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Wednesday 1st November: Adventures in sales
Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther.
The latest issue of The Grub Street Journal asks: Why won’t print just lie down and die? Answers from industry insiders were less about zombie print, more about making print work as a valuable part of the modern media mix.
Something we’ve discussed many times at Media Voices HQ is sales resource. Friends and rivals (just kidding…we have no rivals 😉) have suggested many times that a dedicated salesperson would be an investment that would deliver the returns to give us breathing room, and allow us to really double down on our mission to be the no-BS voice of media analysis.
But this from Brian Morrissey has given us some pause for thought, precisely because it articulates what we’ve said between ourselves many times: “The person making the product is going to be the best at selling it. I don’t care if they’re not a stereotypical sales person – this is usually a bonus, actually – but they will develop a different level of connection with clients.”
I’m not saying we’ll never get a dedicated salesperson. But there are some really interesting points in here which I think any solo and small publishers will find reassuring. It’s a kick in the butt to dedicate some more time to building those relationships too.
Should we (and other smaller outlets) look at getting a salesperson, or are we better building the relationship with sponsors ourselves? What would you do if you were us?
Microsoft’s news aggregation service published the automated poll next to a Guardian story about the death of a woman. Apart from the obviously inappropriate poll, there’s a really serious question here about labelling AI-generated content, and making it clear to readers exactly who ‘owns’ and publishes such content.
Jacob Donnelly has been bitten by the event bug! Seriously though, his newsletter is great and this is one event I’d have loved to be at, so I enjoyed reading his initial takeaways. Scott Gerber’s 10×10 advice to scale a community’s revenue by actually getting more focused is especially notable.
The UK advertising market is expected to grow 2.6% this year to £35.6bn, but tech platforms will account for all that revenue growth. It’s not a pretty picture for publishers; advertising on national newsbrands is estimated to be down 8% in the first half of this year, with magazine brands down 7.3% and regional newsbrands down 14%.
Since launching last month, we’ve kept topics and posts in our community forum restricted to only logged-in users. We’re asking our registered users if that’s something they’d like to maintain, or if opening them up would encourage more participation (posting will always require a login, but we can open viewing up to the public). If you’re a community member you can vote here, or reply to this email if you haven’t signed up but have a opinion.
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