The traditional daily newspaper is in trouble. Advertising revenues are in steep decline along with copy sales as the internet causes major disruption to print, one of the oldest forms of existing mass media. If however we as marketers grasped the value of online peer review coverage, would we pay for the privilege of outbound links from newspaper websites in our published PR articles?
A regional newspaper may for example have an ABC audited readership of around 70,000. On the other hand, the online version of the publication has around 1 million unique viewers each month. Tradition would have it that if you make the print version, you are pretty sure to make the online version for stories of reasonable resonance with the reader. This may not feel like you got double the bang for your buck, but consider a scenario whereby you got your embedded video along with an outbound link to a landing page dedicated to the article published in the online version of the newspaper. This is a small example of Online PR and the implications are massive.
Firstly having peer review publications linking to your website will help your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Next, your article will be stored and indexed by Google, Bing and Yahoo! meaning your PR article has perpetual use and relevance and can be found in the future. Third your PR is seen by people overseas and outside the normal distribution demographic of the print publication giving your extend reach. Finally you can track with total accuracy the number of inquiries created, videos watched and links clicked without the aid of third party services. In other words, you can see if you get Return On Investment (ROI) for your marketing spend.
With all this in mind, would you still prefer column inches to page impressions? Would you pay to have the privilege of having your video embedded in the article and would you pay to have an outbound link to your website from the newspaper website? So if the economic model of online display ads is not working for newspapers, could charging for enhanced online PR fill the gap?