Just to play devils advocate, here's the title for a recent book 
published by Wiley: _All Consumers Are Not Created Equal: The 
Differential Marketing Strategy for Brand Growth and Profit_ by Garth 
Hallberg.  (I haven't plowed through it yet.)

In short, business truisms like "20% of your customers generate 80% of 
the sales/profits" have some validity.

Although I think that text-web development is extremely important (I tend 
to use lynx most, because it's faster by and large), given the comments 
people have made on this thread about the difficulty of converting large 
amounts of print articles to HTML, not to mention enhancing these stories 
with hyperlinks and additional references to take advantage of the 
medium, it could be difficult to develop sites enhanced for all browsers, 
when certain browsers will provide the majority of hits.

Given the FIND/SVP study bandied about lately, it certainly seems 
reasonable to develop for online services' web browsers, not to mention 
Netscape, but how many browsers are too many?

All customers are not profitable and organizations that use market 
segmentation strategies tend to be more successful than those that don't.
If banks like Steve Bowbrick's client have a handle on the lifetime value 
of their customers, and the length of retention for a customer, maybe it 
makes sense to start out with a service oriented to students.  It's 
probably also worth it as a testbed, given the likelihood of critical 
mass with the student population, and the unlikelihood that other market 
segments may not be online yet in sufficient numbers to really focus on them.

What does this mean for online publications?  Good question.  I'm into 
them, but from the perspective of making money immediately (seems to be 
necessary  these days, given what's been happening at Times Mirror and 
Knight-Ridder among others), I would focus on business-to-business 
applications myself because businesses are accustomed to paying full 
price for information/news, unlike consumers.

- -----

On the question about adding hyperlinks to stories, I wholeheartedly
agree, but it does contravene what newspapers have done traditionally. 
Let me step back and explain.  For 4 years I worked for the second largest
consumer group in the U.S. and for 3 years, I managed the non-newsletter
publishing division.  The primary method to promote our new products
(books, posters, reports, slide charts, etc.) was to send out press
releases, and hoping that someone would write/do a story on the product --
a poster on Fast Food nutrition for example -- _that would include
purchase information_.  People would buy it then, we'd sell it, and
subsequently promote our newsletter to them. 

Many publications wouldn't do stories, either because the item wasn't
considered newsworthy or because putting in purchase information made it
advertising.  Well, I guess it was, but there was no way, given the
economics of advertising, that it ever made sense to advertise (except in
our own publication), especially because many of these items cost less
than $5.  Or, a lot of the time, if they did do a story, it would be
without contact information.  (Note: for items that cost $30 or more, it 
made sense to direct mail, and other forms of paid promotion.)

To give you an example, Marion Burros (NYT) once did a story about
nutrition newsletters, including the one published by my employer.  The
story ran on the NYT wire too, and it included contact information.  Based
on rough analysis, we figured we got about 1,000 full priced subscriptions
as a result of that story.  OTOH, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a great
profile of our organization, including some great photos (for a black and
white paper, the Inquirer has great reproduction) and it ran on the Knight
Ridder/Tribune wire too, so we learned it ran in the Orlando Sentinel, and
other places.  But this article didn't include contact information, and we
received almost no additional "white mail" subscriptions from PA/NJ,
Orlando, etc., unlike our experience with the NY Metro area with the other
story. 

As a heavy, heavy reader, I've always felt that newspapers should list
contact information when appropriate, because it makes the information
presented action-able, without a lot of extra effort on the part of the
reader.  Trade publications like _InfoWorld_ and _NetworkWorld_ do this as
a matter of course.  In newspapers and magazines, it's more likely to
occur to in feature sections like "Food" or "Health."  It's the rare 
person who digs and digs to find contact information if it isn't 
presented.  (Comparable to why businesses make it easy for customers to 
contact them via 800 numbers or business reply mail.)

The only newspapers that I've seen that list contact information as a
matter of course are the SF Examiner and SJ Mercury News in the U.S., and
the Financial Times of London.  Of course, you're limited in print with
what you can do, and we've/I've written in the past on this list about
providing links to organizations quoted in articles, etc., or to reports
editorialized about, etc. 

(I was pleasantly surprised recently when the Post ran a 3 part series on
"The Winner Take All Society" and they listed about 6-8 books in a sidebar
for further reading.  Or, Neal Pearce (?) of _National Journal_ writes a
column on state and local issues that is syndicated by the Post Writers 
Group [which the Post, to my regret, doesn't run].  He did a story that I 
happened upon about efforts in Philadelphia to redevelop large, barren 
urban tracts of land, and he listed the e-mail contact of the Penn. 
Horticulture Society which published one of the reports, and a phone 
number of a municipal office that produced another report.  [I sent 
e-mail to the Society and received the report within a week.  Haven't 
called the city office yet.])

(Relatedly, I am still kind of surprised that the Post and other 
newspapers list URLs "with abandon" when many newspapers wouldn't list 
contact information for reports, studies, etc., of public interest 
organizations, etc.)

I still remember a point Paul Jacobson made many months ago about how the
online newspaper of the Chicago Tribune has online annual reports of the
major Fortune 500 companies in "Chicagoland."  That's a useful additional 
capability that illustrates what can be done, as do links to archives, 
archival stories, etc.

This of course adds a whole lot of value to a newspaper subscription that 
seems to make it worth more than the $12/mo. that most newspapers charge 
for a subscription to the print product.  (WRT the interesting post from the 
Eastman Chemical librarian, I would say that a business should pay more 
for such a subscription than a non-businessperson, but that's another issue.)

My Netcom subscription (sans GUI-Web) costs $18/mo.  I've been pondering 
lately the thread about AT&T writing off their investment in Interchange 
and wondering about a bundled Internet account/newspaper service (yes, 
we've/I've written about this before).  Yes, people have written that 
individual newspapers aren't equipped to support the technical 
infrastructure, as well as to provide technical/customer support.  Maybe 
this is where NCN could come in, and set up a national support 
infrastructure comparable to what TCI will be setting up for the @home 
cable Internet service.  But I digress.

I think a $35/mo. charge for a super-newspaper in digital format only +
Internet access would be a good deal.  It would be a premium service for a
premium, not too outlandish price.  And, the price for the newspaper part
would be comparable to the print version, without the cost of printing and
distributing.  Of course, this scenario is complicated by (1) the
transition from print to digital, (2) the question of whether or not the
same financial structure for advertising will persist in the digital
environment, and (3) some legitimate questions about linking to other
sites, for money or not, and concerns about editorial integrity. 

I haven't checked out the FIND/SVP stuff other than the Mercury News
story, but other stuff I've read about their work in the magazine
_Marketing Tools_ asserts that up to 2/3 of the U.S. population isn't
interested in moving to a digital/online news, information, entertainment
"teleputer" environment.  So that's another issue.  (Of course, Xerox
didn't think there was a market for more than 50-100 copying machines
world-wide when they were developing the first model either.)


Richard Layman, Mgr., Business Development, and Research Producer
Computer Television Network, 825 6th St. NE, Washington, DC 20002-4325
- ---- 202-544-5722 ---- 202-543-6730 (fax) ---- rllayman@netcom.com
http://www.phoenix.net/~ctn



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