Fishburn Hedges

01.04.2010

There’s been plenty of speculation since News International announced its decision to erect a pay wall around The Times and Sunday Times websites. 

There is no doubt it will reduce the readership of what will soon become sister sites, but the question on everyone’s lips is – how many readers will be left?

Capsizing audiences

News International’s announcement will have an immediate impact on the perceived value of the work we in the PR industry do. 

If you were to measure the value of The Times website simply by visitor numbers, which is how we are often tempted to see it, then the move to erect a pay wall looks quite depressing.

Nobody yet knows for sure, but Suzanne Bearne at New Media Age suggests the sites may retain 5 per cent of their traffic.  This would be a little over 60,000 of the current 1.2m readers stated by ABCe. 

Even worse, Nick Thomas at Forrester points out this means UK online readership of the paper could drop to just 20,000.  This looks bad.

In search of commercial business models

Could News International’s announcement set a precedent?  A recent study by Alastair Bruce of MSN UK shows that the media is trying many ways to find a commercially viable business model. 

Many media titles already use or are trialling pay walls, using mechanisms such as metered access, subscription or ‘freemium’ models (where some content is available for free).  What is evident is that all models negatively impact readership numbers.

Who, not how many?

But these are crude analyses.  Numbers are not everything.  Focusing on who the readers are has become even more important than before and we in the PR industry need to recognise this.

In the short term, we need to be clear about what is happening to the traditional staple of our work, the media, and to move away once and for all from reach as a proxy for PR value. 

Our work should be measured in relation to the bottom line, or to evidence of changed attitudes or behaviour.

Sell on “engagement”, not “reach”

In the longer term, we need to learn to sell ourselves differently, for example, to show that we deliver engagement, not reach. 

Tens of millions of ‘opportunities to see’ may sound impressive, but engaging a far smaller number of the right people in conversation is more important if that translates into valuable business or behavioural outcomes.

Know what you can measure, and what it means

The good news is that, while life is getting harder for anyone whose job is still to ‘get ink’, it has become far more exciting for those developing communications programmes that take into account the new environment. 

Fishburn Hedges recently worked with BT Global Services to reach a highly targeted group of global chief information officers by tapping into their interest in a major European IT event.

We showed that it is possible to use social media such as Twitter, YouTube and Slideshare to reach a niche business audience with serious business messages.  Not only did we reach over 2,000 of this niche group, they were based in 96 countries when they logged into the website we developed. 

Such numbers may not even have registered by some cruder PR measures, but we were able to show that not only did our audience turn up: they also spent time with us, downloaded our material, and interacted with us, all online.

Value is in reaching the right people

While media organisations such as News International tinker with their business models, many in PR will find it affects the perceived value of what we do. 

Some will use the opportunity to begin conversations with clients about how they measure their work. 

But if we want to add real value for clients, we need to show how these issues of measurement stem from more fundamental issues about how we reach audiences in the first place, and more importantly, how we engage them.