Battling
the big publishers: How History
Today fought off the
BBC; The
newstrade war zone: costly, wasteful and senseless; Sales
letters: working with benefits / breaking the rules; Advertisements:
creating promotions with your editorial team; Grazia vs
Vogue: how look and feel can win market share
Dear
Colleague,
The chief
business of a marketer is business.
Business
is about making money. But these days it’s much harder to make money from a
publication by selling it to readers, either directly or through the newstrade.
So if you can’t sell it, why not give it away? There are new ideas for freebies
announced every few months.
Ideas are
important. You can’t be a successful marketer unless you are creative. But it is
useless being creative if your creation doesn’t make money. The problem is that
giving something away free puts little value on it – for readers or for
advertisers. That hits revenue hard.
The free
distribution model is standard in some markets, especially for business
publications. It works as long as you dominate your market. But if you don’t
you are vulnerable. All it takes is a negative attitude from advertisers and
your publication will fold. Watch what happens to Shortlist, the free London magazine
We can no
longer rely on copy sales to turn a profit. Neither can we rely on
advertisement revenue. You must be much cleverer than that and take an
all-round creative approach to bring in revenue. With this in mind, you will
see from the front cover that Subscriptions Strategy now includes much more
than just subscriptions marketing.
Marketing-led
publishers now make around half their money from products and services other
than their main newsletter or magazine. Revenue comes from books, reports,
Internet access, on-line advertisements and events such as exhibitions,
workshops, conferences and seminars. In the States, teleconferencing is big
business. Google Adsense, which delivers targeted text and image ads to your
website, is making some Internet publishers pots of money.
Publishing
is changing fast and unless a publisher follows the money it will quickly
disappear into the distance.
Peter
Hobday
Members-only section Subscriptions Strategy issue 67 >>>