Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

A good article on Roy Greenslade's "Greenslade" blog, talks about the major investment of £650m (about $1.3 billion) that Rupert Murdoch made in News International's printing plant in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire. You can go to his blog to read the specifics of the investment.

I bring it up here to emphasize the importance of understanding transitional periods of a business, and how we should respond to them.

Everything Murdoch does with this investment in the dying newspaper business, seems counterintuitive on the face of it, but in reality it isn't; it's smart business.

The reason is, Murdoch understands there's going to be a continual slide in newspaper readership, and only the very best will continue to succeed, even though at lesser levels than in the past. That's the underlying reason for the large investment.

Even more important to me, is understanding the transitional nature of the industry, and how Murdoch is dealing with it.

He could just let it fizzle out, but he knows that the transition to almost total digital news will take time to happen. This move of his isn't a denial of the realities, but understanding the nature of change as it applied to his industry. It'll take a significant period of time for the transition to happen, and that provides opportunity to extend that transition time by running leaner than he has in the past, and going to the top of the heap in the markets he competes in.

Another smart aspect of the move, is he is sure to get contract business from his competitors, because of how lean he will be running the business, which they can't compete with. So even though their competitor makes money off of them, it's cheaper than they could do; a wise strategy by Murdoch.

Even though we'll always hear the idea that everything is changing at incredibly fast speeds, we have to be careful not to buy into the hoopla too much. Even though change is happening fast, it only happens as human beings are able to respond. That's part of the secret to understanding transitional periods.

Take the case of Murdoch and the newspaper industry, it's similar to network news on television. People that were raised on it continue to tune in, even though the average age of the viewer is increasing. In the U.S., viewers average in their early sixties in age.

So even though that is transitioning, there will be opportunity for years ahead in that market, even though it will gradually decrease as the demographic literally dies off. What's important is the strength and loyalty of the demographic is predictable, and very easy to measure over a period of time with longevity tables.

As online marketers, we must understand these transitional periods. If we completely abandon one, we could leave a lot of money on the table. When everyone says everything's going to the Internet, that's partially true. The reality is it's going to take years to get there.

So in essence, transitional periods are times when we have our feet in the past and the future at the same time. I say the past, meaning in this case: a declining market. The past is really a slowing present, while the future is where the faster growth and longevity will come.

We need to learn to take care of the present, while making sure we don't allow it to deter our future strategies. That's what the huge investment by Rupert Murdoch is all about. Note that he didn't do this before acquiring MySpace and implementing a lot of strategies through Fox Interactive Media. He got those things going first, and has the future taken care of, now he's looking at prolonging the present, so the future strategies have time to take hold and generate significant income, while the current business markets gradually decline.