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VA Newswire Launches Business Intelligence Center

 

RICHMOND—VA Newswire LC has revamped its website as a business intelligence center geared to Virginia businesses. The company will use the website to aggregate content – in the form of white papers, case studies and newsletters – and make it more readily accessible to anyone looking for business solutions and industry-specific information.

 

“There has been a quiet revolution in the professional services marketplace,” said James A. Bacon, publisher of the VA Newswire website and newsletter. “Now that the dot.coms are no longer distracting people with their crazy schemes, businesses are figuring out how to use the Internet more cost effectively.”

 

Professional service firms are dissatisfied with traditional forms of advertising that don’t yield measurable results. Increasingly, companies are posting white papers, or management-style essays in which they have an expertise, on their websites. Many also are creating case studies, testimonial-like stories that showcase how they solved a problem for a particular client. Yet others are publishing newsletters for e-mail distribution to clients and prospects.

 

“Businesses are creating valuable content potentially of interest to audiences that extend far beyond the names in their contact databases,” Bacon said. “But they suffer from one big drawback: They wait passively for new readers to find them instead of reaching out and finding the readers.”

 

VA Newswire has reconfigured its business model to help professional service firms gain more visibility for their white papers, case studies and newsletters. The company has redesigned its website with that specific goal in mind. Business intelligence found on the website includes:

 

  • Daily news feeds from PR Newswire and Business Wire, plus access to current and back issues of the weekly VA Newswire newsletter.

  • A “Newsletters” section where readers can subscribe and unsubscribe at will to free newsletters.

  • A “Business Solutions” section where readers can access the latest postings of solutions providers.

  • A “Data” section providing access to Virginia-specific market data.

The VA Newswire newsletter and website create a cost-effective alternative to scatter-shot direct mail and print advertising. The most important benefit of the VA Newswire marketing model is the ability to measure web traffic and e-mail clickthroughs, providing concrete feedback on what people are responding to. “With traditional media, you send your direct mail into the void. Does anybody see it? You don’t know,” Bacon said. “Same with print. Does anyone read your ad? Hard to say.

 

“You can’t run a marketing program on anecdotal feedback,” Bacon said. “What you can’t measure, you can’t manage.” Glossy brochures and slick image ads don’t yield useful information like e-mail and websites do. By partnering with 303 Media, developer of the Mail Manager e-mail management service, VA Newswire provides advertisers data on how many people opened clients’ e-mails and electronic newsletters, and what they clicked on.

 

Said Bacon: “This does way more than just track the effectiveness of a particular media buy – a solution, by the way, that has always eluded traditional media. It provides real-time data on the topics and issues that resonate in the marketplace. This is strategic-level information that firms can use to modify existing services and create new ones.”

 

- November 13, 2002

 

Visit the VA Newswire website at www.vanewswire.com.

 

Click here for details on VA Newswire’s advertising products.

 

Click here to read our white paper, “The Digital Revolution and the Marketing of Professional Services.”

 

 

Contact: James A. Bacon

(804) 918-6199

jabacon@vanewswire.com