How to regain our market leadership?
October 23, 2008 by tom.corbett
”Don’t ever think you are ahead… or that you’ve lost! You can change tomorrow! We’re in THE most opportunistic era of classified business,” believes Felix Erken of Junk Mail in South Africa.
Mr. Erken is a managing director at a South African classified advertising company.
He spoke at the INMA/IFRA Classified Advertising Seminar, organized in Prague on October 22-23, 2008.
Launched in 1992, Junk Mail Publishing started with nice publications like JobMail, CarsMail, Truck & Trailer, Plants… and became the leading classified medium in the country.
Junk Mail launched online services in 1997.
“We embraced the internet rather than ignored it,” Mr. Erken said and admitted: ”It cannibalised our print!”
”But we integrated services that were internet friendly: free ads placement, live ads. And we became the biggest weekly online classified provider in South Africa. Over 100,000 online classifieds every week and growing.”
Junk Mail launched mobile services in 1999.
”The first version was very simple but it was a great gimmick value, it transformed the image of Junk Mail.”
Technically, the mobile site was just a WAP version of its online product.
”But we actually earned some money with mobile through call centres, online subscriptions and SMS ads,” he said.
As Junk Mail’s managing director said, all was wonderful until two years ago. What happened?
Print reality check:
- Print circulation of their publications declined 8 % year on year.
- Advertising revenue showed lowest growth ever.
- More and more smaller competitors entered the market and grabbed some share from Junk Mail.
- Print cost increased as it did every year.
Internet reality check:
- More competitors than ever.
- Junk Mail started to loose its market share.
- Incredible market surge from nowhere by Gumtree - they are currently leading the way.
- Junk Mail ranked at the beginning of the year as number 283 in South Africa (used to be 10th).
Mobile reality check:
- Revenue model is slow.
- Mobile usage for online services still in it’s infancy.
- Networks share in revenue is exorbitant.
- More and more companies are launching their own services.
So what to do?
Mr. Erken shared his challenges with the audience: “What should we do to regain our market leadership? To win again what we lost to the new players?”
And he answered with eight points:
- Wake up and smell the coffee! History is for historians. Don’t look back!
- Structure our organisation better that allows focus on all spheres: print, online, mobile.
- Know what we’re up against. Stay informed, read, see, use the tools.
- Use the tchnology as our compeitiors do - SEO, live ads, free models
- Provide an offering that meets and beats the expectations.
- Be bold: challenge sacred cows. Print has to compete versus online and it has to fight versus mobile.
- Use our assets (THEY’RE HUGE) and invest them relevant to our market conditions for the future.
- Spread our portfolio. Use them or lose them.
- More new products
- Local based products
- More vertical products
- More media interdependent products
Tagged: advertising, classified advertising, IFRA, INMA, internet, mobile, seminar
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The advertising industry is alive and kicking! Print, online, mobile, they all have there challenges but they are all challenges that can be overcome. Competition in the advertising industry: its always been there and it will always be there. It’s not about the competition but how we deal with it. You simply need to better than the competition! Print doesn’t need to drop unless you except it will in which case it will! Find new interesting ways to attract the reader and focus on the things the market out there wants! They are the people who are reading/buying your product! If you’re print is dropping, look at what you don’t offer not at what you offer.
You cannot grow your market share if you don’t change and adapt to the needs of the people. You also don’t need to change your business/product concept to add new fresh ideas to attract NEW readers. Your readers of 10 years ago is getting older by the day and getting less. You need new readers and therefore you need to know what they want and then offer that to them. Once cannot grow your market share by simply expanding on products and services but you can do it by doing surveys to find out what you need to do to attract the new ones.
People are still reading and they always will! In South Africa in particular print have more life in it than most people think but the problem is that not enough is done to research the new generation Y so that we can know how to keep them interested in print. I can think of many reasons why some print mediums in South Africa is failing or close to failing which I would rather not discuss here.
If you’re online medium is not doing well or as well as it did then something must be wrong with your approach! How can one charge for an online service if all your competitors are doing the same but for free? How can you then expect to stay on top? See, once again, you need to be better than your competitor or at least on the same level in order to stay on top or to continue to grow your market share.
You cannot blame the competition or the growth in new products joining this industry for your failure to stay on top. New products and concepts come out every day but that is not new, is it? It’s always been like this! In good times you see a lot of new products and in bad time some again disappear. Accept the fact that it will always be like this and rather concentrate on gaining market share by understanding what your reader want and by giving it to them! Don’t do what you want or what you think the reader wants. Find out the needs of your readers or potential readers and give it to them!
Print is alive and if your copy sales are dropping then you are not on top of your game!
The advertising industry is alive and kicking! Print, online, mobile, they all have there challenges but they are all challenges that can be overcome. Competition in the advertising industry: its always been there and it will always be there. It’s not about the competition but how we deal with it. You simply need to better than the competition! Print doesn’t need to drop unless you except it will in which case it will! Find new interesting ways to attract the reader and focus on the things the market out there wants! They are the people who are reading/buying your product! If you’re print is dropping, look at what you don’t offer not at what you offer.
You cannot grow your market share if you don’t change and adapt to the needs of the people. You also don’t need to change your business/product concept to add new fresh ideas to attract NEW readers. Your readers of 10 years ago is getting older by the day and getting less. You need new readers and therefore you need to know what they want and then offer that to them. Once cannot grow your market share by simply expanding on products and services but you can do it by doing surveys to find out what you need to do to attract the new ones.
People are still reading and they always will! In South Africa in particular print have more life in it than most people think but the problem is that not enough is done to research the new generation Y so that we can know how to keep them interested in print. I can think of many reasons why some print mediums in South Africa is failing or close to failing which I would rather not discuss here.
If you’re online medium is not doing well or as well as it did then something must be wrong with your approach! How can one charge for an online service if all your competitors are doing the same but for free? How can you then expect to stay on top? See, once again, you need to be better than your competitor or at least on the same level in order to stay on top or to continue to grow your market share.
You cannot blame the competition or the growth in new products joining this industry for your failure to stay on top. New products and concepts come out every day but that is not new, is it? It’s always been like this! In good times you see a lot of new products and in bad time some again disappear. Accept the fact that it will always be like this and rather concentrate on gaining market share by understanding what your reader want and by giving it to them! Don’t do what you want or what you think the reader wants. Find out the needs of your readers or potential readers and give it to them!
Print is alive and if your copy sales are dropping then you are not on top of your game!