While pulling together an editorial calendar for my next hyperlocal venture (read: watching the NCAA basketball tournament) last week, I received a tweet from a DC-area marketing company. They were holding an event in my old beat, and I assume the tweet was meant for me to retweet or somehow mention on my now-defunct hyperlocal site in Maryland.
I ignored the tweet. But it reminded me of a big challenge I faced with my former publication: When does announcing an event for the readers’ benefit become free advertising for the event’s organizer, and at what point does one cut off that event organizer and demand payment?
One can make the argument that any mention of such an event constitutes free advertising, and I resigned myself to doling it out in my publication’s popular event calendar. The fact was, there wasn’t much fun to be had in my beat, and I felt obligated to let readers know of any action in the hood.
Generally, I was happy to mention a charity fundraiser or an event that charged no admission and still provided free nosh. But there were many instances when a commercial venture (usually a restaurant) would ask to list a special performance or tasting menu at their venue. I omitted such events from my publication’s calendar and replied to the solicitor with “Care to buy an ad?” And then I wouldn’t hear from that event sponsor again until they had something else they wanted me to plug for free.
There was also one event organizer (owner of the neighborhood’s only bar) who ignored my sales pitches and plugged her bar’s events under the website’s comments section. At first I just deleted her unpaid advertisements and replaced them with a note to readers that “This comment has been deleted.” But after a while I began leaving notes that said, “Please pay for advertising.” We played this game for three years, and the bar owner never bought an ad.
(In fairness, there was no animosity between us. The bar owner and I knew it was just business, and she was always hospitable enough to invite me to closed-door events. Of course, subsequent coverage of those events only meant more free advertising for her business.)
Where does one draw the line? More importantly, how does one convince event organizers (and other potential sponsors) that paying a hyperlocal publisher for ad space is worth the money and effort?
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Chris Blakeley.
We don’t do a lot of business in advertising one-off events. We keep an events calendar too, and it’s just something that people expect – I would never NOT put something in the events calendar because it seems like free advertising. Exposure in the events calendar is nothing like exposure with a (likely) colorful ad on every page of the site. Ideally, you don’t have to “convince” people to advertise – you have a place they want and need to be. But if you do feel like you have to do “convincing,” then come up with an ad opportunity that’s irresistible – something high profile, something contextually placed. Did you have ads on your events page when you ran your old site?
I’m inclined to agree with your comment:
But there were times when local businesses (usually restaurants) asked me to list things beyond one-time events: weekly discounts, lunch buffets, whatever. I never published that stuff, but I’m curious if you (or anyone else) does. Maybe my head’s screwed on backwards?
You also wrote:
Sounds interesting! I’d appreciate more information on this.
I try to think about the bigger picture when it comes to monetizing my site in Seattle. It’s rare that a one-time event is a good driver for a long term advertiser and I don’t have the bandwidth to try to build my business around hustling every event organizer for a buck to promote their events. Instead, I try to think of the site — and all the ‘free’ coverage we do — as building a pile of attention. Attention is valuable and that pile is a better product to sell over the long run. That means you end up giving up all sorts of ‘free press.’ I do, however, have an additional advantage in that I can use event pitches as an opportunity to introduce local businesses and organizations to our self-serve tools. Our events calendar is open to the community so anybody can post to it. It’s a good gateway to our self-serve advertising tools. So, when I get a pitch, sometimes I’ll include it in our coverage but I *always* respond with an invitation to create an account and put our platform’s tools to work. Between the attention and the growth of community contributed content, I’m happy to get all the freebie pitches I can get.
My site runs on the same platform as Justin’s, so I have the same self-service event calendar and ads. However, your post makes me think perhaps I need an upfront, written policy for the event calendar/comments, so that if someone complains about me deleting them I can point to it.
Thanks, Justin and Kathleen, for your input. I actually don’t have a problem with posting one-time events, or even regularly occurring (ie, weekly) events sponsored by nonprofit organizations.
But my problem is with commercial venues (eg, restaurants, retailers) who want to post regularly scheduled “events” for free on the website. I’m just not comfortable with posting things like daily buffet prices, weekly drink specials, even less frequent discount dates on an event calendar for free.
It feels like commercial interests are taking advantage of what should be a community resource and possibly diluting its value.
Should I just suck it up?
It’s all a matter of having a policy. Since our calendar is editor-maintained, we don’t have a problem with people trying to post that sort of thing as events. But we do have the occasional problem in our forum with people trying to post free ads – taken care of by the fact we have a clear, posted policy. There are opportunities for businesses to post in our freebies/deals/sales section if what they are offering truly qualifies. But no standalone posts simply touting what their business does day in and day out – our ads are insanely cheap for the amount of people they reach, a lot less than most of these businesses would think nothing of paying for a backpage ad in a community paper, or a coupon in a mailer, etc., yet much more effective.
Re: contextual opportunities, we aren’t particularly scientific about it, but for example, we have a security system banner ad atop our Crime Watch page right now. That’s contextual! And if your events page allowed it, you COULD choose to sell short-term ads for events that wanted to buy higher-profile showcasing – like “listings free, add your flyer for $25/week” or something. I am making that up – nothing on our event calendar is a paid placement – but it’s one way to look at monetizing it if you so choose.
Forgive me for not thanking all of you sooner. I was without web for a little while.
Thanks to all for your great ideas. I especially like TR’s suggestion of having a policy. Sometimes, one just has to lay down the law!