On March 18, Inland Press responded once again to the newspaper industry’s interest in hyper local competition and the growth of Patch. They invited me to do an encore of the session that was originally presented in St. Petersburg, Florida a few weeks ago, at the Key Executives conference. See presentation below.

Attendees heard our message loud and clear. Run your website like your newspaper….profit must come first.

Key take-aways that seemed to resonate the most:

• Whoever acts as Web general manager, VP Interactive/content, editor, etc….must have their compensation tied to digital profitability and local market share….NOT page views or other soft metrics.
• CPM selling at the local level is no longer effective, and is only getting worse.
• Ad units and page layout need to be cleaner and more advertiser friendly. ( just like the newspaper )
• Reliance on 3rd party ad or remnant networks need to be reduced or eliminated.
• Newspapers need better awareness of the new, digital competitors like Groupon, Patch, Reach Local, etc.
• Patch may not be a newspaper killer, but they do execute local tactics that newspapers should adopt.
• Compensation, management structure and work flow must be re-aligned to embrace a digital first culture.
• Let’s stop talking about, or over-researching the problem. Let’s put sales & business 101 into action.
• Print is never going away. Yet digital will be the one tool that helps our industry the most.

INLAND PRESS: New Digital Competitors 3.18.11