Matt Miller, Chief Revenue Officer of The Observer-Reporter discusses the transformation of his advertising division to drive new revenue using data, modeling, segmentation and targeting.

1. THE FUTURE
OF ADVERTISING
(in 20 minutes or preferably much less)

2. Observer Publishing Company
Our Market:
Pittsburgh DMA
20 miles south of the city
2nd oldest population in the country (Dade
County, FL)
 Same people
 Just “winter” in Miami
#1 newspaper reading city in the country
 See “old people” bullets above
Two metro newspapers in PGH
 Post-Gazette
 Trib Total Media

3. Observer Publishing Company
Company Overview:
Independent, family-owned company
Daily newspaper started in 1808
Same family has owned since 1908
Recently “hired” 5th generation family member
Newspapers
 Paid daily newspaper – 30k circ.
 Free weekly newspaper – 30k circ.
Websites
Full compliment of niche publications

4. Observer Publishing Company
Revenue Diversification:
Reimagine Main Street
 Digital agency
 Launched January 2013
 On track for $1.4m in 2016
Event Marketing Division
 Launched November 2014
 On track for $300k in 2016

5. Our original mission statement:
Solving
problems with
data none of us
has any idea
what to do
with…

6. Getting Started
Identify People
◦ No new hires
◦ Just added to current staffers
◦ Top level managers
spearheading
◦ “Techie” to put together proposals
◦ Launched with rep leadership
team

7. Getting Started
Training
◦ A bit of a learning curve
◦ Lots of self-training to get up and
running
◦ Leap uses Tableau

8. Data
Identify Data Sources
◦ Acxiom (through Leap)
◦ Subscribers
◦ Website registrations
◦ Events
◦ Contests
◦ Purchased lists (ex. people that filed bankruptcy)
◦ Google Analytics
◦ Etc.
Warehouse data
◦ All our data was in silos
◦ Imported it all into Leap’s MAXX database

9. Audience Engagement Blueprint
Goals
Goal 1: Define market
Goal 2: Identify and model customers
Goal 3: Use modeling to target prospects
that “look like” your customers
Goal 4: Plan, measure, analyze & repeat

16. Audience Composition
Your Customers:
Age Range: 70% are 45+
Home Owner: 85% Own
Residence Length: 52% lived in their
homes 11+ years
Working Women: 38%
Our Subscribers:
Age Range: 80% are 45+
Our subscribers are 114% more likely to fall in this age range
Home Owner: 95% Own
Residence Length: 65% lived in their
homes 11+ years
Our subscribers are 124% more likely to own their home 11+ years
Working Women: 47%
A comparison of your customers versus our subscribers

17. Multi-Media Strategy Recommendation
1. More than 60 percent of your donors are our subscribers
o “Shotgun” marketing
o The first layer of your campaign should be print media
2. Your customers are 150.7% more likely to respond to direct mail
o “Rifle” marketing
o Scrub your customer list against our subscriber list
o Create a “look-a-like” list of prospects in our market
o Utilize direct mail to target households you are not reaching through your
print media campaign
3. Layer in a tiered digital advertising campaign
o “Shotgun & Rifle” marketing
o Focus on your target market and you customer profile

18. W
O
R
K
F
L
O
W

19. Lessons Learned
o Steep learning curve
o Difficult to identify and bring in
quality prospects
o Educate at beginning and sell at end
of presentation
o Dumb it way down
o With a solid direct mail strategy
there’s business to be won
o Customers want to work with us

20. THE
END