Focus on opportunities amid recession

The economy is slumping, jobs are being cut by the tens of thousands almost daily, home values have plummeted and signs of the recession are being felt by everyone, including in our newsrooms and at the bottom line.

We’ve been feeling it here, although it has been a slow, but steady decline for the last two years. Living in a resort community that’s within driving distance of southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area, we are always a little insulated in downturns in the economy. They hurt, but often we can ride them out. No longer. Advertising sales are down and we’re feeling the pinch to cut the meat (we starting cutting the fat a year ago). We’ve tightened up our editorial content, meaning fewer pages and a reduced print bill. While we haven’t cut any essentials, we’ve cut some of the columnists and extra features we would have published in years past. The challenge has been how to do more with less.

I have to admit that the last year has been frustrating for me. I have a great job at a wonderful publication, but I’m an idea person. I’m always thinking of new ways to improve the content, delivery, production, design, marketing, advertising, you name it, I have an idea for it. We’re faring better than others are in our market, but the funds for the extras have vanished.

I’ve thrown aside the frustration and found renewed enthusiasm, of late, and now look at the economy we find ourselves in as an opportunity.

Focus on the core
First and foremost, keep the focus on the customer, whether it’s the reader or advertiser. We’ve always been known for our customer service, and we can’t lose that focus during tough times. Be diligent to spot errors whether it’s in a story or an ad, helpful and friendly service is something that never goes out of style and work to produce the best product within your means.

Trim the Fat
Like I mentioned earlier, we’ve cut the fat and sliced into the meat, but we haven’t sacrificed the core publication. Yes, we trimmed some editorial features, but we’ve worked on improving those things that work.
For many years, we’ve operated on a wide column format, which is hard to read, but also limits our design and advertising sizes. Needing to fit more into fewer pages while offering more options to advertisers, we’re now redesigning our look. Well, we’re really tweaking the design. We’re working on fonts, column sizes, use of pages and other avenues to offer more without sacrificing our editorial content (of course, we’re doing it in-house). We hope to debut the design soon, which will open the editorial space (something I’m ecstatic about) while keeping a tight reign on our page count.

Market Your Product
One thing we’re also trying to improve is our marketing in the community, done of course with little funds. We’re been able to sponsor many local and regional events in exchange for advertising and editorial coverage (something we would do anyway). No money changes hands, but our name is at community events and fundraisers.

We’ve also wanted to do a readership survey, and have been looking for innovative ways to make it happen. And, the Internet provides. There are many companies offering inexpensive e-marketing solutions like readership surveys, e-newsletters and other tools to reach customers and readers.

We’ll be using on of these services to conduct our readership survey. A key to surveys I learned a long time ago is to offer an incentive, which we’ll do with ski lift tickets and other coveted prizes. And, we’ll be starting an e-newsletter that we can use for our readers and/or advertisers to promote our editions, special features and advertising specials, among other ideas.

Revisit Old Successes, Failures
More on the advertising side, we’re looking at sectors that we’ve been strong in that have dropped off and looking at what just doesn’t work. By tweaking old ideas, we’ve trying to reinvigorate ad revenues from display to classifieds. Working at a small publication, everyone’s input is essential and I know I’ve gotten fantastic editorial ideas from people outside the newsroom. I think the same is true for those in editorial to offer ideas for other areas from advertising and design to marketing and circulation.

I don’t see an end in sight to our economic problems in the near future, so I’m all for holding onto what works, tossing what doesn’t and looking for solutions to bring us through this storm.