From the Editor: Your Opportunity: Solve Problems
After a year that saw many publishing companies pulling their publications, brands and employees out of the tar pits, the fourth quarter has brought some of the optimism to a (hopefully temporary) halt. Marketing companies have either already spent their annual budgets or are tightening their purse strings in anticipation of a possible double-dip recession.
Publishers, however, are not standing still awaiting the economic outcome. As you'll see in our cover story, "20 Revenue-Generating Ideas," many publishers are launching new products to boost their bottom lines, from variations on the traditional trade show to research and data services, among many others, with print brands standing strong as the foundation.
Another trend—among both b-to-b and consumer publishers—is the emergence of publisher-driven marketing services solutions, which often includes custom publishing, but has spilled over into all areas of marketing, including social media and other digital areas. These services create long-term commitments (and spending), as marketers look to publishers to solve their personal marketing challenges and those of their companies. To give just a few examples:
• Last year, UBM launched DeusM, a "Marketing-as-a-Service" company targeting social media. It's based on a "Community in a Box" (CiaB), and has been used to build award-winning communities, such as Internet Evolution (sponsored by IBM) and Enterprise Efficiency (sponsored by Dell). There's more to the service, but this should give you the basic idea of what UBM is doing to serve its clients' "pain points."
• Source Interlink Media (SIM) acquired in May the digital marketing studio Mind Over Eye to enable SIM to serve its clients as a full-service creative agency, providing cutting-edge marketing and creative services for TV, Internet, mobile and more.
• In March, Penton acquired online marketing firm EyeTraffic Media, to offer expanded marketing services, including lead-generation. Penton announced the acquisition following an Outsell Advertising and Marketing Study that found 82 percent of b-to-b marketers expected to use publishers for marketing services this year, up from 72 percent in 2010.
