Trade Publications That Use the Web Avoid the “Death Spiral”

Short post today, and one that heavily relies on something I saw elsewhere, which I find interesting and insightful enough that I really can’t add much with my own blather.

To entice you to click over, here’s a snip:

“B-to-b companies that have been working on their transition from print to digital are in good shape today,” says DeSilva + Phillips managing partner Reed Phillips. “I don’t think it’s time to panic, unless the company has had its head in the sand for the past three to five years about its digital strategy.”

For many tech publishers, moving online has been a necessary change.
“To oversimplify only a little, all [of this negative news] is a
manifestation of the increasing demand for online media—both from a
content consumption and marketing spend standpoint,” says one b-to-b
CEO who asked to remain anonymous. “Sometimes, probably most often,
this comes at the expense of print. The tech sector has been, and
probably will be, the most impacted, and most susceptible to pure
digital competition.”

OK, I realize that what this is driven by is the fact that the “early adopters,” i.e. the nerdocracy that is getting most of its news from the web now, is also the market segment that is most devoted to snarfing up the shiny new toy of the moment, and thus there is much advertiser love for putting messages between them and their buying decision on places like TechCrunch, Techdirt, Techmeme, Engadget and Gizmodo.

But long-term, the other trade pubs should definitely be paying attention to this. Already, before just about anybody makes a major buying decision, they go online and check the prices to make sure they aren’t getting completely skinned. If the price at Joe’s Local Widgets is +/- 10% of what they can get on eBay or Amazon or elsewhere, my guess is that they go ahead and pull the trigger, rather than taking the chance on eFraud, stolen credit card numbers, etc. Having a strong web presence means that you come up high in the Google results when your readers go looking for the real lowdown on how much a Fusion-Powered Turnip Twaddler really costs. Coming up high in the Google results means more traffic, and thus higher ad rates and more lovely green bits of paper to shower on Twaddler 2.0.

I’ll post a pretty picture to make up for all this text-heavy stuff in a bit.