Do You Really Need the Trade Media?

By Bill Fahrenwald, Executive Director, James Street Associates

Do you really need the trade media?
…and, is traditional media still relevant?

With social media on the rise you are probably already pulling visitors to your website with case studies, white papers and other gated content. Plus, there’s posting on LinkedIn and other social media, coordinating strategies and tactics with sales, and tackling the 101 other priorities that fill your day.

With all the effort going into attracting visitors, does the trade media fit into your priorities?

There are a number of reasons why the media continues to play an important role in your company’s success. Perhaps most important is its credibility.

We’ve all seen how very effective social media can be in spreading political messages, rumors, and “fake news.” But in the business-to-business climate, there is a need for truly substantive communications.

Results from the respected University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center speak to the issue of trust in communications. Last year’s study was conducted with about 1,000 adults, and is subject to a 3.7 point margin of error at the 95 percent confidence level.

The study found that information in magazines is trusted by 81 percent of adults. In contrast, social media is trusted by 53 percent and blogs by 55 percent.

For another perspective on the credibility of trade media, look at Domain Authority.

Domain Authority is a 1-to-100 scoring system developed by Moz Analytics that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. It is calculated by using a number of link metrics including linking root domains, number of total links, MozRank, MozTrust, etc

We ran some related internet sources through the online Moz research tool and found that some mid-size 3PL sites had rankings in the mid-30s; and that some of the leading trade publications had scores in mid-50s to mid-60s. The Wall Street Journal, by the way, had a score of 96.

So, if you want to establish thought leadership in the market, make sure your message is in the most credible media, which are magazines. And hey, the Wall St. Journal would be great, but most of your efforts won’t land there.

Blogs and social media play a critical role, course. But, that should not be at the expense of reaching the trade media audience.

As part of our analysis of best practices in media relations, we’re going to be discussing this subject and others on March 31 during TMSA’s “Pulse of the Media” webinar. Join us!