The “local” subject has finally arrived at Internet World, a trade fair in Munich. The Local Media Conference took place today, and discussed a number of subject with the theme local marketing and content. It was a successful prelude.

The conference was organized by the Neue Mediengesellschaft Ulm and a Berliner marketing agency, Zanetti Altstoetter und Team. The targeted audience of the one-day conference: publishers and decision makers from marketing and sales. The agenda was “sporty”, as fifteen speakers passed around the microphone, topped off by an expert debate round, and all this within nine hours including breaks. The topics ranged from general pieces about regional marketing to fascinating case studies from printing, online, and mobile.

Here are some of the highlights:

Thomas Szász, Smartshop Strategies: Finding Local Stratagies

The CEO of the Berliner agency delivered a clear message. For local media sales, the most important piece of advice is: “Become more like Google AdWords.” People investing in local marketing should begin considering whether or not they should be investing countless amounts of money in complex and ineffective forms of classic media, or whether they should just spend 500 Euro a month for an ad with Google. The time of relative claims and monopolies in the local marketing branch is at an end. Szász: “Customers pay for advertising for the search, not the content, or the contextual setting.”

The problem: local media has ignored changes in consumer trends in media for too long. The question of whether or not one can survive without the daily paper can clearly be answered with “yes”. This has something to do with distribution problems: the lack of qualified media advisors remains one of the major problems for publishing.

Alexander Wild, Feierabend: Ten Years of Experience With Civil Reporters

Feierabend.de, declared “Best Community in Germany” by the German Federal Ministry of Economics in 2008 and as the “oldest network with the most regional groups” by the Stiftung Warentest (Eng. German consumer organization), was also to be found. What’s remarkable: teens, twens, and the market dominating thirties are being targeted, but the golden league of sixty plus. With this focus, feierabend.de has 160,000 registered users in 120 so-called regional groups. Each regional group has its own forum with chat rooms, where information is exchanged about subjects out of the local area.

One of the chief attractions of the community that put a lot of worth on contacts between the online and real-world are product tests: seniors bring their perspective on offerings and report on their experiences. Many producers are thankful for the experience reports that the scouts provide, according to the network pioneer Wild. With this, they can improve products that are designed for older consumers. This does not only include kitchens, but also rollercoasters. Wild: “In a society that is only getting older, even theme parks will have to start focusing on retirees.”

Norma Demuro, ka-news: Hidden Champion For Regional News

The general manager for the completely online news portal for the city of Karlsruhe gave an interesting perspective about how strong the user community of 250,000 users – with a total population of 400,000 – is when it clicks into the site. Tram accidents, soccer, bank robberies – “these are our hypes,” she reports. With 1.2 million visits a month, ka-news can compete with the entire Baden-Württemberg region despite its limited coverage area, comparing to the Stuttgart Newspaper with 3.2 million visits.

Demuro however does not see any threat from the printing press. This is because they “are more local,” she explained confidently. User tests of ice cream parlors or mulled wine stands are always on the hotlist, and the “head profile”, a type of wanted poster for interesting people in and about Karlsruhe, has developed into quite the “who’s who”in the region with over 460 entries. And even the reader retention in the classic news report could make some daily newspapers a little jealous: a bank robbery, which may have been reported directly from a reader to the editorial staff before even to the police, can bring in over 500 comments within a small time period. The news site averages with about 250 comments per day.

What is also interesting is the approach of making a citizen report. These are newsletters from community groups in the region that can be downloaded as a PDF by any user. These should even be able to be send per HTML, as they are especially popular among users with an average age of 42. Demuro: “We are not only local and more local, but also sublocal.”

Haldun Tuncay, Westdeutsche Verlags- und Werbegesellschaft: Lokalkompass Setting Up Civil Communities

Even the giant WAZ-Mediengruppe loves civil reporters – in times of radical savings methods, this has become quite popular among publishers, but isn’t lacking on readers either. Tuncay, CEO of the WAZ sister company that published ad books in a large portion of North Rhine-Westphalia, is waiting patiently with impressive numbers. Lokalkompass.de, a platform with local news reports with 50 publishing houses and 100 freelance journalists backing it, has a remarkable 8,000 civil reporters. And 80 percent of the material posted by them comes religiously. There are a total of 50 local online communities on Lokalkompass and more than 200,000 unique visitors per month.

What is a bit problematic, however, is though reports from civil reporters are controlled for inappropriate material, such as smearing tactics, the accuracy of the posts is not verified. So it would technically be possible for someone to write a post about an alleged child molester in the neighborhood, starting a debate among users without first having this information confirmed from the police. It’s like walking a fine line, admits Tuncay.

Jan Gessenhardt, aperto move: No Mobile Success Without Usability

The most interesting examples for successful mobile strategies in the mobile branch are from the CEO of the Berliner service provider. His philosophy: don’t even think about trying to make your online offering mobile. This thought process has already failed with the “print to online” method. Gessenhardt: “Mobile solutions have to display scenarios not encountered online.”

What he means by this can be shown by different projects, like Immobilienscout24. It’s iPhone app offers those looking for new real estate completely new possibilities to look for their dream home or apartment while on the go. The app was declared the best German iPhone app at the iPhone Developer Conference with its 300,000 plus downloads in 2010.

The Berliner could also shine with their new emergency pharmacy finder that can be used through all possible channels: SMS, telephone, and mobile internet. The iPhone app is really taking off, with a usage rate of eight percent in 2009 to forty-four percent in 2010. Over 55,000 searches are conducted per month.

Conclusion: Exciting Premiere, But A Lot of Steadiness Required

Not everything presented at the Local Media Conference was really local. Matthias Setzer from PayPal would have been able to present his interesting presentation in a program at the Internet World. But that’s what the internet of today and its special problems is all about: just about anything can be broken down into the local category. Maybe it was the message from Joachim Vranken from the portal Kalaydo, as he stated: “There is no local internet.” A provocative statement, which he continued using. A shame.

Decision makers in the publishing world, who were in the focus of the conference, were shown an interesting mix of regional marketing possibilities, but also were confronted with a hard truth. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about online news portals, web radio, or even corporate publishers like BurdaYukom: there are not many left in the world of online contents that haven’t discovered the regional sector, giving daily papers a run for their money.

It will be interesting to see if any publishers will be admitting to having learned from any of the frightening reports next year. What would also be welcomed would be if the agenda were cut down a bit. Some of the 200 guests started to get a bit antsy throughout the day…