Vcita’s sponsored webinar with E&P zeroed in on the same drumbeat every local publisher hears from small and midsize businesses (SMBs): show me outcomes. The session’s throughline—grounded in fresh survey data previewed by Vcita’s VP of Product Marketing, Rachel Nulman-Schapiro, and field-tested by industry strategist and E&P columnist Todd Handy—was blunt: publishers win when they make lead generation, attribution, and post-lead follow-through unmistakably valuable. As Handy put it, “Value for money is a churn killer… The more they spend with you and the more return they get, the more they’ll keep spending with you.”
What SMBs actually want (and how they say it)
Nulman-Schapiro’s read of more than 500 SMB responses was simple and actionable — and the complete report is still being compiled. It will be released first to all E&P readers. To ensure you get your copy, make sure you’re an E&P email subscriber at EditorandPublisher.com/SignUp.
“Small businesses… want actual tangible business results,” she said. That means more qualified leads, real customer acquisitions, and meaningful web and social engagement. She cautioned that the language can be misleading: some advertisers say “exposure” when what they really mean is new customers this month. “Sometimes what they say is we want exposure, but what they really mean is we want to have 10 new clients by the end of this month,” she noted, urging publishers to translate casual requests into specific, measurable outcomes.
Handy connected that expectation to publisher advantage: “Publishers are the audience builders. They’re the ones that have the relationships with those target audiences that the SMBs are looking for.” But that advantage only matters if it’s framed around outcomes the client values and can recognize.
The services baseline (and why you must be one on the “short list”)
Survey responses also underscored a new baseline of services SMBs will buy from someone: websites, social campaigns, and adjacent marketing utilities. “If small businesses… are expecting these, anyone that isn’t offering these services… is kind of missing out,” Nulman-Schapiro said. Her advice: make sure you’re one of the two or so vendors an SMB will even talk to. Handy agreed that the consolidation of vendor relationships puts the onus on publishers to widen the toolkit: “If all you sell is your endemic media… you’re never gonna make it. You’ve gotta be able to sell everyone else’s media.”
Churn’s clock starts on day one
The shock to the system came when the conversation turned to attrition. Nulman-Schapiro called the six-to-twelve-month spike “heartbreaking,” because it often outpaces the time required to prove a full sales cycle. “Between day one and day 180… this is crunch time. This is where we need to start delivering fast, showcase value, ASAP,” she said. SMBs cited missed goals, lack of transparency, and better competing offers as top reasons for walking. “When I say lack of transparency, I think that could also just mean… what am I even paying for here?” she added.
Handy quantified the operational pain: “You’ll have about 35% churn on a monthly basis… you gotta go get 35% just to get back to whole… let alone if you’ve got growth goals.” His practical yardstick for retention never wavered: “If they spend a dollar with you and you give them $3, they will keep spending.”
Make measurement mutual—before the first impression runs
Both speakers insisted the cure for churn starts before the insertion order. Handy advocated a four-question client needs analysis that every seller can memorize: “Number one, who are you trying to reach? Number two, what do you want them to do? Number three, how are you going to measure that? And number four, what’s the return that you’re looking for on that?” Ambiguity at setup is the seed of dissatisfaction later. “Let’s say it’s click-through rate… and so we deliver a really great click-through rate, but you don’t get any conversions… What you really were looking for was conversions and we should have known that from the very beginning,” he said.
Nulman-Schapiro tied the same principle to reporting cadence: with today’s tools “there’s nowhere to hide.” If numbers lag, use the transparency to course-correct collaboratively: “Here’s what we’re going to do about it.”
Download the slide deck displayed during the broadcast
From ‘we delivered leads’ to ‘we helped you convert’
The panel’s most pointed “inconvenient truth” was that merely delivering leads is not enough. “If we’re generating these leads… we can’t just dump [them] on the local advertiser and say… work your magic,” Nulman-Schapiro said. Delivery mechanics matter: “Is email a realistic channel?… I’ve seen… a spreadsheet at the end of the week… If someone called me five days ago… there is absolutely no way I didn’t find someone else if that first business never got back to me.” The assignment for publishers in her view: audit how, when, and where leads are delivered and whether that empowers prompt response.
Handy has seen the fallout when that loop is broken: “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had advertisers cancel… ‘we got a whole bunch of phone calls, but we didn’t get any conversion.’” His probing questions—how fast did you return calls, how many follow-ups did you make—often expose that the breakdown is in the SMB workflow, not the media. Without shared visibility into post-lead handling, the publisher still takes the blame.
Grow ARPA with SaaS-like add-ons that stick
Beyond lead handling, Nulman-Schapiro pressed publishers to widen the value proposition with tools SMBs already need—payments, scheduling, CRM-lite workflows, and email marketing. “We use a KPI… ARPA, the annual revenue per account… We’ve had partners that have increased, you know, by 40, 50% per account,” she said. Handy unpacked why this matters: “If you were selling… invoicing and billing tools, and they adopted those 100%, they’re never going to leave… Now you have monthly recurring revenue, whereas, ‘oh, I can take or leave my advertising campaign.’ Software as a service is all about building monthly and annual recurring revenue, MRR and ARR.”
He also framed the buy-versus-build choice plainly: “You’re not gonna build this platform… Why not just sell what they’ve got?” For resource-constrained sales teams, his test as a former Chief Digital Officer was pragmatic: “Okay… we’re already selling this and now we’re going to sell this. I’m going to need help… What is your support? How are you gonna support me?”
AI as a force multiplier for time-starved SMBs
Any conversation about SaaS in 2025 includes AI, and Nulman-Schapiro was emphatic about its everyday utility for small businesses. “Small businesses are time starved,” she said. Embedding AI to draft replies, suggest pricing, auto-generate invoices, and find the best appointment slot isn’t hype; it’s margin. “Whatever workload we’re able to automate… that is tremendous value.” Adoption is rising quickly: “So many of them are already using it and… so many… are interested in using it,” she added.
Handy’s take for publishers was crisp: “Publishers who bring AI enabled tools to SMBs will be indispensable and not interchangeable.” Helping a two-person shop perform like a team of ten without adding headcount, he argued, makes you the partner they can’t replace.
Operationalizing the partnership (and piloting before you scale)
To close, Nulman-Schapiro outlined Vcita’s inTandem partnership model: a white-label app that gives SMB clients a single pane of glass to see campaign analytics, communicate with leads, move opportunities through a pipeline, and even process payments—closing the loop that typically goes dark for publishers after lead delivery. “We can also start small… a slim lead management solution… and then from there, we can grow and upsell,” she said, noting API options for deeper integration. The business case is both defensive and expansive: “Providing something… in the small businesses’ day to day… is much stickier. That’s also something that can help combat churn.”
For teams worried about “one more thing to sell,” she added flexible go-to-market support: “If you want us to train you… we provide all the materials… The alternative is that we can take on some of that selling… under your brand name.” And for fence-sitters, she flagged a low-commitment path: a pilot or POC to see how the offer fits the existing book and whether clients embrace it.
Takeaways for publishers
The case for retooling is compelling and concrete. Set goals with a four-question CNA. Instrument campaigns so value is visible early—well before the six-month cliff. Fix lead delivery so SMBs respond fast. Then extend beyond media to SaaS-like tools that create daily reliance, higher ARPA, and recurring revenue. Or, in Handy’s evergreen language: “If they spend a dollar with you and you give them $3, they will keep spending.” And in Nulman-Schapiro’s equally pragmatic framing, publishers who align around ROI, transparency, and time-saving workflows won’t just sell more—they’ll keep more.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here