“In a world where competition seems endless and there seems to be a new option for connecting buyers and sellers almost daily, Bluefin gives us a tool to offer our customers that is easy, works wonderfully well, and gets results.”

Pat Taylor, Advertising Director, The Pilot

OVERVIEW

The Pilot is an independent tri-weekly newspaper (circulation 14,500) in the Sandhills area of North Carolina. With a strong presence in the community, they are a voice that is respected and looked to for local news and information.  

“We work very hard to maintain this position by presenting a strong product with every issue,” said Patrick Taylor, Ad Director for The Pilot. “That is our greatest competitive advantage.  We also have a strong editorial web site, a great magazine, a phone book and a book store.  Our goals are to produce great products, connect buyers and sellers

to enhance local commerce, and work to make a profit from those efforts.  We have built that strong stable of products to enhance results and spread risk and potential reward.  As we approach our 100th birthday in a couple of years, we face the same challenges that every other newspaper and traditional media faces. Time pressures, brought on by ever increasing demands for people’s attention, make Web self-serve options more popular than ever.”

THE CHALLENGE

Needing to transition to a multi-platform classifieds strategy, in addition to a great print offering, The Pilot strives to become the online destination of choice for relevant, local classified content, as well as to provide advertisers with new ways to place ads online 24×7.

”We had a legacy approach to the self-serve classified placement, which just wasn’t robust enough and required too much hand holding”, Taylor said. “As with the installation of any new web platform, there are some expected issues with getting systems to work seamlessly together.  While this transition was not without some glitches at the beginning, they were fewer than with other installs I have experienced.  I think that’s because Bluefin put together a package that is compatible with a wide range of software environments, and the fact that every time we brought up something that needed to be done, it was finished quickly and satisfactorily.  With each “fix” we solved the problem and put it behind us.  There was very little rework required in the process.”

THE SOLUTION

The Pilot chose Bluefin to grow their classifieds presence, and provide a great user experience for the advertisers and readers alike. 

“Bluefin allows our readers to create and place advertising on their schedule, without the limitations of having to do business on our schedule”, said Taylor.  “Our classified placements via Bluefin’s s web application have grown from 0% to almost 10% of total classified revenue in a short period of time, which proves its value to our readers.  I also thought it would work because it is robust without being overly complicated.  I was not interested in buying a lot of built-in capacity that we didn’t need or wouldn’t use.  While we are a relatively small paper, Bluefin capably suits our needs in every respect.”

THE BENEFITS

In addition to a superior online classified and self-service place ad platform, The Pilot also acquired a strong technology partner for the long-term. 

“With Bluefin, it has all worked seamlessly, and that doesn’t always happen”, said Taylor.  “That’s a benefit from the start.  We have had a steady increase in use, which reduces the time from filling phone orders and enables classified reps to do more selling.  That’s a benefit.  We can do more selling effort with the same staff.  The cost-benefit is a positive.”

“I liked the people at Bluefin right from the start, and continue to believe that they are dedicated to doing things right and treating customers as their number one priority.  Upon seeing a demonstration, among several at a conference, I felt like Bluefin was the best fit for our needs.”

IN SUMMARY

As the Bluefin platform continues to gain momentum, the future for online classifieds continue to look bright for The Pilot.

“There is no question that some percentage of the population likes the option of placing their own ads”, Taylor concluded. “We don’t know what the upper limit is yet, because we have not heavily promoted the feature, especially in the recent past.  But the fact that it is still on the upswing means we haven’t reached that figure yet.  The print-to-web upload to our website is routinely automatic, so it has not impacted our workload in any negative way.  We have had almost no complaints about ads getting up on the web in a timely manner, so the customer service element is a positive.  And since we tie print and web together as a package for liner ads, having the web portion up within a day is a real benefit to the buyer and a great selling point. “

When Gary Green, joined Black Press as Vice President of New Media and BusinessDevelopment. One of his first challenges was to completely revamp their Web self-service place an ad solution to support its 70+ newspaper titles throughout British Columbia covering 94% of BC with a distribution of 1,099,409.

At the time, the process was decentralized and manually intensive. Each publication had a Web form that captured some pieces of an ad order. Someone at the newspaper would have to contact the advertiser to complete the ad and get it processed before deadline.

“It actually took a classified rep twice as long to take an ad this way as compared to one taken over the phone in the call center. Also because the advertiser couldn’t complete their ad online, we had some customers who when contacted by our reps, decided not to complete the transaction. This area was one of my top priorities.”

To find a better way to streamline this process, a request for proposal to acquire a group wide self-service place ad solution for both print and online ads was distributed to the top providers in the industry. After careful evaluation of all the solutions, Black Press chose Bluefin Technology Partners to power their Web ad order entry process.

“One of the main reasons we went with Bluefin Place Ad was the ease of use for both our newspaper publishers and advertisers. While there were a lot of flash and features from other providers, we felt that these would not have a major impact to our bottom line. Rich Grover at Bluefin listened to our requirements and worked with us in a collaborative way to build a comprehensive place an ad platform environment. The fact that we had direct access to them to make any changes, tweaks, etc. was a blessing. Their response has been excellent throughout the entire implementation.”

For about a year now, Black Press has been live with Bluefin Place Ad and the results are impressive. Ads can be placed via the individual newspaper websites or through the main Black Press classified portal www.BCClassified.com. Advertisers can place an ad order for the entire group, in 18 regional areas, or in the individual newspaper publications. This flexibility allows for maximum ad exposure and increased classified revenue for their newspaper publishers.

“Acceptance by our customers has surpassed all expectations by 110% as we are receiving thousands of ads per month going into our print publications and online. We are getting more ad volume, more revenue per ad, and providing a complete user-friendly experience for our advertisers. It was crucial for us to automate the ad taking process for the user so that they can complete the ad at their convenience. This new process has had a positive effect on our overall revenue and profit figures.”

With the place an ad area addressed, Gary set his sites on providing a better way to publish ads on the Web. After careful review of the alternative offerings, Black Press chose to implement Bluefin Marketplace online ad publishing for BCClassified.com which has over 10,000 listings on a daily basis. They are also taking advantage of Bluefin Command Center for platform setup and configuration on, reporting, and data feed management.

“Here again, Rich Grover and Bluefin Technology Partners worked with us to produce a great online classified publishing platform that fully integrated with our place an ad solution. Our online upsell offerings from the place an ad side are natively supported within the search and display module with Bluefin Marketplace. Dealing with one vendor for both (ad placement and Web publishing) simplifies our maintenance and support processes as well.”

Black Press is leading the way for serving a Community Marketplace in British Columbia. Solutions from Bluefin Technology Partners provide them with the most flexible solution available to enhance a more positive experience between buyers and sellers.

“Bluefin has all the major features that allow us to compete effectively against the online-only classified sites. Best of all, because we have a seamless way to offer classified ads for both print and online we can give our advertisers maximum exposure in our newspapers and on the Web. This makes us the best choice for our advertisers and consumers alike. We look forward to working with Bluefin to come up with more innovative solutions that allow Black Press to take advantage of exciting new market opportunities.”

Stayed tuned for more updates!

David Woronoff, Publisher, The Pilot

Thomas Hite, Vice President of Classified and Interactive Advertising, OPUBCO Communications Group

Michael Alfers, Publisher, Rural Messenger

Tony Howard, CEO, Independent Newspapers

Patrick Taylor, Advertising Director, The Pilot

Andover, Massachusetts March 9, 2012 — Bluefin Technology Partners, a leading provider of digital classifieds  and self-service advertising solutions for the publishing industry, announces The Pilot of Southern Pines, North Carolina is now live with its industry-leading Bluefin Digital Classifieds Marketplace that includes a self-service place ad strategy to increase both print and online classified activity.  Go to www.thepilotclassifieds.com.

“Bluefin has given us an opportunity to provide a superior digital classified platform to our advertisers and subscribers.” said Pat Taylor, ad director of The Pilot. “Their partnership approach demonstrates a sincere desire to help grow our business by making it easy for us to deploy a great online advertising environment.  It was a seamless migration to a powerful and user-friendly system that grows our print and online revenues, and dramatically enhances our digital classified presence.”

“We try to look at technologies, like Bluefin, as a chance to improve our operation and open up new revenue opportunities,” said Publisher David Woronoff.  “When we can partner with a company to gain skill sets we can’t develop as effectively on our own, that’s a win-win-win, for us, for the developer and the customer.  We think Bluefin is a great example of that.”

The Web-hosted deployment includes Bluefin Place Ad, allowing advertisers to place classified ads in multiple print and online publications, all from a single advertiser user experience. These ads can be for print-only, online-only, or a combination of print and online – each listing with its own “look and feel”. Powerful upsell features help drive revenue by giving advertisers tools to make their ads stand out.

With Bluefin Marketplace, The Pilot is bringing buyers and sellers together by hosting current online ad inventory with effective and relevant search and display capabilities. Utilizing “cloud computing” technology requires no local infrastructure or support.  Bluefin latest release includes significant enhancements to connect to social media platform such as Facebook and Twitter.  The Pilot  also utilizes Bluefin’s automated Data Feed Manager to upload and publish their print classifieds listings online.

“We are delighted that The Pilot has chosen Bluefin to advance their self-advertising and digital classified marketplace strategies”, said Rich Grover, General Partner for Technology and founder of Bluefin Technology Partners. “This new site once again proves that newspaper publishers of all sizes can leverage Bluefin’s evolving technology to extend their advertisers’ message to both traditional and non-traditional media channels.

About The Pilot

The Pilot newspaper is a tri-weekly in the Southern Pines/Pinehurst market of North Carolina.  It is considered by many in the newspaper industry to be among the best community newspapers in the United States, and has twice won that honor from the Inland Press Association.  The Pilot is known for innovation, having also started two exceptional magazines in recent years, and a telephone book operation in two markets.  The Pilot’s website, www.thepilot.com, has twice been a finalist in Editor & Publisher’s best web site contest. The company even purchased a local bookstore 18 months ago and is exploring synergies associated with that business.

About Bluefin Technology Partners

Bluefin was founded in January of 2005 as an innovative solutions provider to the publishing and advertising industry. Their flagship offering, Digital Classifieds Marketplace Platform incorporates all the powerful features in a single platform for creating the best eCommerce portal available for local sellers and buyers.  Bluefin clients are publishing over 100 newspaper titles and related Web sites in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and the Republic of South Africa.

For more information contact:

Steve Rosenfeld at 978-662-3323, email – steve@getbluefin.com