Today I was told that an industrial trade publication we had selected to use for a client of ours was not going to run a print edition of their publication. Instead they were offering online ads on their website as well as e-newsletter sponsorship in lieu of print advertising. The ad rep positioned this as great opportunity considering that you could reach 40,000 prospects each month at a fraction of the cost of print. And they could prove these numbers with analytical data that would substantiate his claim (it did). He also went on to state that the future is now for trade publications to go digital as more and more professionals glean their news from the web.

I must say they have an excellent web presence, lots of fresh content, good articles and a clear argument for being positioned as innovators with an electronic only publication. It appears to be working for PC Magazine who just went all digital, why not for them?

 Just one problem- there is currently no advertisers on their site.

It is safe to say that trade media has taken a beating over the last few years with many advertisers flocking online or investing their marketing dollars to bolster their web presence, ramping up search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Even consumer media such as newsmagazines and newspapers have experienced significant shrink in ad revenue. Many publications, although some what begrudgingly, have read the writing on the wall and have now made the shift to augment their print advertising revenue with online ad revenue by building dynamic web sites. Web analytics are replacing BPA audits as a means of measuring readership and impression potential.

My conviction is that shrinking ad sales is not a result of a publication’s lack of editorial content or feature quality- rather it is the revolution of search engine development that has empowered readers to quickly source information online with an unlimited potential of sources. Why flip through a magazine scanning for relevant copy when you can type in a few phrases and in a flash you have hundreds of sources to explore?

Verticle publications online and in print are still very relevant despite the convenience of search engines. They provide, for the most part, objective industry news content and police advertorial to keep the content fresh, relevant and intelligent. Search engines have yet to filter advertorial from editorial (hmmm… maybe I just thought of the next billion dollar web application) so we still have a need for discerning editors. But what separates strong trade publications from weak?

Dare I say it is the verticals they target? Money talks as they say and in the world of media this couldn’t be truer. Publications with a large stable of advertisers thrive while those with little advertisers die. And you don’t need to be a horizontal pub to thrive. Many successful publications can have a very distinct market vertical. Next time you are in the drug store just look at the number of publications and the thickness of these books that are all about women’s hairstyles. Hairstyles! Okay, maybe not the best example since this is a B2B blog, consider food processing, pharmaceuticals or agriculture publications. Generally these books have steady advertisers so much so that their market is crowded with national, regional and local trade publications targeting B2B advertisers and growing their sales.

Not all trade publications have the good fortune of serving growing markets. Many metal working, chemical and polymer publications are hurting for advertisers, so much more so in the economic downturn we are in. For some they are closing shop or consolidating books. For others, they are turning to a website and shutting down the printing presses. Unfortunately, cheaper and most likely more effective and measurable advertising mediums offered online do not necessarily equal a good business model. Why? Because these vertical trade publications that have had an uphill challenge to solicit advertisers in a strong economy have an even tougher time getting advertisers in a weak one. And the advertisers they are targeting are typically not looking to go online because their own website is outdated and irrelevant.

Does this mean that a publication forced to go online because of lack of print ad revenue, only to find it could not carry what advertisers they had left to their website, is defunct and irrelevant? Maybe. Honestly most vertical trade publications have a strong readership, valuable circulation with good editorial oversight and relevant content. Unfortunately they may be serving well established verticals with few competitors who feel as though they don’t need marketing to survive. Generally these are the companies who have the same website they built in 1996 with the animated gif of the American flag and solve economic strains by decreasing their workforce instead of trying to increase their sales. However loyal their readers may be and even if they have award winning editorial and brilliant staff reporters, trade publications are not non-profit charities. (Okay, some may be nonprofit associations but that is beside the point.) Ultimately if ad revenue doesn’t come in and you can’t afford to pay your staff then yes, a publication will suffer in its quantity and quality of content and in turn its relevance will be diminished or lost.

So who will save trade publications serving market verticals who, ahem, don’t market? The responsibility is on us –innovative B2B marketers of the world- to make sure our vertical websites and publications don’t die. As much as you may despise the incessant badgering of ad reps, vertical publications keep our marketing costs down and provide targeted audiences to focus our campaign efforts on. Without vertical publications, companies that are already weary of marketing and its return would be unwillingly to front the costs to market in a large publication only to reach a small percentage of readers that serve as ideal prospects.

Print advertising, PR and online marketing works. And in judging a publication’s viability in reaching your market, it is not who its advertisers are, rather it is the content and circulation/visitors that is the true test of a publication’s effectiveness so as long as it is bringing in the leads. So what if we are one of five advertisers that keep the lights on, we have a captive audience. Just because many are slashing budgets and hunkering down to ride out the storm we are in the business of helping our clients/company grow.

As for that print publication, now only available online with currently no advertisers… the numbers are right, the readership is strong, we’ll try it out for three months and see what the leads show us. So what if we are one of one advertisers keeping the lights on…

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