AT THE NEMOA FALL CONFERENCE LAST MONTH, one of the sessions described five ways that marketers fail their companies. Two really resonated with me: that merchants are obsessed with their print catalogs, and that they don’t develop enough web-only business and products.
It pains me to admit it, but print magazines often suffer from the same failures. We’ve long struggled with what content to put online and when, and what, if anything, we should “save” for print.
During the NEMOA session, speaker Bill LaPierre of Infogroup-Direct Media Millard noted that merchants tend to think, “If it’s not good enough for the catalog, why put it on the web?”
The old line of thinking was that the web was for overstocks — a great way to get rid of what didn’t sell in the catalog. It wasn’t much different in magazine publishing: Have an interview or Q&A that won’t all fit in print? Stick the overmatter online.
Considering the web was initially viewed as a receptacle for overages — the vast unsold or unedited — it’s no surprise that “web-only” used to be code for “not good enough for print.” But times have changed, and catalogers — and publishers — need to change with them.
The way people shop and absorb content has evolved with the technological advances of recent years. Thanks to video, improved site search and filtering, social media, and customer reviews/reader comments, there are tremendous benefits to shopping and perusing content online vs. print.
Do you necessarily need to embrace every online bell and whistle? No. As another NEMOA speaker, Lauren Freedman of the E-tailing Group, pointed out, the answer to what works in retail is often “It depends.” While you shouldn’t be afraid to test new things, you have to know your customer and understand what’s right for your business.
Many catalogers in the past year or so have made great strides in how they present goods online and integrate web elements into print. (Publishers, I’d say, have made smaller strides, but we’re working on it.)
I don’t see the print medium going away, at least not anytime soon — there’s still plenty of content people prefer to consume in print. But it’s true we could probably stand to be less obsessed with print.
We may not have much choice, however, if postage and paper prices keep going up. And if the U.S. Postal Service’s proposed 5% exigent rate hike is approved this month, paving the way for future exigent rate increases, print is really going to be in trouble.