the news people want.

That’s where aggregation comes in. On your web-site not only can you publish all of the contextual information, photographs and overset that no longer fits in your paper, you can also aggregate content from other sources on the web to offer a far more complete, in-depth package than ever before.

This is not illegal. It is not immoral. In fact, it is a beautiful thing.

Done correctly both you and the original content source get to count the page views, impressions and unique visitors. Both sides of the equation can make money. It is a win-win for your paper, for the original source of the aggregated content and most importantly for your site visitors and advertisers.

This technique can enable your paper to become a go-to source for your readers once again. You provide the crucial local content. Aggregation provides the depth of content. A company like Content That Works provides original topical content that changes daily and helps differentiate your site from competitors who also aggregate.

Here’s just one example this concept at work for the holidays:

http://onlineathens.holidaycelebrations.com/

You can apply this technique to any niche-content area that’s important to your readers and valuable to advertisers. We can help make it happen quickly, at a very affordable price and with virtually no work, no learning curve and almost no risk on your part.

Aggregation is neither Craig nor the Second Coming. It is, however, a tool that can help make your paper more important and attractive in lucrative niche categories.

Why force your site visitors to go elsewhere when you can give them everything they want and need right on your site? This is your chance to out-Yahoo! Yahoo!, out-Google Google. . . your chance to fight back. Why not start today?

The lead story is a gripping an account of the sinking of the steamer Europe and mid-sea rescue of the survivors. Not a picture or graphic graces the page. There are various reports from Washington D.C., including a story on a Federal fraud investigation, passage of a railroad bill designed to stimulate the economy and several other articles that could be plucked from today’s headlines.

The stories could be plucked from today's headlines and the left hand column is chock full of local advertising.

What’s particularly fascinating, though, is that the entire far left column is devoted to ads for local merchants — two souvenir photo studios, a Realtor, the Merchants Exchange National Bank and two other financial institutions. There’s an ad for “fresh” California Salmon at A. Booth’s, which makes me wonder what salmon must have tasted like in 1874. A stationer, glassware retailer, doctor, dentist,  jeweler, grave site marker company and office rentals round out the ads, 20 in all.

It is notable that front page advertising apparently was commonplace in the late 1800s. Every one of the advertisers was local and for the most part they were small businesses. Most of the ad categories represented on this page still exist today. Successor companies to some of the advertisers still operate in Chicago, proof  that advertising works!

Somewhere between 1874 and today newspapers lost their way. Classified ads were booming. Every auto dealer, Realtor and major retailer had to run big ads to be competitive. Newspapers turned their backs on selling small space ads to humble merchants on Main Street — stationers and housewares retailers, photographers and grave marker companies. Too much work for too little gain seemed to be the attitude.

“Make sure your holiday sections are 100% geared to local Mom and Pops,” Tom Bradley, Ad Director of the Bartlesville, OK Examiner-Enterprise urged me today. “The big box stores don’t advertise with us.”

What a difference a few years makes. The CTW editorial department is decorated for Christmas right now! The editors are taking Tom’s words to heart, too. They’re building brand new holiday magazines from the ground up, chock full of ideas that highlight retailers on Main Street and appeal to local folks who shop there.

You can help. This year we are asking you to forward your ideas and suggestions to make CTW’s Celebrations holiday magazines and MiniSites™ truly yours, the best money-makers ever. Your idea could even win a new iPad!

Make your holiday selling season merry and bright. Forward your ideas for stories or for successfully marketing holiday to paul@contentthatworks.com. Your ideas will truly guide this year’s packages, plus you could end up winning an iPad — a sort of Christmas present in advance.

Mom and Pops rock. Lets get in touch with the businesses that were the foundation upon which newspapers and other local media were built. Small businesses are your biggest opportunity. Helping them helps you and your community.

This rule applies to books (how many variations on the “…For Dummies” series can they dream up?) newspapers, magazines and in today’s world profitable Web sites, blogs and social network campaigns.

So why do most local media relegate bridal to a once-a-year selling event?

I talk to local media executives pretty much every day. When I ask about bridal most tell me they do a “very profitable” bridal promotion in their markets once a year. It might be tied to an annual wedding show/event. Rarely the magazine gets posted online. But the vast majority of markets take advantage of bridal just once a year.

So what’s the big deal?

• Bridal is a $72 billion annual business in the US
• About 2.3 million couples will wed this year
• That’s about 6,300 weddings a day
• Those weddings occur every day of the year
• An average of 200 guests buy a gift for the happy couple
• Most wedding guests spend between $70 and $100 on that gift
• The average cost of the bride’s and groom’s rings alone is $1016
• 99% of newlyweds take a honeymoon, spending an average of $3657

Most important, the vast majority of the merchants involved — jewelers, florists, caterers, beauty shops, limos, halls, rental companies, etc. — happen to be small local businesses that are not regular advertisers in newspapers, on radio or in any other local media. The bridal category is a grossly under-developed opportunity in most markets. Yet, the crisp white dress on the cover of the once-a-year bridal publication turns an unattractive shade of yellow waiting for local media to seize the opportunity to make bridal a year-round business.

The fact is all local media have become addicted to the next new thing, new idea, the silver bullet that will solve all of our problems. Sadly no such silver bullet exists. That’s not to say there are no good new ideas out there. New ideas abound. However, we have departed from the basic rules of profitable publishing that made fortunes for those who preceded us.

Why bridal? Why now? It makes sense when profits are strapped.

If most businesses related to the bridal category in your market do not advertise regularly with you, but advertise in large numbers once a year. If weddings happen all year long in your community and you have the means to make bridal a year-round business — 24/7 on your Web site, weekly in your newspaper or on your station and once, twice or more often with bridal magazines and events. Then you are missing an opportunity to generate new ad dollars, help your merchants on Main Street and help couples planning their weddings.

In short you have a big fat wedding opportunity. We can help you take advantage of it.

Aside from sounding very much like restraint of trade, it is a very scary notion that a large coupon insert company and supermarket chain should attempt to dictate to newspapers what they can and cannot do. The free and independent press in this country is fast becoming anything but.

That should frighten the bejeezus out every man, woman and child old enough to read.

Don’t get me wrong. We love coupons and coupon companies. We love Albertson’s that happens to own Jewel, the dominant supermarket chain in Chicago. We understand that making it possible for consumers to acquire and redeem coupons outside the normal distribution window could be disruptive to Albertson’s business.

However, could it be that consumers are simply getting smarter about coupon use by reading columns and viewing videos from such experts as Jill Cataldo, The Coupon Queen? She is teaching newspaper readers how to make the most of the coupons freely distributed in the paper to stimulate grocery store business and sales of brand name products.

It seems that in some markets coupons are working too well! What a shock in this economy.

Jill takes the view that the Sunday paper landing on her driveway is like being handed more than $100 cash due to the coupons. We have heard that in some markets consumers actually go out on Sunday and buy multiple copies of the newspaper just to get additional coupon circulars.

Thing is, this is a win-win-win-win-win. The newspapers win because they sell more papers. Consumers win because they save money. Valassis wins because coupon redemption goes up. The brands win because they sell more products. Albertson’s wins because it gets more people into its stores.

On that last point just think back to the last time you went on a shopping trip to the supermarket. Were you disciplined enough to buy only what was on your list or the items for which you had coupons? Me either. So just how hurtful can the occasional Sunday newspaper sold on a Monday (or horrors, the following Friday) be?

The fact is every newspaper that has coupon inserts should be running The Coupon Queen. She helps consumers learn how to get the most from the coupons in the newspaper — help consumers desperately need in these uncertain times. She also helps newspapers strengthen their bond with their readers. The Coupon Queen reminds readers that the newspaper is valuable!

The Holy Grail in the coupon business is controlling the relationship with the consumer. Valassis itself is a major distributor of online coupons. Limiting coupon use, controlling how newspapers do business and trying to keep consumers in the dark about how to get the most from coupons is bad for everyone. Moreover, it is just another step in the erosion of a free press in America.

When was the last time you heard a reporter from a major television news network say something like that? Well that’s precisely what happened March 25, 2010 at the end of an ABC Nightline segment on “how much you can get for $50” when reporter John Donvan uttered precisely those words.

http://bit.ly/bmhZjC

It’s kind of refreshing after all of the talk of newspaper dying. Don’t you think?

Here’s what Jill Caltaldo, whom Donovon characterized as the “Dear Abby of coupons” during his Nightline segment, said about newspapers on the show to a national viewing audience:

“I see Sunday morning as somebody throwing $100 bucks at the end of my driveway and I am the first out of my house to go get it . . . ”

How much is that sort of publicity worth to the newspaper industry?

This suburban housewife is single-handedly trying to save newspapers! She’s on a one-woman crusade to make people realize that newspapers are important and have significant value. This after years of hearing a one-note song that the newspaper business is dying.

Here’s the thing: It seems incredible to me that any newspaper that carries coupon inserts would NOT run The Coupon Queen, by Jill Cataldo who was one of the two featured coupon experts on Nightline. Still many don’t and it makes no sense.

No less an authority than the Newspaper Association of America asserted last fall that newspaper inserts and the accompanying coupons are “under siege.” So why wouldn’t every newspaper do everything possible to shore up and protect its coupon franchise?

http://bit.ly/c47f19

It is time for newspapers to fight back. The Coupon Queen, her weekly column and videos, should be in every newspaper that carries Sunday coupon circulars and on the Web sites of those newspapers. The information she provides helps readers get more for their money when those readers desperately need the help. The environment her column and videos create helps your ad staff sell coupon ads they would not get otherwise. The column even helps the circulation department, which benefits from having something in the paper every week underscoring the power of the Sunday paper and the value of the coupons it contains.

Newspapers as we know them are in a heap of trouble. Jill Cataldo is trying to help. Sadly too many newspaper middle managers are asleep at the switch, or worse, they are afraid of their own shadows. Either way if we all don’t do something, and do something fast, we’re going to be vice presidents in charge of looking for a job.

Here’s CTW’s commitment: If you take The Coupon Queen out into your marketplace and make a serious effort to sell ads against the column or the new videos for the your Web site and can’t sell at least one ad that brings in enough to pay for the content, you get the column FREE for one year. We believe that much in providing a reason for your readers to buy your newspaper. How about it?

She’s also in denial. However, despite her protests to the contrary she has an addiction problem.

I noticed it again this morning when my alarm went off this morning — the telltale blue glow shielded from my side of the bed by a strategically placed pillow.

My wife has fallen into a serious relationship with her iPhone. No, she was not playing some game, though she has a few on her phone. Nor was she using one of the myriad apps she has available like our friend Arlo’s:  Jug Band App. That could have been a tad annoying at that hour.

No she was simply, silently reading — probably the New York Times or some other news feed. I dared not ask for fear of breaking the early morning solitude and disturbing the sacred relationship between woman and machine.

My wife’s addition is hardly unique.  I see avid readers surreptitiously sneak out their electronic devices to feed their habit in the oddest of settings. Luckily that means there is hope for people who believe in the power of a good story well told.

My wife loves to read. She also loves the fact that her phone now gives her access to great stories worldwide in a moment’s notice on a compact, portable, unobtrusive, easy-to-use device always just an arm’s length away. Its kind of magical, and more than a little addictive.

However, it wouldn’t mean a thing without content worth reading! That represents a huge opportunity for newspapers and other local media outlets: Learning to appeal to digital readers whether they use the iPhone, Google’s Nexus One, Amazon’s Kindle, the coming iPad or any of the other new delivery systems.

It all starts and ends with a story. That story needs to have a reason for being and told by someone who understands how to spin a good yarn with a beginning, middle and end. That’s what we attempt to do every day at Content That Works. It’s also the reason we are bullish on the news and information business for the foreseeable future.

Electronic delivery may be a threat, but it is also a significant, potentially addictive opportunity. Provided, of course, the content delivered is as compelling as the machine it is delivered on.

I sincerely doubt that my wife will have the same relationship with the iPad when it comes out as she has with her phone, no matter how appealing the big bright display and added capabilities. The iPad will glow bigger and brighter, but it won’t have the same easy portability or palm-satisfying convenience.

We will see.  In the meantime I have learned to find comfort in the soft blue glow I often see emanating from the other side of the bed. It tells me the future of great content is very bright indeed!

In essence the writer, whose name comes eerily close to my own, argues against cowardice and for bravery.  It seems to me the same advice could be given to our industry. As simplistic as it is to prescribe bravery in the face of adversity, acting on such advice is precisely what we need to do to revive our fortunes.

We must believe in what we do. If we believe we actually help readers, site visitors and the local businesses who entrust us with their advertising in print and online, we will succeed. If we fail to believe we continue to flail about wallowing in our own troubles with little hope of digging ourselves out of this mess.

The SFN and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers release a report this week with “the key objective to inspire newspaper executives to invest and innovate their business units and business practices . . .”

http://www.sfnblog.com/industry_trends/2010/01/sfn_report_overall_revenue_suffered_at_g.php

It’s a great objective, of course, but it is the second step in the process. The first step is to reconnect with our core purpose: informing, enlightening, entertaining and leading our communities in the belief that we do good in the process — good for those who support our endeavor, readers and advertisers alike.