How to Sell Print and Online Together
I conduct emedia sales training sessions for many B2B and consumer enthusiast media companies and in my training agenda (PDF file) is a section on how print and online work together from a seller’s perspective. One of the key points I stress is that there is very little overlap between the online audience and the print audience of a given brand. The research I have done with various publications shows there is typically 15% overlap between the two … sometimes a bit more sometimes a bit less.
As a seller this is gold! It means that your customers need to buy both print and online to reach all of their potential customers and is powerful ammunition to help them see the wisdom of a cross-media buy. BTW, for that 15% audience that overlaps, you can always use the Cross Media Optimization Study (CMOS) done a couple years ago to show that a message that hits an audience in multiple media is more effective than a message in a single medium.
Very interestingly, I just saw the news that Nielsen//NetRatings and Mediamark Research completed a study (PDF file) that looked at 23 large-circulation magazines and compared their print and online audiences. What did they find? An average of 83% of their web audiences only viewed the content online. That means that there is only around a 17% cross-over between the online and print audiences. Seems remarkably close to the 15% average that I’ve discovered when doing print/online audience cross-over studies for individual publications.
BTW, this may sound simple, but the easiest way to find the cross-over between your online and print properties is to conduct an online survey of your web audience. Kill two birds with one stone: ask a few demographic questions (you need the online demos anyway) and while you’re at it, be sure ask how many also subscribe to the print publication. Then use that data to go sell not only emedia, but more print as well.
And please share what you discover about the crossover between your online and print properties … I’m curious to know if the results are similar!
13 Responses to “ “How to Sell Print and Online Together”
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Eric,
My editorial team was, once upon a time, worried about online undermining print readership. I ran some numbers and arrived at about a 15 percent potential overlap, which soothed their fears. I’m glad (relieved) to see my estimate, based on circ figures alone, was justified.
Jack
It also seems to vary from edeliverable to edeliverable.
Web sites are not newsletters are not events.
We did one study with enewsletters a while back that showed a very high overlap (we’re talking 80%+ plus) between enewsletters and circ file. However that seems to be falling and more accurate numbers might be in the 40% range.
And to extend that argument there are “active” and “inactive” subscribers in all media — magazines that go into the trash can, unread newsletters, etc. It just makes sense that if you’re going to try to reach a market you’d want repeated touches, even if those *were* the same people. Does any company ever run one and only one ad? No it takes multiple touches to make a purchase.
You’re right on, Frank. I didn’t have enough time to go into it, but I do believe there are three distinct audiences in *publishing*: print, web, and email. (Events are yet another different animal). Email and web are often quite different because many publishers have used their print circulation database to build their email newsletter database. Thus, while the deomgraphics are usually more close between email and print, the overlap is typically much higher as well. And on the web, the demographics may more different from print, but there is much less of an overlap.
But either way you slice it, it bodes well for sales teams as a reason for advertisers to buy both print and online.
Thanks for sharing your findings, Jack!
We conducted an in-depth usage study in April 2007 and 55% of the respondents (about 800) stated that they use both our magazine and our website which seems to contradict the low duplication rate you mention above.
Hi Heather. Thanks for the info. In your post, I see which publishing company you work for, but won’t make that public unless you want it to be. If you’re able to share, I’d be interested to know which publication specifically you did the study for. The number will certainly vary by property. For example, I would expect a company like CMP or TechTarget to have a very high overlap because of the nature of their audiences and the tight integration between print and online. Other companies like Globalspec or CNET are online only so there is no correlation at all. But for a good chunk of B2B and consumer enthusiast publishers who are still making the transition, it still seems to be much lower than 50%.
Eric -
From mIn’s Digital Media Report:
We’re not sure why it took so long for this research tidbit to emerge, but we finally have firm evidence that the Web is not a “companion” at all. It is a real driver of real new business and audience. A new methodology from MediaMark and Nielsen tries to combine the databases of the respective companies to ascertain how much of the online audience for magazine titles is unduplicated. While the sample includes only 23 of the top monthly circ books, the research finds that 83% of the visitors to a magazine Web site are accessing those brands almost exclusively online. The study showed a large range of Web-only brand use, from 65% to 96%. Men were more likely than women to engage a brand solely on the Web. Age, however, seemed to make little difference in the ratios.
- Rob
Eric,
You make an excellent point regarding the lack of duplication between print and online audiences. I am sure that your metrics will hold up in most cases.
On a broader note, I beleive that a smart salesperson who understands his/her products and is skilled at uncovering his/her cusomter’s needs can sell both print and emedia together effectively even if the audiences are 100% identical (at least in my industry!).
Readers use different media for different reasons (and to solve different problems).
On a high level, online readers are looking to answers to “the question/problem of the day” or simply for news. This is usually a very specific, seach driven event for the reader. The same generally holds true when subscribing to email newsletters. This is why emedia is such a great direct response vehicle (and it doesn’t hurt that it’s so easy to click!).
Readers use print to find out what’s coming (that they don’t need to know about yet, but will soon). They spend more time with a magazine (even compared to the stickiest of sites!). This makes print the perfect brand building/awareness generating vehicle (with the bonus of also being able to drive response!) that it is.
Anecdotally (but very consistently), I find that customers that run integrated campaigns see a lift in their overall ROI. In a quantifiable, lead driven world, brand drives response. Readers click on/respond to ads at a much higher rate from recognized/respected brands.
It takes a strong consultative salesperson to indentify which of your products to reccomend to a customer. The days of peddling print are behind us. But, print revenue can grow with emedia revenue when we identify customer needs and meet them strategically.
Good points, Jeff. Print and online do complement each other whether or not there is a large overlap in the audience. The cross-media optimization study done a few years ago helped prove that. I do, however, believe that online is just as powerful at building brand as it is at response. There are some interesting studies that will make a great topic for another blog entry. But your points are well-taken and you are right … the best sellers know how to position both print and online and demonstrate the value of both to their customers.
Hi Eric,
The study was done for Managing Automation magazine which reaches 90,800 print circ in the CXO, LOB job functional area in manufacturing. I would be more than happy to share the study with you. The tudy also shows that print is the #1 or #2 most used information resource among this audience along with peer-to-peer interaction and vendor sites/information. Media websites came in about 5th. We polled the audience across 4 stages of the buying continuum to give the information gathering process more depth.
The study absolutely supports the notion of an integrated marketing plan with a single media source. I say single b/c many marketers think integrated means buying ad words on Google, print pages with one magazine, online advertising with another, etc. As a marketer, it’s important to understand that to have maximum impact on a desired target audience, you need to understand their specific information gathering habits as they relate to a specific media source and then map the program accordingly. I know lead gen is the word du jour today but you can’t generate qualified, motivated leads if the buyer doesn’t know who you are which further supports the notion that print/online combination is key to marketing program success.
Using print subscribers as our base, we have the ability to analyze our enewsletter audience against our print subscribers to define both the unique enewsletter circulation and the unique magazine circulation, as well as the common magazine/enewsletter circulation they share. Now we’re working to do the same for our online audience vs. our print audience and enewsletter audience through analysis of our website registration data. The goal is to be able to promote the strength of both reader loyalty and the depth of total reach we provide through the market. Both win/win sides of the coin.
Eric,
I just found this research and it I hope it will help me with my analysis. I am trying to find out potential publisher online audience based on print audience. However, it looks that one more number is missing in this article to do this.
If we have average b2b overlap 17%, it means that 17% of online readers saw print version as well. Is it possible to determine what part of print audience also reads online version?
Having this dependency will help to estimate ROI for publisher when building an online magazine if publisher just has print version.
I appreciate any idea on this.
Sergii
[...] source of information for some market segments. And, research from various sources (Nielson, MRI, eMedia Strategist, and our own analysis of media kits and publication data over the years) repeatedly shows there’s [...]