If you have not yet surveyed your advertisers to find out what they want, here are the results from a 2009 Palm Beach Post survey, summarized by Chuck Gerardi, Vice President of Revenue Development. These ten needs were used as guiding principles to develop the Innovative Client Solutions department (see a case study on their creative team here ):
1) Relationships are great, but they’re not enough any more.
2) We like you, and we want you to succeed; but you need to change the way you do business with us.
3) We like your products line-up…don’t waste your time developing more of them.
4) And stop pushing products at us…take the time to understand what I need; ask more questions.
5) We want to see MORE of you; but those visits need to be quality visits, not drive-bys.
6) We want a single point of contact; but you need to understand your assets.
7) We want creative, customized solutions…not more of the same old stuff.
8) Please stop writing about the woes of your industry.
9) Show us the way on Digital…we know we need to be there, but we don’t know how.
10) We want consistency in pricing and rates (i.e.- I want to know I’m getting the same deal as my competitors).
The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and MediaExecsTech, developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine, to showcases perspectives from around the world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.