E112: Salesperson of the Year Nominees

We shine a spotlight on two of the most dynamic media sales professionals in our region—Nicole Allen of Baltimore Fishbowl and Blake McCoy of the Catholic Review—nominated for MDDC Press Association’s 2024 Salesperson of the Year. Host Kevin Berrier dives deep into their unique sales journeys, client-first approach and what it takes to succeed in today’s ever-evolving news media landscape.

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet the finalists
• 2:00 Inside the publications
• 8:11 Sales journeys and lesson learned
• 19:00 Strategy, pressure & the power of partnerships
• 32:56 Future-proofing local media

Transcript

0:01

All right friends, so let's get started. So today's episode is especially exciting because we're featuring two remarkable professionals who have been nominated as Salesperson of the Year for MDDC Press Association's 2024 News Media Contest, an honor that's reserved for those that truly run circles around their peers in the world of media sales. In this conversation today, we'll dive into what drives these two nominees. how they set and exceed their goals, how they nurture strong client relationships, leverage their deep marketing insights, and stay ahead in an evolving media environment. First up, we have someone from the Baltimore Fishbowl. With over six years at the publication, rising from director of advertising sales to her current role as publisher and chief operating officer, she's proven time and time and again that she knows how to deliver results for both her organization and her clients. Also joining us today is an account manager at the Catholic review for more than a decade. And over those years, he's made a name for himself by consistently developing successful sales strategies, understanding clients, businesses inside and out, and finding new ways to elevate their marketing efforts. So without further ado, let's hear from the two finalists vying for this year's MDDC Press Association Salesperson of the Year honor Nicole Allen of the Baltimore fish bowl and Blake McCoy of Catholic Review. Hello! Hi Kevin, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for taking the time. I know in our world, time is few and far between. So thank you both for finding the time to chat with me. We're kind of three peas in a pod here. We all engage in media, news media, advertising sales, and marketing strategy, and all that good stuff. So I'm super, super excited to geek out. highlight honestly all of the amazing work that both of you have done at your publications. So I want to dive right in. Nicole, I want to start with you. you first, for those that aren't familiar, if you're not familiar, shame on you. Baltimore Fish Bowl is amazing. Talk to me a little bit about Baltimore Fish Bowl, who your primary audience is, and what your publication is known for in the Baltimore community. Sure. Baltimore Fish Bowl. You can find us at baltimorefishbowl.com. It was launched in 2011 and in the past 14 years we've really grown our coverage. We've really grown our readership. We are a locally owned free news publication online only. We do have two print publications, which maybe we'll talk about later, but primarily it's an online news source. We are known for our feature stories. We're known for our columns. We are known for our events coverage, arts and entertainment. We cover a lot of the local theaters and you know, it's just a great resource for people to know what's going on in Baltimore specifically. Our coverage is extremely Baltimore Metro centric. Therefore our readers tend to be people who live in Baltimore city or in the surrounding areas. If you're not interested in Baltimore, you probably would not be very interested in Baltimorefishbowl.com. Another thing we're known for is we have some reporters and some columnists who have been in the area for a very long time. We are known for coverage from people like Ed Gunz and David Nitkin and people like, you know, some newer names to the area, like Aliza Worthington and our editor, Marcus Deterly. And more recently, we're becoming known for having Dan Roderichs write for us. We were very pleased that Dan Roderichs brought his column to us recently, and you can find it every Thursday on BaltimoreFishBowl.com. every Thursday, baltimorefishbowl.com. That's amazing. I love your website. I love how clean the look is. I'm a stickler for symmetry and your website is very easy to read, very symmetrical, responds down so well from desktop to mobile. this is not the first time that the Baltimore Fish Bowl in some capacity has... been in our contest and has won. So thank you for that. I'm a huge fan of Baltimore Fish Bowl. I engage with your website all the time. yeah, I'm excited to learn a little bit more about all the advertising that's really tastefully placed on your website. Absolutely. Now Blake, I want to move to you. you talk to me a little bit? You've been with... You've been with the Catholic Review for a long time, but I want you to talk to me a little bit, kind of same question. Talk to us a little bit about the Catholic Review. What makes your publication unique in the news media landscape? And with that, who are your core readers that businesses could be able to reach? Yeah, so just who we are what we do we produce the Catholic review Magazine, so it's a monthly magazine It reaches a little over 60,000 homes by mail every month except for August we do a July August combo We just found that in the summertime people are on vacation and that's just a good month to kind of take a pause and regroup We do we have our website Catholic review org we produce a two radio shows, we have a Spanish radio show, we have English radio show, and both of which are, well actually the Spanish is just a podcast, but the radio show is also archived in a podcast version. And then we do a bi-week or twice weekly newsletter. We do an annual Catholic directory, just kind of archives everything in the Catholic Church in Baltimore, in the archdiocese of Baltimore. And then our readers are really, it's Catholic families, but. from an advertising standpoint, it's just families. They are Catholic, but religion aside, these are still people that go shopping and go out to eat and that kind of travel. So we're mainly hitting families. Got it, yeah. so, and I think in addition to that, as you're looking at families, you're absolutely right. Whether, whatever the religious affiliation of a family is, they are still a family and they still need goods and services that can be served by businesses in the community. And I think with, I think innately, now I get the Catholic review every month. a good old practicing Catholic and I think, there's a degree of, know, when there's that, that themology or niche in a publication like that. I think it further increases the propensity of audience that, that you reach in terms of, you know, how they're engaging in the information, you know, your, publication is, is mailed. It's, it's delivered conveniently to us. But when people think about You know kind of like direct mail publications businesses may think about like well Where does it go as soon as it gets out of the mailbox? And I think you know with with the Catholic review It's going on the kitchen table and to be read and then on the coffee table and then to be read some more It's a highly engaged Audience I think and I think to me that's something that as I'm buying media These are things I'm looking for and you know that I've looked for from you as I've bought, you some advertising from you guys in the past. love your product, love the work that you do. You can tell the time and energy that's put into it. Thank you for that. Blake, talk to me a little bit about like, you've been in, so from what I understand, you've been in sales for a long time. You've been in media sales for at least 10 years that I know of. Talk to me a little bit, like what initially drew you to get into news media sales and like, what keeps you passionate? about it. That's a loaded question I know, but. I would say what got me into my current job at the Catholic review was probably not much different than most people out there. I just needed a job. I came out of college and I worked at enterprise rent a car for six years and you know, they give you the tools. What's the line from a was it stepbrothers? They give you the tools to run your own business. That's right. I learned I got a crash course for many years in sales, quick sales though, very short sales, and customer service. And, the time came to move on. And so I found the Catholic review and I've been here since. I, I, I do, it's a, it's a different type of sales because it's not, you know, talking about enterprise. If you don't know pretty much anybody that's running a car before you go outside and they're going to try and sell you up into a bigger car. and sell you the insurance to take care of you while you're driving the rental car. It all happens in 35 seconds. And so you learn the value of people's attention span when it comes to sales being very short and you got to make your point quick. Then you move to media sales and it's a little bit more long-term with a lot of these projects where you kind of have to follow up and work with people and they're not standing there ready to buy something. They're looking ahead and they've got budgets they got to stick with. And, you know, so it's kind of cool for me. I like to go fishing and, it's a weird analogy, but I find that this type of sales is like fishing where you're going to be casting out oftentimes a lot of lines and you're hoping to see what bites and then you can reel it in from there. so there's a little bit of, kind of a game to it in that sense. you know, but, you know, I do, I like to, my main thing is being the only person at the Catholic review that does sales. do take pride in. and doing a good job and bringing money in and knowing that while I'm not necessarily creating the content, I am driving the revenue behind making the content, you know, the number of pages to put the content on. You know, and I think that's a very important point that I think needs to be made. I see all the time, I follow all of our members' social channels. You know, I see the comments that are put into, you know, into posts by the community. And, you know, it's common for them to say, you know, well, like this publication's fat and bloated on revenue. And I think we can all hear. today attest under the oath of marketing pros that this is not the case, right? It's our, the work that we do and the revenue that we bring in for our organizations funds all of the important work that is done by those publications. you know, I think the idea is, well, news is free. You know, and news is a, it's a God given right for news, right? And Baltimore fishbowl is a free site, which is amazing. There are members that we have that, that aren't free and have a subscription model. And, know, I, I always argue with the idea of like, you know, if you go into a pizza shop and eat a pizza's on and then walk out without paying, well, that's probably not going to go over very well. So, professionally vetted and sourced news and information. It takes money and, and. we rely on our partnerships with our businesses and our communities in good faith to trade our audience and getting your message in front of the audiences that we have access to in exchange for helping us fund what we do. So thank you for bringing that delight. Nicole, a little bit of the same question, like what got you into news media sales? And have there ever been any specific mentors or like pivotal moments throughout your, throughout your news media journey that kind of helps shape who you are today. Cause you're, you're, you are continuing to grow within, know, within the Baltimore fishbowl. You're continuing to ascend. So talk to me a little bit about your journey from that vein. it's kind of funny because I never envisioned myself doing this. What happened was I was the marketing director for Record and Tape Traders, which is a chain of record stores that used to exist in the Baltimore metro area. We had 11 stores at that time and being a person who's worked for small businesses all my life, I can smell a sale when it's coming. We were about to be sold and I knew it. And I used to place a lot of ads in City Paper. So I talked to my rep and I was like, know, City Paper seems like such an awesome place to work. Are you guys hiring? And she's like, yes, we need help in the classified department. So, you know, I thought I was going to get another advertising director, marketing director type of job, but I was like, you know what? City Paper's cool. I want to work there. I'm going to go work in the classified department. So I started selling classified ads back in what, 2006. Yeah, 2006. So it's been a couple minutes. And I was like, I'm just going to do this for a little while. I'm going to pay off my student loans. And then I'm going to go like be a professional writer. So 19 years later, I'm selling ads. And it turned out I was good at it. And it turned out that I really liked it. And while I wouldn't just go selling anything, I loved City Paper and I loved supporting it. And Baltimore Fishbowl, I feel the same way. I wouldn't just, if I was looking for a job, I wouldn't look for a sales job. But I feel like the organization you work for is almost more important than the job that you're doing for them. And that's why I'm here because I want Baltimore Fishbowl to be successful. It turned out that I was pretty good with the advertisers and I just enjoy it. So as far as mentors go, I would say the person who helped shape me as a salesperson is, she was a Shira Jensen at the time. She's now a Shira Barbosa and she is a real estate agent, a realtor. So if you ever need to buy or sell a house, I'd probably call her because she was amazing. If you can sell classified ads, you can do absolutely anything. I mean, we're talking selling classified ads after Craig showed up with his list. And if you can do that, you can do absolutely anything in the world. Yeah, that's actually, started in this industry and classified as well. August 24th, 2001, so right before 9-11. And I remember the days when, I remember it was about two or three weeks when there were lines out the door for people coming in to place classified ads. It was awesome. And then 9-11 hits and everything changes forever, right? Everything changes forever. But I think the constant that I'm hearing out of both of you is there is a passion, right? There are different paths into getting into doing what we do, but I think there's a passion behind what we do in some way, or form. And I know for me, really, mine really comes from, I do believe in the power of the free press and the need for a free press. and being able to play, I'm not a writer. I'll never be on that side of the IO. just, I'm not a writer in that way, but if I can help in supporting news media and evangelizing and advocating for it through the work that I do and bringing in revenue, then we're doing our part. I think that's just one piece of it, right? In addition to... helping businesses grow their business with the quality audience that we have. So I wanna talk a little bit about like all of the hats that are worn. I mean, we all wear a lot of hats. We were talking before we started recording that, you know, we're lean and mean, or I would also maybe call it flexible and adaptable, you know, so. We do a lot of stuff during the day. Nicole, talk to me a little bit about what a typical day is for you as you're working with advertisers. How do you prioritize? Time management is an art in our world and in of itself. How do you manage that time in addition to all of the other stuff that you have to do? What are the tips and tricks? Are you leveraging AI? Are you? just leveraging no sleep or what's the secret sauce? Okay. So I have a lot of lists, I have a lot of reminders, I have a lot of Google Docs, a lot of spreadsheets and I am always looking for inbox zero and I think that's the key to my success is if an email has been addressed it is in a folder or it is labeled it is not in my inbox. When you have a clean inbox your life is better, you don't miss things, nothing gets buried. You respond to people quickly because if you don't respond to them quickly, you're going to have that email in your inbox and that's terrifying. So you need to address that email and file it away because it's been finished. So I think organization is the key and also understanding when is the best time to do certain things. If it's Monday at eight o'clock, I'm not cold calling. If it's Friday at five PM, I'm not cold calling. Those are times when I'm handling administrative tasks and just trying to figure out there are all of these things I need to do that are not dealing with the clients directly. When's the best time to do that so that the times that are good to reach out to them, I'm available to do that. So I think just thinking about when is the maximum, how can you be getting the maximum productivity out of the hours you have by strategically doing things at the right times. I think that's a great point. think you would have a heart attack if you saw my inbox. feel like so, so I was on a, I was actually on a client meeting. was sharing my screen and great clients. have the ability to be able to joke back and forth. And one of my clients were like, you know, what's really bothering me is that, you could see like on my doc, the little red bubble, you know, above my, this was for my text messages. And he's like, you have 181 unread text messages. I'm like, well. Yeah, I guess I do. So for anyone that I did not respond to, I apologize. But Blake, talk to me a little bit, kind of in the same thing, but I think for you, Blake, I'd like for you to talk a little bit about how you approach working specifically with your clients within the interests of keeping them happy and keeping them whole. know, clients are always... there's a lot of education that we have to do, right? A client's going to say, hey, I placed this ad in your publication. How many people walk through my door because of it? And that's a hard answer to give, right? It's metrics don't operate in that way. So there's an education issue there. How do you navigate working with clients so that you are maintaining honesty and integrity and a win-win partnership that continues to have them? you know, coming back and advertising to your audience. Yeah, think, you know, especially with the print side, digital stuff, you can at least report on impressions and clicks and those types of things. And that's a lot that's helpful because you can show, you know, hey, there's interest in this ad. People are clicking on it and they're being re-diverted to your website. With print, it's difficult. It's really more about making sure that you're keeping a presence in the marketplace. You know, showing that we do have these readers. did a survey a few years back and we found we were kind of talking about this earlier, but we found that our readers will keep the magazine in their home for two to three weeks. They're faithful readers. They'll read. I think it was 70 or 75 percent, 90 percent will read four out of four, three out of four magazines. Chances are they might be passing it on to a relative or a child. an adult child. so just helping people understand that because there's the religious aspect, there's a little bit of a buying in from our readers that you might not get otherwise because it's very targeted. And so, yeah, it's tough to say how many people are going to walk through the door, but your presence is probably going to be beneficial when it comes time to buy or you know, look for that service, you're gonna be top of mind for that market because they've seen you month after month or, you know, every time they pick it up, they start a story and they go back and they flip through the magazine again that month, they're seeing that ad more than once. And so you're kind of, it's a branding that's happening with our market. 100 % it's brand awareness. And I think in a world where businesses are trying to, and understandably so, they're trying to squeeze the most value they can just must bleed it dry, like every penny that they spend, they lose the ideals of a marketing funnel, right? And it's, know, as all of us are experienced marketers here, we understand the beautifully simple ideals and theologies of a marketing funnel. If all of your marketing is lower funnel marketing, but you're not filling the top of the funnel through a micro style or macro style brand awareness effort, you're wasting that budget that's reserved for the bottom of the funnel. Additionally, I think it's interesting to note that multiple studies and multiple surveys have shown that ad recall. by consumers when they're engaging in advertising that is aligned with the written word versus maybe radio or even TV, especially digital. digital absolutely has its place. I've sold my soul to social media. It's unhealthy. But the recall all speaks to the quality of audience that news media. And that's a unique value proposition. And when you look at a cost of an ad, dividing that out by the number of people that you're projecting will see it, it's one of, if not the most affordable advertising medium that businesses can engage in. So again, I'm getting on my soapbox here because it's absolutely important and it's absolutely necessary. And we work with other agencies all the time that understand the value of news media advertising, the state of Maryland values, you know, news media advertising because of the, audience that it has. So again, hopping off the soap box here, but it is absolutely true. but you know, I, I think, I think, you know, Nicole talked to me a little bit about, and I think this is something that you would probably handle very well as organized as you are. but talk to me a little bit about like the pressures. That's your, are the publisher, you're the chief operating officer, you are handling advertising, you're doing everything, right? You are the unsung hero. You are an unsung hero. You have an amazing staff too. But you do a lot at Baltimore Fish Bowl. Like how do you handle the pressure of just our world every day? Because when we win, feels great because we're helping businesses. But when we don't, it can feel crushing, right? Talk to me a little bit about. about how you handle that and how we have thickened our skin over time. sure. Well, believe it or not, it does become a little stressful at times. And you do feel that weight sometimes, especially when you are in charge of a very large percentage of the revenue and you know that your coworkers are relying on you hitting those goals so that everyone can continue to work in this wonderful place. So that's always in the back of my mind. But for me, have, it's this little thing called sales karma and I believe in it. And I believe that if I, If I'm hitting a wall and I'm having trouble and we have a big goal to reach, if I just keep emailing people and calling people and trying, even if I don't get a single sale from any of those people that I'm reaching out to that day, sales karma will bring me something. If I put the work out there into the world, if I put the hard work out there, something will come back to me. And for the past 19 years, it's worked out pretty well for me. I just... realized that we're always adapting, that the advertisers don't owe me anything. They don't owe me the sale. I am grateful when they do decide to work with us, but I can't take it personally. And I'll just keep tapping gently on that door here and there until they realize that maybe they should talk to me. But I'm never forceful. I'm never pushy. And I find that nobody wants to be sold. And the minute they smell, that you're trying to sell them, you're lost. Your credibility is lost. So the most important thing is I would never try to sell a Baltimore fishbowl ad to someone if I would not buy that ad if I were them. And I think my experience of being a marketing director and having my phone ring off the hook all day long, sometimes with five different reps from the same place, and I'm like, wow, are you guys multiplying? Like, what is going on here? I know what's obnoxious and I know what doesn't work. So I think that's been extremely helpful. Yeah, so I'm a media buyer, so I get a lot of those calls. And I think what you said is absolutely brilliant. I hate, I actually, and my esteemed ED, I hate the word salesperson because we're not, we're marketers. I'm a marketer. That is what I am schooled in. That is what I know and that's what I understand. And a portion of what I do or what I have to do is I have to pitch my idea. I have a great idea for a business to help grow their business, but I need to pitch it. And in that there's a sales element to it. But when you're overtly selling, like all of our competitors are doing in other media industries, it desensitizes businesses. So I think you're absolutely right in saying that as you're going in and you're talking to a business, if you're trying to sell them, it's at best transactional. Whereas if you're trying to partner with them to alleviate an obstacle they have or solve a problem that they have, now you're becoming a trusted advisor. And that's kind of, that's our goal. If we can become a trusted advisor for our businesses, we've done our job. Blake, talk to me a little bit about how the Catholic review sets themselves apart from what they offer compared to... your competitors and it could be in broadcast, it could be in radio, it could be in digital. Like what is that unique value proposition as you're working with businesses, talking to them about the value of the Catholic review. Talk to me a little bit about what that conversation sounds like. just being a Catholic publication, we're, we're the only one in the archdiocese in the Baltimore area. so unless the church does something bad, you're probably not going to hear much about it in other news forms. so if, know, nobody's really covering, we cover local stuff. cover stuff. across the nation, we cover stuff internationally, we cover a lot of things because of Rome. And so anyone that's looking for that type of Catholic coverage is really only going to get it with us. Like I said, unless it's controversy, because if it's controversy, you find it anywhere. But yeah, so we do have, like I said before, our audience is really bought into that because of that. It's part of who they are as a person. And we're just delivering that news. And so we're the really the number one and only game in town to find that that type of content. And that does set us apart. So. Yeah, no, it absolutely does, it absolutely does. Great, great. So I wanna move on to the evolving landscape of our world. It seems to ebb and flow and evolve like waves in the ocean, right? In the interest of trying to remain flexible and adaptable with that, can probably feel a bit exhausting, right? Nicole, want to learn, so Baltimore Fishbowl by and large is a digital only publication. You mentioned you have some print publications, but for your website, baltimorefishbowl.com, talk to me a little bit about how you're positioning yourself in this changing digital environment, right? Because even, you know, even websites that are with the times, right? Always still need to remain flexible and remain adaptable and do a lot of things probably behind the scenes that a typical reader wouldn't even know that, you know, Baltimore Fishbowl is doing just in the interest of being able to provide the best product and service possible. So talk to me a little bit about how your kind of navigating that changing digital landscape. One thing that we found very helpful is we've done some readership surveys and we have gone to the people who are coming to our website on the regular and we're asking them, what do you like? What do you like about what we're doing? What do you wish we were doing more of? Is there anything that you don't like? So with their input, we have tried to expand coverage in certain areas, particularly events. People love the events coverage. And so in addition to our weekend events column, we've just added a few months ago, a monthly events column where we can give people a little more advanced notice about things that are coming up. Our editor actually just launched another monthly column that is local theater productions to see, which is fantastic. And that is something that is helpful to our audience. And it's also helpful to our advertisers. We don't include our advertisers in that theater roundup because they're advertisers, but We do include them because they are theaters. And so that's helpful to them. It's helpful to our readers. It's helpful to Baltimore, just, you know, with some of the news coverage not tending to be positive. It is really nice for people to be able to come to our website and see, remember, these are the things we love. These are the reasons we love Baltimore and these are the places where we want to go. And here's when we can do that. So, but we've also been covering politics more. We've been covering a lot of business news, real estate news. So we're continuing to do what we've been doing, but trying to really maximize the things that are most important to our readers. And as time goes on, we'll have to keep making tweaks here and there to keep everyone happy and to just be evolving with the times, but really just relying on our readers and listening to them. That's beautiful. It's so beautifully simplistic. I love it. Right. Because there are so many instances, I think, where businesses as a whole, it's just even say businesses, even outside of media, if they're serving a consumer, sometimes they're looking at themselves from the outside in versus just asking their audience or asking their customers, you know, how are we doing? What would you like to see? And I think for you in doing that, what it sounds like is that it brought to light the opportunity for diversification and coverage, right? Like, you know, who would have thought Baltimore has a huge performing arts scene, right? That unless you're in the city, you probably don't know that it exists. that's, know, performing arts, as an example, it isn't getting holistic coverage everywhere, right? So I think you're hitting this need not only to to highlight important areas within Baltimore, but also, yeah, give some news that reminds people that there's a lot to love in this world. And you don't have to be as stressed as you need to be because all of the news and information that's getting out there, especially right now, feels polarizing. So that is one thing I have always loved about Baltimore Fishbowl is the diversity of news coverage that you put out there. it's, amazing to see, like, for example, you know, the, I have Baltimore, Baltimore fish ball up right now and beautiful advertisement right at the top for the sea beyond festival, for Maryland school for the blind and, that it's, it's an amazing event. We actually had Maryland school for the blind on a past episode to talk about the sea beyond festival last year, because of how amazing the event is and you being able to provide them your audience. So. the community can understand really what it means to be blind. the event and I, if you haven't gone, it's a really wonderful event. I took my sons to the event. They loved the interactive and accessible playground. They loved being able to participate in the activities. And of course there's face painting. So face painting and balloon animals. Come on. yeah, I mean, you know, I'll meet you in the garage for. Yeah, no, I, it's a big deal to me. I'm like, we just became best friends. I'll meet you in the garage for karate and Mentos and soda later because that sounds awesome. That sounds awesome. So, so Blake, want, I want to talk a little bit about kind of same question. And, and since by and large, like you have an audio presence, you have a digital presence. You also have a print presence that's going out to 60,000 readers every month. know, kind of same question. Talk to me a little bit about the trends that you see shaping the Catholic Review's advertising approach over the next few years. You know, what's the Catholic Review doing to continue to be flexible and adaptable, to serve up news and information to their audiences where they want to see it? Yeah, I think we've kind of gone through that just in my time. When I started, were before my time, it was a weekly newspaper. Then it was when I started a bi-weekly newspaper and we've evolved into a magazine format. It's monthly. Um, and I think right now, you know, Going to church is something that maybe some of the younger crowd doesn't do as much as their parents and certainly not as much as their grandparents did. And I know one of the focuses that we have is trying to bring content forward that's going to bring some younger people and some younger people back in and kind of. showing them that like, it's okay. It's cool to go to church too. Like you can, you know, make this a part of your life. It's not, it doesn't have to be, you know, necessarily maybe as stuffy as it was when your grandparents did it. You can make it your own thing. you know, and trying to, you know, find and bring in some kind of younger, readers, you know, it's the same time the church is trying to bring in younger people into the church. Cause as people die, You need to have people coming up, growing up behind them. And so I think that's kind of one of the things our social media stuff has taken off and we have someone that works really hard with that. We kicked around the idea of creating a studio. I'm not sure where that's at right now, but I know it was in the talks. It was an issue of, think, finding some space for it. But. But yeah, think that's the main focus right now is trying to come up with ideas and stories that are going to draw in a little bit of a younger crowd. Yeah, being able to introduce the ideas of even what it means, like what, what it means for someone to go to church, right? It's there's a very different meaning for our grandparents versus our parents and even for us. And I think there's always a start, you know, in, know, within, within the Catholic church to introduce the Catholic church to, to a younger audience, right? It's, it's just, that's the nature of, of any organization like that, right? It's you. you want to be able to spread the positive words. that, I think that totally makes sense. That's great. So I wanna, as we're starting to kind of wrap up a little bit, I wanna look ahead, which this will be a bit of, I suppose a bit of a loaded question, because no one knows, right? It's again, the landscape is changing so quickly. So we have no idea what's happening. In the land of digital advertising, Google continuing with its battles with monopoly, right? And how that will change the landscape, how AI will change how people search for your news and information. I could speak hours about that. Nicole, let's start with you. Talk to me a little bit about you know, if you could close your eyes and say like, this is where I'd like to see the Baltimore fishbowl three years down the line. You know, like three years from now, kind of here's the idea and here's the plan of what I want to see the Baltimore fishbowl continue to grow and evolve into. What does that look like for you? I would. So three years? Well, what do you do? You want to do five? Well, I'm just trying to be realistic. I don't know. like, because I don't think I can double the readership in three years. But I would like to obviously continue to grow our readership. I'd like to continue to grow our coverage. I'd also like to continue to make it clear to the folks in the county that though the name is Baltimore Fish Bowl, we have a lot of coverage for Baltimore County, for Howard County, and we have more and more readers who are in the counties. And many of them are like myself, you know. I know I'm a trader, but I don't live in Baltimore city anymore. I'm an old wife and mother and I live in the county again. So, you know, there are many of us who are not living in the city anymore, but we still love the city and we still want to know what's going on. And some of them are as far as, you know, some of them are in Southern Pennsylvania, like places like Hanover and littlestown, and they're from Baltimore County, but they still come to the city and we have readers. who are in Bel Air and we have lot of readers who are in Westminster and they're my friends. I can tell you they used to live in Reisterstown. So, you know. you know, in fact, I, when I start, so I started at the Carroll County times back in 2001 and I lived in littlestown actually. And I've always had, so I can be a testament to you're absolutely correct. There are, uh, there's a wide reach and a wide net of people that are interested. Baltimore is a destination spot for those outside of Baltimore. If you want to go for a night on the town, um, Baltimore is a common place to go. Lots of amazing restaurants, amazing things to do. The hippodrome, have the aquarium, amongst so many other amazing, amazing places you can go to. It's not just Baltimore centric. So how do you think you'll crack that, that edgy, because that's an education issue, right? In, in working with, businesses and organizations to have them really understand how far of a net that the Baltimore fishbowl really casts in terms of its readership. thing. That was good. Hey, you know, fishing, Blake turned me onto it. loves fishing. how, but, talk to me about that. We're not gonna change the name. We're not gonna make it the Maryland Fish Bowl or the five county plus Baltimore Fish Bowl. It's just gonna, it's catching on though. I can tell you when I started six years ago, it really saddened me when people would ask me, well, where are you working now? I know city paper doesn't exist anymore. And like, I know too. I'm like, I'm at Baltimore Fish Bowl. And they're like, what? And it would break my heart. But now... Six years later, when I tell people I work for Baltimore Fish Bowl, they know what I'm talking about. So we're already getting there. And we are, you know, we're pushing our stuff out on social media, just like everybody else. And we are just trying to continue to build our email list of subscribers and, you know, hoping some friends will tell their friends and people will share our stories. And they're doing that on social media and getting people to our website for the first time so that they can figure out, wow. this is pretty cool, maybe I should come back. and it's free, even better. And I think, you know, we're one of the last standing without a paywall. And I understand why people have paywalls. I'm not going to fault them for that. I think without paywalls, certain publications wouldn't be able to employ the vast numbers of reporters that they have. We're a smaller media organization. So our budget is smaller and We're just gonna keep selling as many ads as we can. we also do, while we're not a nonprofit, people can donate to Baltimore Fish Bowl. And so we hope that as readers find the value, that they will continue to make donations as they are able. And that, you know, if I keep running out of ad space, I'm gonna have to just come up with something else. Yeah, so you can, you can, you know, support Baltimore fishbowl, support Baltimore, become a fishbowl member. Baltimore fishbowl.com slash support dash Baltimore dash fishbowl. Check it out. You can make, you can set it up to, to have a small monthly contribution. can make one annual contribution. it helps support to fund the reporting, the amazing reporting that the Baltimore fishbowl does. So, you know, we, we. we need to keep that going. So everyone consider that. Now, Blake, I want to start with you on this. So this is going to be the of the elevator pitch. if you were able to stand on a stage in front of all of the businesses and organizations out there that have a remote interest in advertising and news media, What would you tell them about the importance? Why is it important to consider news media advertising as a cornerstone piece of their marketing strategy? Why is news media advertising important for them? I'm putting you on the spot here. I know that. I know that. bit. mean, I just as far as our Catholic Review news media goes, like that, you know, it's you know, we're one of the only people in town you can get the information from. So if you're interested in news relating to the Catholic Church, what's going on in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, what's going on in Rome from a local standpoint, you know, we're the guys for that. And that type of content is constantly evolving. know, news happens every day. And we do a good job of staying up to date on it and keeping people aware of what's going on. There's not too much opinion or spin. It's really just letting you know what's happening, which I think sometimes can be important. think there's oftentimes too many people in the world that are trying to tell you how convince you how to think. It's nice sometimes just to read it and think for yourself. And I do think we offer that, you know, so, you know, that's kind of where. That would be my pitch on why it's important as far as the Catholic review goes. I think that, and I think that's perfect because I can personally attest when, you know, and I never thought about it in the way of there is not a spin, right? There is always controversy in the Catholic church. just, that's the nature of the history of the Catholic church with an organization that large. But I think the Catholic review does an amazing job on providing the correct news and the correct information. that relates to the Catholic Church versus some derated influencer on X that's throwing out some swampy gunk that people will latch onto and deem it as gospel. And that's not the case, right? mean, the Catholic Review is the gold standard in reporting on the Catholic Church. Fellow Catholic, thank you for that because there's not a lot of folks out there that do that. Nicole, I want to pose that very same question to you for Baltimore Fish Bowl. Now you answered, I think, a little bit through your past questions, but if you could stand in front of all of the businesses and organizations that have an interest in the Baltimore Fish Bowl, tell them why it's important to consider news media advertising as a cornerstone strategy within their marketing mix. would say that it's important to keep us in mind because we have a huge audience that's constantly growing. We're covering Baltimore metro area, the city, the surrounding counties. As I mentioned, there is no paywall, so our news is free to anyone who's interested in reading it. I would also encourage them when they're thinking about digital advertising, they're like, well, I'm doing programmatic. I'm like, well, that's cool. Your ad might never end up on our website. So when you're buying programmatic, I might remind them that when you're buying a programmatic campaign, you are buying certain geo-targeting areas, but you have no idea where your ad is. Like if you were to just go online, you're not going to say, oh look, there's my ad. You might see it, but you might not. I'd also remind them that a lot of programmatic advertising is based on retargeting. Retargeting leads to preaching to the choir. For instance, retargeting can be great. Let's say somebody's come to your website once and you want to kind of keep stalking them to get them to come back and close the deal. But you can also end up in a situation where you're spending a bunch of money on people who are already buying from you. Every single day, I am being served QuickBooks ads all day. Do you know why? Because I go to QuickBooks online every day. Because I'm already paying QuickBooks. And now QuickBooks is turning around and spending all this money to continue advertising to an existing client. So that's the kind of thing that can happen with programmatic advertising. I'm not saying don't do it, but if you want to know that your ad is going to appear in front of a very specific audience and have your brand aligned with a very specific type of website, going directly to that website is the best way to do it. A hundred percent. So I am, I am well versed in the digital advertising side of our world and you are, you've hit the nail on the head. Programmatic advertising beyond the retargeting side of things. Also primarily by and large, because the cost per thousand is the cheapest will most likely your ad will fall on a mobile game of some sort and fat fingered clicks will inflate your click ratio. And it's, it's If you're not very careful in the programmatic space, you will waste your money left and right. Additionally, yeah, absolutely. Buying direct O &O usually is going to be more cost effective. It's going to you a human audience, right? It's digital swampy. I am a huge advocate of digital advertising. I'll be the first say it, but it can be very swampy. And unless you have a marketer like me or like Nicole or Blake that's really putting the time and attention to it. It's very easy to waste budgets in that way. So I think you hit the nail on the head. Same thing for social advertising, right? Same thing for paid, paid search. All of these programmatic styles of advertising, the words of our beloved Carrie Underwood, you kind of let Jesus take the wheel a little bit on it. and I'd also remind them that when they, you they don't want to do a web ad, like a digital display ad, fine. Don't do a sponsored post instead. Do a sponsored event feature. Because if you're worried about your SEO, guess what? Our Google ranking is higher than yours, most likely. Not to be a jerk, but our Google ranking is probably higher than yours. So when you publish an article on our website, guess what happens? I'll let you say it. I'll let you say it's huge. It's huge. none of our readers wanted to read it, which they would, because if it wasn't interesting, I wouldn't let you post it on our website. We're very particular about the sponsored content, but it's going to help you with optimizing yourself in a search engine. When you align yourself and you have something that is posted on a website with a high ranking like ours, it is going to help you. That's 100 % verified. Yep. News media, news media websites typically will have a higher, a higher search rank because of the amount of onboarding of content that they're doing, the amount of traffic that they're getting, the amount of time that the traffic is spending as a session on your site. All of these things will make a news media website usually get a higher, higher rank much more quickly. So when you align your URL and your brand and your website to a, a high ranking URL, it's back linking. Right. It's you. So you're getting you're getting a quality local backlink and local is is the important word here because Google does take precedence over local backlinks versus national backlink Yelp. You you spend all this money to get your your your business on Yelp and, you know, cleanse reviews and things like that. The the value of Baltimore Fishbowls backlink or the Catholic Reviews backlink far exceeds Yelp itself. which is a little known fact, but something I think every business should know. So that's amazing. So I think, I hope for everyone listening today, if they're skeptical or considering what is news media advertising look like from a standpoint of how it helps your business, I hope this answers every question you've had. You get a high quality human audience that's completely. and absolutely engaged in the content that they're looking at, which means they'll have a higher recall for your advertisement. And more times than not, the cost per thousand is going to be less than if you were to run Google Ads or run meta advertising, things like that. do not sleep on news media advertising. is a huge, huge area of opportunity right now. And news media advertising is kind of having a moment because of the all of the news and information that's, you know, circulating around in the world right now, there's even more increased eyeballs. So, you know, keep that in mind. So for everyone looking, so for Baltimore Fishbowl, baltimorefishbowl.com, check them out on Facebook. Looks like you're on X, you're on Instagram, you're on LinkedIn. And then for Catholic Review, check it out, catholicreview.org. and check them out on their social channels, Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, as well. Did I miss anything? I want to make sure if anyone wants to get a hold of Nicole Allen or Blake McCoy at the Baltimore Fish Bowl or the Catholic Review, I want to make sure they can. What am I missing? Nicole? Well, my email address, you could just email me. It's Nicole, without an H, N-I-C-O-L-E, at BaltimoreFishbowl.com, if you're interested in finding out more. Or you could email advertising at BaltimoreFishbowl.com, or you could go to our website and click on the thing that says advertise and reach us through there. Boom, makes it easy as pie. What about you, Blake? same email, bmccoy at Catholic review.org. And then the easiest way is if you go to the website, there's an advertising tab, click on that. You'll find me. Yep, makes it easy, easy as pie. if you, or give me a call and I'll put you in contact with them. All of our information is everywhere on the interwebs. So I think that puts us at about the 54 minute mark. This may be a record, but thank you both for taking the time. Is there anything else that you want to make sure that you're putting out there into the ether before we end this episode today? Nicole? I'd like to thank the MDDC and Kevin, and I'd like to thank Blake. What about you, Blake? Yeah, thank you guys. appreciate it. I've never done one of these before, so I assume this is pretty neat. And I just want to also thank the guys, George Matysak and Chris Guntiet, my team, or my team at the Catholic Review for nominating me. I really appreciate that. Shout out to George and Chris. you are so much kinder than I am. I should probably thank Susie and Marcus for nominating me. Thank you, Susie and Marcus. Thank you, Susie and Marcus and George and Chris and all of the amazing people at the Baltimore Fish Bowl and at the Catholic Review for all of the amazing work we do. It's by and large usually, it's the unsung hero type of work that we do in the world, but it is absolutely an important piece of, honestly, of democracy. So I think with that, that is everything. Check out Baltimore Fish Bowl. dot com Catholic review org all of their social channels email call advertise support It's it's incredibly important for what we do in our individual communities and I think with that Thank you both for taking the time. I really appreciate it. I hope this was fun and until next time see ya See ya.