During the month of May, we conducted a study to see what percentage of the job classifieds in the daily papers also appeared on the daily newspaper web site. For every daily paper in the 8 markets we serve, we took a sufficiently large, random sample of jobs each week for 4 consecutive weeks in the following categories: General, Healthcare, Skilled Trade, Professional, Sales, and Transportation. And while we expected the percentage to be somewhat low, we were surprised at how ineffective the dailies were in cross-selling print and online postings to their employer advertisers. Across all 6 categories, the average percentage of print ads that also appeared on their respective daily paper’s web site was 62%, with a specific breakdown for each paper as follows:
71% – Minneapolis Star Tribune
70% – Omaha World Herald
67% – Fargo Forum
62% – Wichita Eagle
60% – Milwaukee Journal
60% – Sioux Falls Argus Leader
58% – St. Cloud Times
52% – Des Moines Register
No wonder the daily newspapers are struggling. Whether the low percentage is due to ineffective sales efforts, an inadequate value proposition, or some combination of the two, I have no idea. Perhaps those employers have simply found better recruitment advertising alternatives elsewhere on the web. But if a print publication can’t develop a decent online program and sell it to advertisers at a consistently high level, it’s going to struggle no matter what the competitive environment is.