There was a time, within recent memory, in fact, when if you wanted to present a product or service to the pulp and paper industry, you simply bought an advertisement in one of the monthly magazines published for the industry.

No more.  Those magazines are no longer published.  For at least a couple of reasons.  One, the build-build-build fervor of the 1990s subsided into the great "Overcapacity Festival" of the 2000s.  Two, a tidal wave of consolidation among both papermakers and suppliers, washed over the industry.  Overcapacity served to reduce papermaker demand for equipment and services and consolidation reduced the number of suppliers seeking ad readers.  So long, magazines.

Print magazine advertising was never very efficient in the first place.  You had to buy the ad space, put some words and pictures in it, and hope your prospects even noticed it and then deigned to read it.  You had to live with the fact that most of the people perusing the pages of the magazine were not prospective buyers of your product or service.  Pulp and paper people, yes; prospective buyers, no.

But as nature abhors a vacuum, the advertising world rushed to fill the hole left by the demise of great chunks of printed media.  Enter the Internet.  And desktop, laptop and hand-held computers. 

Today, buyers--virtually all buyers--click onto the Internet for information about the products and services they need to buy.  It's almost funny how things have become reversed: advertisers once hoped prospects would notice and read their ads; now prospects are actively seeking supplier ads.  Prospects want and need the information that you want and need to give them.

For business success today, be on the Internet.  And be sure your Internet offerings are interesting and helpful.  We can help you with that.  Call Helen Roush at Paperitalo Publications, 937-403-8602.

Chuck Swann is Senior Editor of Paperitalo Publications.