It’s old news to say that many newspapers are struggling to bolster flagging ad revenues. Especially with circulation numbers dropping, it’s hard to compete with direct mail for the marketing dollars of local businesses. Your ad team assuredly has many viable reasons they can recite to a prospective advertiser about why to use your paper as an ad vehicle, but how many of your ad reps are talking to the prospect in terms he or she can understand?

When competing with direct mailers, the first thing you need to do is understand what the prospect is hearing from the competition. If the business is already used to talking about postage rates, saturation mailings, single-family dwelling units and other direct mailing terms, your team needs to update its lexicon. While this step is necessary, it may not be sufficient to win that business because it is still just words.

When your competition (the bulk mailers) talk to local businesses, they emphasize “saturation mailings” – maximizing the ad distribution while getting the best “per person” cost. More and more direct mailers are using maps to display saturation mailing areas. Because the USPS offers steep discounts for saturating a mail carrier’s route, maps showing streets and postal carrier routes with delivery counts lets businesses see where their money is going. Plus, postal carrier routes approximate neighborhoods, so the same map lets them target mailings to increase response and minimize expense.

Newspapers can learn from the “postal carrier route map” strategy to help your potential advertisers decide what parts of your markets they want to reach. Then calculate the “per person” costs, which should reflect favorably compared to direct mail because direct mail has printing and postage costs you don’t have to charge.

While basic carrier route maps are inexpensive and a clear communication tools, even more valuable are maps that reflect your subscription base. These maps have additional value: your circulation department can see where they need to focus their campaigns. For example, imagine a map that shows all the surrounding carrier routes, colored by your circulation counts, that your sales team can use to prove that an ad placed with you is a better value than an ad placed with a direct mailer. Believe me, the direct mailer is using a similar map and argument to win the business, and your sales reps probably have nothing to counter with.

If you are a small to mid-sized newspaper that is seeing ad revenue slip away to the local direct marketing firms, you should consider working with a mapping firm to help you present the strengths of your advertising reach. Make sure you find a firm that understands direct marketing – that way you can leverage not just their cartographic skill but also their insight into how your competition (the direct mail industry) does business. In particular, companies that specialize in carrier route maps are probably your best resource. You also want to speak with firms that work on a service basis rather than those that offer a “canned” solution – you’ll need to work with them to develop the best approach to your challenges.