Classified sections have traditionally been ignored by editorial
teams. Those pages and pages (and pages) of lovely line advertising and
display classifieds were rivers of gold that poured into newspaper
companies without any need of editorial love. Motoring, real estate,
jobs — while our readers may have enjoyed perusing the marketplace, to
most news teams they were a distraction to the main game of politics,
sport, crime, city news, and even the arts, where the real journalism
happened.
But during the past 10 years, the drying up of the classified
revenue stream has forced editorial teams to rethink — and not only
because the dramatic revenue drops have required a tightening of the
belt across every editorial department. Increasingly, editorial teams
have started to realise jobs, homes, and cars are vital content areas
that readers are hungry for information about. And if we no longer have
the volume of advertising to fulfill that appetite, then there is a role
for engaging journalism in that space.
But “classified journalism” can be difficult for mainstream
journalists raised on a diet of hard news to embrace. It requires a
commercial understanding and a highly developed set of communication and
social skills. Across my career, I’ve built classified sections up from
scratch and repositioned languishing sections with directionless
content for both Fairfax Media and now News Ltd. in Australia.
This is what I have learned:
1. Understand that search works best online.
Classifieds have traditionally been the cheap way to advertise in
any newspaper. Sure, they made heaps of money, but that was because a
lot of drips filled the bucket pretty quickly. Every newspaper I have
ever worked for has assumed that when the ads started to move to online,
they did so because our rates were too high. If we were cheaper,
advertisers would return. Now sure, at some newspapers, we’ve
historically received excellent yields, and there’s been room for price
reductions. But what every classified section needs to understand is
that classifieds are about a marketplace, searching for what you need,
or finding a bargain amongst a sea of opportunity.
Here’s the thing. Search is just easier online. You type in a word,
and suddenly you no longer have to scour a newspaper for hours. The
thing you are looking for pops up in seconds. You can execute the entire
transaction in less time than it used to take to look up the phone
number.
It doesn’t matter how cheap we make the old hunter-and-gatherer
model; print is just not as useful as online. So we need to stop crying
and get over it. You will need to build your classified search online,
while your print product focuses on other deliveries — such as premium
offers and quality editorial content.
2. Understand the changing relationship dynamic with your remaining advertisers.
In the old days, the sheer volume of classified ads made editorial
teams immune from their opinions about the quality of what we wrote. If
we reviewed a car and said it was a lemon, it may have offended a
handful of auto traders. But if they pulled their ads, who cared? There
were plenty more where they came from.
Nowdays we don’t have such luxury. This is one of the key reasons
most journalists detest classified sections or execute bad editorial
strategies in the space.
Fewer advertisers now have greater power in the print classified
sections of newspapers today. But this is not an excuse to turn the
section into trade marketing advertorial that is a turnoff for readers.
Rather your editorial team needs to have a robust commercial
understanding and be happy to get out and meet advertisers and hear
their views.
Strong editorial policies promoting balance and fairness are vital
in any commercially minded section to ensure the newspaper can continue
to deliver true and accurate reporting. But the businesses that support
the section must also feel confident their concerns will be heard and
they won’t be sideswiped unexpectedly.
3. Reinvent your category delivery.
Because classified sections have had such a commercial history,
when newspapers have decided to execute any editorial in the space,
we’ve traditionally done it in a really awful way.
From an editorial perspective, it is common to take the view that
advertisers are annoying and we’ll do anything to shut them up. As such,
we’ve just written the type of stories that advertisers have said they
want and loathed the result of advertorial. In such a space, why use
your good people? To make sure we’ve delivered as cheaply as possible,
we’ve traditionally put in the junior reporters or the badly behaved
staff, then grudgingly dealt with the criticisms from advertisers on the
basis that advertisers are never happy.
In repositioning your classified section, it is absolutely vital
you talk to your advertisers and find out what they think they want in
their section. They are a vital part of the focus group research you
should do and often have good ideas.
But all of those ideas should be matched to a rigorous editorial
delivery. What do our readers really want to know about this category?
What are the content styles that engage them? What deliveries do we do
in other feature sections that we could apply here? Who are the staff
members who are best placed to deliver that kind of reporting?
When you reinvent your classified category, ask yourself, “What
kind of stories do readers want to know?” and “How can we make this
space a compelling part of the newspaper?”
4. Give readers and advertisers a reason to go to the section.
I was once asked to reposition a motoring classified section that
had two separate print sections, one on a Friday and one on a Saturday.
The reason was clever from a sales point of view. By making it extremely
attractive for advertisers to book a double buy, we were able to make
significantly more money.
Editorially, however, the sections were identical. They did
reviews. After all, that was what everyone wanted to read about cars,
right? Wrong.
When we spoke to advertisers, they complained bitterly that they
were being asked to buy in two sections that attracted the same readers
on consecutive days, while the newspaper did nothing to attract the
audience they were really after.
We did an analysis of our audiences on the Friday and Saturday and
found the Friday audience had a higher female readership. As such, we
repositioned the Friday section to make it a “lighter” version about
motoring with more lifestyle content, focusing more on car appearance,
safety, and the joy of driving. We expanded the Saturday section to
cover more reviews and “under the bonnet” information for the rev heads
and motoring enthusiasts. The result was expanded readership and a
stronger advertising proposition.
5. Replace ads with compelling information.
Traditional editorial deliveries around classifieds have tended to
focus on the fact that they are markets in which a product is sold. As
such, the stories have focused on what’s for sale and what are its
features. That’s not interesting to a reader — not every day or every
week — unless they are in the mood to buy right then.
But markets are interesting to readers generally. Look at how
obsessed we are at the moment with stock markets and finance. In these
cases, it is not that a stock is for sale or how much it sold for —
although that is part of the mix. It is how the volume of those
transactions move, the trends they create, and how you get involved and
succeed in that market. This is the sort of information readers really
want to know and which an online search site can never reproduce. This
is the sort of information that will bring readers to a section
regularly, not just when they are in buying mode.
Data journalism is the next big thing in reporting, and classified
sections can and should be at the forefront of it. News deliveries based
on what your market is doing are not just good sectional spreads; they
are great early-book reads.
Make sure your classified section is a mix of product information,
market data and trends, advice and guidance. Your sections will not just
survive. They will thrive as they differentiate themselves strongly
from online.
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