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Beware the intelligent media amateur
13 June 2008
BBC News
Here we have four intelligent media amateurs: Janet Street Porter, Peter Jay, Andrew Neil and Andreas Whittam Smith.
These four highly-regarded media people show how failure is often due to simple amateurism.
The professional publisher
Experienced publishers succeed through drawing together a community of three elements: audience, advertisers and the product.
A publisher builds and maintains market share by giving equal attention to all three while keeping within a pre-determined budget.
The spreadsheet
The budget is represented by ‘the spreadsheet’, which is the omnipotent influence in any business enterprise, to which all personnel must adhere. Unless the spreadsheet is accepted and followed by all, the company is in danger of failing in its primary purpose – to provide a service and make a profit.
A company will struggle and die if it fails in any of those fundamental areas. This, then, is a story of how not to run a media company.
Editors, politicians and publishers
Business, finance and economics writers are journalists. They talk about, but rarely have any positive experience of running a business. They operate in a separate but parallel world. But given the opportunity, they will often try to sound like an expert and can sometimes pull it off. Like politicians, they can be put in charge of huge resources without any relevant experience.
Politicians and journalists are bedfellows and thus share similar characteristics, as I will demonstrate.
Famous amateurs (1) Andreas Whittam Smith
The Independent newspaper struggles because, way back in 1986, the editor and launch team failed to see the importance of classified advertising. The Guardian and The Times bagged it all. Classified advertising may be an obvious revenue opportunity to us marketer (take a look at Google to see how much money there is in classified), but The Independent was run by its editorial team and they just couldn’t see it.
The man in control, editor Andreas Whittam Smith, was advised by his business writers. Launching with a healthy circulation of over 400,000 in 1989, it soon developed financial problems and Whittam Smith left in 1994.
Famous amateurs (2) Peter Jay
Peter Jay is a famous example of how an intelligent amateur can sell a media idea to unsuspecting backers. Jay was an editor who wrote on economics and business for The Times. In those days, Jay’s ability to baffle readers and listeners was impressive. Now, of course, most of us are wise to the syndrome and have learned to say:
‘If I don’t understand it, I won’t invest.’
Warren Buffet taught us that bit of wisdom during the dotcom bubble that burst in 2000.
However, the mess we are writing about here was back in 1983 when we were still ignorant. TV-am was launched with Peter Jay as the founding chairman, with a ‘mission to explain’, a concept supported by his impressive intellectual grasp. But viewers weren’t impressed with the programming and watched BBC instead. TV-am floundered and the managers were overthrown in a coup in 1984.
Famous amateurs (3) Andrew Neil
Andrew Neil was the editor of The Sunday Times and The Economist, and he enters our league of amateur publishers at third place.
As Peter Jay with TV-am, Andrew Neil was chosen to launch the TV channel Sky as founding chairman in 1988. And like TV-am, Sky struggled financially for years. A merger with its main competitor BSB injected healthier advertising contracts and equipment, but the new station, renamed BSkyB, did not make a profit for ten years. Like TV-am, managers were removed and the owner’s persistence paid off. Sky is now one of the most profitable television companies in Europe.
Andrew Neil moved on to run newspapers.
The European was launched by Robert Maxwell in 1990. The Barclay brothers bought it in 1992 and invested $110 million in the title with Andrew Neil as editor until it folded in 1999. Since 2005 Neil has presided over another folly, The Business, launched in 1996. It struggled until February 2008, losing around £3m a year. It has now closed and morphed into Spectator Business, a new magazine with a largely free circulation of 42,000.
For Neil, this is a fortunate move, as it is difficult to measure editorial success when you are not relying on people to buy your magazine. Spectator Business will be measured by advertisement revenue, sold by a separate, largely autonomous Ad Sales department. If and when things go wrong, they will be blamed.
Unlike Peter Jay, Andrew Neil is a riveting presenter and journalist, a formidable interrogator of any politician that comes his way. Unfortunately those impressive investigatory skills do not transfer well to other areas.
If Andrew Neil, for example, constantly inerogates and interferes with the marketing team or any other specialist department then strife, ridicule and high staff turnover will result.
“I was always smart enough to listen to people who knew what they were doing.”
Quincy Jones on his first movie score on collaborating with Michel LeGrande
The best approach any publisher can have is an open mind, to delegate to the experts – especially when faced with colleagues with more expertise and experience.
Andrew Neil’s writing and broadcasting skills are shamefully underused as he whiles away his time playing publisher and businessman.
Famous amateurs (4) Janet Street-Porter
Janet Street-Porter is an award-winning editor, presenter and producer.
Street-Porter was chosen to launch the new TV station L!VE TV, operated by Mirror Group Newspapers on cable television from 1995 to 1999. The station was headed by Kelvin MacKenzie, ex-editor of the Sun newspaper, with Janet Street-Porter as Managing Director.
With two grand editors running the show, disaster beckoned. After repeated clashes with MacKenzie over content, Street-Porter left after only five months.
Amateurs usually soldier on until terminated by worried patrons, but MacKenzie left voluntarily and by 1999 the channel was showing soft porn. In 2006, the name was changed to Babeworld to reflect the channel’s gradual change of focus towards ’adult material‘.
Media direction, influence and control
TV stations and other mass media are able to influence huge audiences and so they, in turn, are monitored and influenced by governments.
In the UK, the government secretly set up the Information Research Department to circulate propaganda against people and movements considered to be ‘anti-British’. Material was distributed via ‘friendly’ editors and correspondents within the press and the BBC.
There are other ‘information’ departments within government. The Central Office of Information publicises favourable aspects of British life. Downing Street gives distorted press briefings on behalf of the Prime Minister of the day. All three departments are engaged in editorial direction: influencing and controlling the media.
The Government of the day will attempt to influence TV channels by threatening, for example, to reform, reduce or remove the BBC’s ‘licence’ tax income. The BBC governors (all amateurs mostly appointed by the Government), terrified they will not receive honors and recognition, seek to influence the BBC directors (all professionals) who are responsible for programming.
Politicians and media
Politicians and media folk are bitchy bedfellows – there is no trust, simply one-sided attempts to influence and control, which is why the media constantly snipes back.
There is another reason why the relationship fails. As with any unsatisfactory marriage, both parties are missing a vital ingredient to a successful liaison. In this case it’s financial acumen: it’s quite a strain on family life if you are going broke and cannot understand a spreadsheet.
Politicians and editors are alike: they both seek to engage and build an audience, a politician for power and an editor for influence. A minister’s skills are political and social; an editor’s are creative; both are able communicators. But with a few notable exceptions (Michael Heseltine is one who manages to straddle the political and publishing role), most politicians and editors have no commercial skills. In fact, most hold the world of business in disdain, which is why there are so few real business people or programmes on TV or radio.
To put either an editor or a politician in charge of a big-spending department can only work if rigorous commercial management prevents overspending and wastefulness.
Put an editor in charge and a pattern emerges: economic failure, argument and bankruptcy. TV companies, like governments, are too big to liquidate however, so survival of those involved is usually assured. A saviour is found and the people concerned reinvent themselves.
As for the politicians who, with no appropriate experience whatsoever, find themselves running massive government departments, their mission, rather than fight for more funds, advocate for the government and launch initiatives, should be ‘to simplify’, which brings us to Alfred Harmsworth and the world of successful publishing.
Lessons from 1896 on how to simplify news
Alfred Harmsworth launched his new paper, the Daily Mail, with the concept: ‘The Busy Man’s Daily Newspaper’. His ideas were groundbreaking over here in the UK, but the concept for the Daily Mail was borrowed from the USA.
Harmsworth engaged all classes of reader, from generals to foot soldiers, from ladies to housemaids. He did this in various ways. His instruction to editors and writers was ‘to simplify’. Sounds easy, but many otherwise intelligent people find it impossible to do.
Alfred Harmsworth was the first UK newspaper publisher to introduce women’s pages because he recognised he couldn’t afford to ignore half the buying public. He supported the suffragette movement for the same reason.
He also paid for readers’ stories because he knew editors are often isolated from their market, relying on a personally selected, closed collection of writers for editorial content.
That editorial isolation is changing as the media discovers it is often easier and cheaper to gather reports from people actually experiencing what they are writing about.
Thus we have the huge popularity of Blogs and other first-hand reporting.
One day, we may even have people from the world of business editing and writing the newspaper business sections.
Building email lists fast
13 June 2008
At a recent newsletter publishers conference in London, a speaker from the USA explained how long b2b letters were outpulling short letters.
This kind of advice could multiply revenue for the average business publisher, so here is a great example of how to combine long copy with ruthless email-capture techniques.
The technique will work for both business and consumer websites.
Here’s a long letter for an internet marketing book:
Ghel internet marketing letter
The owner of the site, Derek Gehl doesn’t simply put that copy up on his site and hope for the best. First, he built a big list of email opt-in prospects and then sends out regular email promotions like the one here:
Peter, here are my email ‘trade secrets’
That email contains the link that takes the visitor to the long letter above.
Mr Gehl claims to have made more than $291,000 in just 30 days. To see how he makes his money and how he collected a claimed 45,000 names in the same period we took a look at his website here:
Here is how it works (and it’s not all obvious what the bits are that make the money):
The site is aimed at start-ups and others who want to know how to market their website.
Unlike many sites, The Internet Marketing Centre doesn’t just carry a single sign-up form somewhere at the top of the home page.
Instead the home page is full of enticing copy in small boxes offering further information. When you click on one of the boxes, a long letter appears, then an opt-in form pops up (illustrated at the top of this page).
The Derek Gehl method captures most email names and addresses with these pop-ups. Those readers of our marketing newsletter Subscriptions Strategy will know how to use pop-ups to do the same. Other readers would be wrong to assume that pop-ups in general are no longer effective because they annoy.
But what happens next? After the pop-up disappears, the reader is treated to a strong long letter. There is lots of yellow ink! These letters sell products at various pricing levels such as:
- Could you be an Internet millionaire? $197
- How to start an ebay business $197
- ‘Start a newsletter’, which sells an e-mail marketing system called Mailloop 7 $379
- Affiliate management program for $677
Derek Gehl has taken email capture to its limit here. I have not found any other publisher who is so relentless.
Offering a free download or further information in exchange for a name and address is something few publishers do, so it’s worth trying.
Judging the quality of names
The vital next step, of course, is to see how responsive those email names are. How many of your auto responder messages are opened? What percentage click through to your landing page? And most importantly: how many people buy?
One can get lost in all the claims made by Internet marketing experts. Traffic, unique visitors and all the key measurement percentages can take up a lot of time to set up and analyse.
But the only measure worth its salt is the number of buyers you get.
Is your loose insert intrusive?
6 June 2008
To be successful, marketing must be intrusive.
That may sound surprising. Intrusion is a violation of your reader’s peace and quiet. It’s annoying.
But the fact is – unless you push your message into enough faces you won’t gain market share.
There is a limit to how far you can push, of course, but most publishers don’t go anywhere near it. Fear and a lack of knowledge hold them back. But although it is unwise for your promotion to get up someone’s nose, it needs to be pushed firmly beneath it.
Intrusion is what consumers usually respond to best. But many marketers don’t use any kind of intrusive promotion. They see too much of them and they don’t like them.
That is where the mistake is made – our personal attitudes have little relevance to professional marketing.
At the last big publishers’ conference I attended, a key speaker spoke out against pop-up email capture boxes on websites. (An email capture box is simply a digitalised loose insert). His rationale was:
“Pop-up boxes are intrusive. They are annoying. So don’t use them.”
The first two points I agreed with: those boxes can be intrusive and annoying. But how he made the jump to ‘So don’t use them’ mystified me and a number of other delegates who use them.
Issue 69 of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter explains how to make a seemingly innocuous common-place card measuring 6×4 inches into an intrusive and effective builder of market share.
If that sounds like a tough brief, you are right. Building market share is something that inserts rarely achieve.
You can order issue 69 of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter here:
Subscriptions Strategy newsletter trial
How Barack Obama handles objections
5 June 2008
‘Handling objections’ is a vital part of marketing. If you don’t deal with important objections up front, then people will just turn away. They won’t buy what you are selling.
You have to ask: “Is there any reason why people won’t buy this?”
In previous articles I explained how Barack Obama has dealt with the primary objection against voting for him: he lacks experience.
There are other objections, mostly handled with his ‘It’s time for a change’ message. So far so good – it’s all good marketing.
Now, in June 2008, all the political commentators are asking who Barack Obama will choose as his running mate. The question arises because a large sector of the electorate, ‘white working class males’, are perceived as unlikely to vote for Obama. He just does not appeal to them.
The area he has the biggest problem is the Appalachian mountain regions, which include (loosely) the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia South Carolina, Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, and the Ouachita mountains in Arkansas and Oklahoma.
I go to Hill Billy country
I speak to a ‘hill person’ in the Ouachita mountains, and get this reply:
“The real Hill Billys are for the death penalty, against abortion, against gun control, can’t make ends meet, and see color instantly, because they don’t know anything about people of color. I don’t know where Obama stands on these important issues, but surely he’ll let me know soon.”
How will Obama handle the Appalachians?
Barack Obama is a marketing man. Marketing, however, is something few politicians and commentators know about. So they do not yet appreciate the methods.
Yes, political commentators see his new and highly successful fund raising techniques and will write millions of words about them. But they fail to connect this ability to his wider marketing ability.
As a marketer, Barack Obama will not view his problems in old, political terms. He will look for the best way to remove objections people have to voting for him.
The true marketing approach is not to ‘choose a running mate that will appeal to white working class male voters’. That misses the whole point.
The marketing approach is simply to do what is necessary to obtain the greatest market share – to dominate the market and win the presidency.
Obama will build market shares by removing any major objection to voting for him. How he does this is wide open.
Watch this space, because, as we say, the past is no guide to the future. I will explain the marketing principles his team are using as each one unfolds ..
Warfare Marketing: lessons from General George S Patton
31 May 2008
U S Army photo
General George S Patton is widely considered the best field commander of World War II and was certainly the officer most feared by the Germans. His success was based on rapid offensive action and an understanding of how people react in the field. Patton’s principles of warfare* can be applied to great effect in marketing today.
General George S Patton
Patton knew a lot about marketing – he just called it something else. A marketer operates in a theatre of war (market), has troops to command and motivate (colleagues and staff), and weapons (promotions) to test and deploy in the field. His enemies are his competitors. Every piece of land, every enemy soldier killed or captured increases his dominance and control of the market. His troops are continually reconnoitring (market testing) and immediately they find a soft opening (responsive prospects), he launches a full, audacious attack to maximise the ground (market share) gained.
That’s the theory. Below is how it works in practice.
The effectiveness of ‘rapid, offensive action’
General Patton’s Seventh Army took Sicily in just 38 days in 1943, killing or capturing 113,350 enemy troops. Patton regarded war as a very simple thing, with the determining characteristics being self-confidence, speed and audacity. This applies to marketing: ‘defensive’ (as opposed to ‘offensive’) marketing diverts us from effective action. That is, it produces plenty of noise, uses up staff time and money but doesn’t win ground. In Sicily ..
“..The (enemy) spent tremendous effort in time, labour and money building defensive positions. I am sure that .. the fact that they trusted to defensive positions reduced their power to fight. Had they spent one-third as much effort in fighting as they did in building, we never could have taken the positions.”
Apart from learning how to sit and wait, a marketer will gain little practical experience from defensive marketing. Experience is what defines our personal value as a marketer. Experience is, for example, the most important thing we are asked about in a job interview.
We can separate ‘defensive’ from ‘offensive’ marketing by examining the tactical methods we use to win readers:
Offensive marketing
• Direct mail
• Advertisements
• Email promotions
• Google Adwords
• Leaflets
• Internet banner ads on other websites
• Upgrade and extension offers
Defensive marketing
• Your website
• In-magazine promotions: inserts, ads etc
• Partner subscription websites such as
www.magazine-group.co.uk and www.letssubscribe.com
• Events
• Social network sites such as myspace and facebook
A website, for example, takes months, years to develop. Then it sits, waiting for someone to find it and be captured.
Unfortunately, your website is unlikely to gain your title much market share unless you are aggressively capturing significant quantities of email addresses, despatching regular email promotions and using Adwords to bring in new prospects. Most publishers’ websites don’t do these things so to avoid wasting resources a website should be delegated to technical staff to handle as it isn’t a front-line operation. This applies to all activities in the ‘Defensive Marketing’ category.
Capturing and protecting market share
The ‘offensive’ items on the list are where creative, effective marketing takes place: prospects are uncovered and significant new business is built. In marketing, our questions are the same as in warfare:
• How much of the market (ground) will our methods capture?
• What’s the Return On Investment (losses vs gains)?
As in war, it’s vital for a publisher to be ready to attack, otherwise you wake up as Cosmopolitan did to find its new rival Glamour at number one in the field with a circulation of 550,066 against Cosmo’s 460,276 – a figure that hasn’t gone up in ten years.
Or, if you are running Virgin TV, you find BskyB has stolen 40,000 of your hard-won satellite TV subscribers through a brilliant flanking manoeuvre, taking back the channels it was renting to Virgin TV and the subscribers with them. In just one quarter, BskyB increased its market share from 8.2m to 8.6m while Virgin stayed below 4m. Defence can be an expensive option.
“Battles are won by fire and movement. The purpose of movement is to get the fire in a more advantageous place to play on the enemy. This is from the rear or the flank.”
Cheap and weak – partner websites, in-magazine ads and inserts
Unfortunately, many consumer publishers leave the bulk of their marketing to online magazine subscription agents – a cheap and weak compromise.
Agents won’t win market share. Why? Because your competitors use them too. The aim is to hunt down prospects and to abdicate that responsibility to others endangers your position.
Online agents are simply alternative delivery channels. As with news trade distribution, costs should not come out of a promotion and marketing budget. Neither are in-magazine page advertisements and loose inserts ‘marketing’. All are merely a way of changing the mode of delivery, from news trade to mail.
Attacking costs money, but in the end it’s far cheaper than defence. You only get what you pay for. Expending your budget and creative energy in a proactive way is the only way to bring in profit and volume.
“Pacifists would do well to study the Seigfried and Maginot Lines, remembering that these defences were forced; that Troy fell; that the walls of Hadrian succumbed; that the Great Wall of China was futile; and that, by the same token, the mighty seas which are alleged to defend us can also be circumvented by a resolute and ingenious opponent. In war, the only sure defence is offence, and the efficiency of offence depends on the warlike souls of those conducting it.”
Who should lead your marketing?
The people creating and monitoring your direct mail and email promotions are your front-line troops. They know what works and what’s needed. They will create the circumstances and future plans for success.
“Plans must be simple and flexible. They should be made by the people who are going to execute them. Orders should not exceed a page and a half of typewritten text and it was my practice not to issue orders longer than this. Usually they can be done on one page.”
A Publisher or MD should not get involved with promotions or when or where they are used. The marketer makes the plan. If the marketers decide it is worthwhile to capture new ground with a direct mail pack, or Google Adwords with follow-up emails, then that should be their decision.
A plan should be stated on one page maximum. The most effective plan I have worked to has been a single sentence stating the Return On Investment target. A long and involved plan indicates either poor strategic thinking or a lack of confidence in your ability.
All a publisher needs to monitor progress is a single report containing monthly ROI figures, the volume of new business achieved, with current renewal rates.
Speedy test marketing follow-up
A publication should be promoted with daring and speed – as soon as your test marketing hits target.
“Don’t delay. The best is the enemy of the good. By this I mean that a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week…Some officers require urging, others require suggestions, very few have to be restrained.”
Prospects are lost if you wait for the perfect piece of creative work, for the perfect list of names, the perfect time. When a test hits target there is no sense in waiting for a spring or autumn campaign.
Many things can hold a marketer back. A lack of budget should not be one of them: cash flow should be positive because subscribers pay for their product in advance. Restraint signals a lack of confidence in marketing ability because if there are prospects ready to be captured, you should be capturing them.
If, however, you lack experience then caution on the part of management is understandable. But then there is something wrong with management, isn’t there? Expertise is vital.
If you are not directing offensive activity perhaps no-one is qualified to act as a true marketer. Perhaps there is no real marketing taking place?
In marketing as in warfare you need to maintain a theatre of action to train personnel and keep up-to-date with what works and what does not.
The enormous value of a bloody nose
Theory has no use until it is practised. An MD cannot direct action from afar: he needs to be with his troops. His front-line are the advertisement sales and marketing/circulation teams and those editorial staff who are actually in daily contact with their readers.
“All officers must be vitally interested in everything that interests the soldier. Usually you will gain a great deal of knowledge by being interested, but, even if you do not, the fact that you appear interested has a very high morale influence on the soldier”
The marketing manager should be in the mailroom sifting through and analysing response. Theory is important, but there is no value in attending a seminar or training session if you don’t test and use those techniques in the field.
Like General Patton you need to be in the thick of it. His Third Army learned how to out-blitzkrieg the enemy, attacking with speed and surprise to prevent them from implementing a coherent defence. Patton swept from West Brittany, through France into Germany, capturing more land, enemy troops and ordinance with far fewer men than other allied Generals who ‘regrouped’, waiting months for the ‘right conditions’.
A bloody nose educates and informs with invaluable experience. Read this recent email from a marketing manager who uses our Subscriptions Strategy website. She was not happy:
“Print advertising does not work!!! I wished I’d discovered your website before I paid out £10,000 in advertising our books in other publications…hardly any response. I paid £4,000 pounds for a half page spread. Your website said that print advertising does not work for people who only have small budgets – I agree. Anyway, that’s a bit of feedback from someone who walked into a job as Marketing Manager and knew very little about marketing, but learning all the time and getting better (I hope!).”
Losing £10,000 sounds a tough lesson, but is part of a necessary educational process. Until a marketer is bloodied in battle, he or she cannot function at optimum efficiency, either strategically or tactically. Good marketers capture tough targets and are people your competitors won’t want to come up against.
With superior experience in the field a team will build a far greater number of loyal customers and revenue because she or he plans well, wastes less time and suffers fewer losses. An experienced marketing ‘General’ can capture a whole market in short order.
If a team is not fighting, it can’t move ahead. If you are not moving ahead – that is, growing volume or revenue year on year – then you can’t capture or protect your market share. You are a sitting duck waiting to be overrun – or already dead in the field. You should move on to a new theatre of operations.
*All quotes except the last are from War As I Knew It, by General George S Patton Jr.
This article first appeared in In Circulation magazine May / June 2008 issue.
© Peter Hobday 2008
Is yours a strategic marketing organisation?
27 May 2008
Ten signs of a strategic marketing organisation
By Julian Turner, Chief Executive, Electric Word
Note from the editor:
We first published this excellent article in the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter, in issue 49 (we are now on issue 69). This kind of from-the-top advice doesn’t go out of date. So here it is again to guide all those publishers who need to check if their marketing is up to best practice standards:
“Good marketing involves far too many decisions for them all to be made by senior managers, and the organisations that are best at making the right strategic decisions are those in which the decision-making is spread more broadly.”
Here’s a checklist of top ten characteristics of the strategic marketing operation:
1. Clearly expressed financial objectives: are we aiming for cash or profits? Now or in two years’ time?
2. Time gained through training and delegation
3. Marketing spending determined by results not budgets
4. Everyone bought into the principle of measurement, from data entry to finance
5. Campaign results recorded accurately and analysed quickly
6. Marketers thinking like investment fund managers: is this a worthwhile investment for the company? Can I invest more?
7. Key measures understood so that decisions can be taken quickly – by marketers
8. Marketers’ incentives aligned with objectives
9. A renewing sub is understood to be likely to be more valuable than a new one
10. Urgency: subscribers not acquired today will never be caught up – especially on a new launch.
Loose insert marketing
23 May 2008
Loose insert marketing will always be popular
Here are some marketing proposals I can guarantee will get passed, because they cost next to nothing. From experience I can say these will prove popular with senior managers.
Making money appear out of a highly restricted budget is not easy, but that’s what many marketers are expected to do. The best way to approach the task is to imagine you are going broke and your company is desperate for cash. (That’s what many an M.D. would have you believe anyway.) Here is what you do:
How can you boost response to a loose insert?
Sadly, creating a loose insert represents the main marketing effort for many publishers. A loose insert, of course, isn’t marketing. For consumer publishers it’s simply changing the way you deliver your magazine to your reader. And for most controlled circulation publishers the revenue wouldn’t pay for an office party.
Most insert cards are copied from other magazines. That’s why they all look alike. We could choose almost any insert card for this demonstration.
It’s no help to be critical without being constructive. So with some creative thought we will turn things around. We will increase the revenue received from a typical insert without spending any more money.
Six ways to boost response to your insert
Here are six measures to take. The we explain the resulting benefits:
1. Cut colour
2. Add in three and two year payment options
3. ‘Bill me’ orders accepted only. Cut out other payment options
4. Offer a more exciting incentive (extracted from a previous editorial feature?)
5. Include three inserts in your publication instead of one
6. Write your copy so the insert sells when it’s placed in other titles
The benefits
Here is what you have accomplished:
1. Printing in one colour: costs reduced
2. Including longer subscription terms: increase revenue by 10% to 15%
3. ‘Bill-me’ orders only: orders increase by 50% to 100%. Mailing list built up
4. Incentive: ‘red-hot’ report lifts response by 40%
5. Multiple inserts: 40% uplift in revenue
6. Insert swaps in other publications: lots more money for nothing
Costs have increased by printing more inserts, the free report for subscribers and running a billing series
However, you have reduced costs by printing in only one colour. And with each invoice you send out to new subscribers, you can up sell and up-grade your subscribers by selling ancillary products.
Your business will really start to rock and roll.
The subscription volume and revenue is multiplied many times. Because your mailing list is suddenly making great leaps in growth, you can sell other products and bring in new revenue through more frequent list rentals.
Most loose inserts are created and designed in house, and copied from others. But as a rule of thumb a specialist copywriter can usually increase response and revenue as described above by selling each publication on its unique benefits and steering things the right way.
You’ll find other inexpensive yet highly effective ways to bring in more money from your marketing spend on this website.
Why is The Week magazine so costly?
23 May 2008
“The Week: condensed, intelligent and all you need to know”
Everyone likes The Week, especially us.
The Week magazine exists on subscription sales. It would have folded without them.
The owner, Dennis Publishing, is a marketing-led company which is rare in UK publishing: managers of UK publishers are generally rooted in print and find both subscriptions and Online marketing difficult to embrace.
Both disciplines are, of course, branches of direct marketing.
Why is The Week so costly?
Actually it’s not. Not in the USA, anyway. A years subscription costs $39.50 for 50 issues.
But in the UK 50 issues of The Week costs £79.99 – four times as much.
Clearly, a high circulation isn’t that important to the publishers at The Week. The subscription rate is probably set high so the subscriptions marketing company can sell by telephone and everyone makes a decent cut.
The Week is far more readable than its competitors, but as it’s hugely more expensive it has a much smaller readership. See the price comparisons below (they should be roughly accurate, although please bear in mind subscription rates change from time to time.)
Far more readable
Here is an opening paragraph from The Week, to show you how they handle a story:
“Fifty years ago, our dustbins were full of ashes from domestic coal fires, on which much household rubbish was burnt. Now, due to clean air rules and central heating, we burn nothing at home. Instead, every man, woman and child in Britain chucks away half a ton of rubbish a year, the weight of a small car; London fills an Olympic-size swimming pool with rubbish every half-hour.”
The style is informative and interesting – like a conversation with a knowledgeable friend. And like a friend, The Week can produce some unexpected laughs:
“London fills an Olympic-size swimming pool with rubbish every half-hour.”
Well excuse me, but which London Olympic swimming pool is being filled with rubbish every half-hour? And who empties it? It would have to be cleared around 48 times a day.
That swimming pool could be the subject of a great documentary.
Use the link below to go to The Week’s website:
There is not much on The Week’s UK website at present, which is a shame. When traveling abroad it’s far more productive to catch up with the news by reading The Week. Most other news sources are filled with daily nonsense and needs filtering.
The US website however, is really good. My only suggestion for an improvement would be to offer an Online subscription as well as a print subscription – at a reduced rate of course.
How the subscriptions are priced
Here are some figures on weekly magazine subscription rates. There are some enormous differences that will impact on circulation – and effect the advertising page yield a title can achieve.
In the USA, The Week’s rate is just $39.50 for 50 issues, around $115 less than in the UK:
The Economist
USA offer: 25 issues for $49.90
UK offer: 52 issues for £94.40 UK, paid by direct debit
Time magazine
USA offer:
A. 84 (28 free) issues for $20.00 by credit/debit card or Paypal
B. 20 for $56 ‘bill me’
UK offer:
A. 54 issues for £34.99
B. 81 for £34.99 credit card
The Week:
UK offer: 52 issues for £79.99
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New Statesman
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The Week case study
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Fundraising by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
22 May 2008
Presidential race USA
You can see from the graph above that Barack Obama, US presidential candidate, has attracted much more funding than his opponent Hillary Clinton – around 23% more.
His team understands how to use the Internet to appeal to new and small donors.
Hillary and Bill Clinton are long-term, highly effective political fund-raisers. Their presidential experience in Washington should mean more funds go their way. Political funds do, in fact, go there way. But those funds, big as they are, just haven’t been enough.
Other, smaller people insist on having their say and sending in their money.
If you break down the figures, the reason why Barack Obama is ahead with his fund-raising is that he has attracted more individual contributions with his clearer ‘unique selling proposition’ (USP)..
The Clintons, on the other hand, have done better with political action committees, lobbyists and other vested-interest groups. That reflects their closeness to the ‘political machine’.
Unfortunately, the Clintons are up against someone who has demonstrated a closeness to the ‘people machine’.
How has Barack Obama attracted so many more individual donations than Hillary Clinton? According to my personal source, a campaigner for Barack Obama, Obama’s website marketing and SEO is superior to Hillary Clinton’s.
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Barack Obama: individual donations 100%
This is the Barack Obama home page. Donate Now is the foremost message.
2008 boosted Obama into the position of the most successful fundraiser, as he continues to pull ahead of Hillary Clinton in the money race every month. He seems to be having no problem appealing to new donors, either. In 2008 he’s been raising more than $1 million a day, largely thanks to small online donors.
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Hillary Clinton: individual donations 91%
This is Hillary Clinton’s home page. Lots of messages here!
Hillary Clinton is down by 9% on individual donations. Although Hillary Clinton was the top fundraiser of either party last year, she has fallen behind opponent Barack Obama. Obama is consistently raising more, sometimes doubling her monthly total. In January Clinton was forced to loan her campaign $5 million to keep up with Obama’s advertising in early primary states and now her campaign is focusing its efforts more on how to use the Internet to appeal to new and small donors.
Barack Obama funds are 100% individual donations, while Hillary Clinton has raised 91% individual donations and 9% through vested-interest groups.
Clearly, being tied to so many groups leaves far less freedom of movement politically for Clinton if she becomes President. And this point carries some interestingly heavy weight. Read on..
Which of the two websites is more effective?
Obama’s website home page (above) shows an immediate request for donations.
Clinton’s home page is cluttered, with the main message asking for helpers to ‘make calls’. The ‘contribute’ button is over the the right below five other, fragmented messages.
From a marketing and fund-raising point of view, Barack’s call to action, being focused on donations with a clear USP (Unique Selling Point) is clearer and more effective.
Barack Obama’s USP
Barack’s ‘grassroots’ appeal, call for change and perceived immunity from vested-interest groups are important campaign issues among politically aware voters — and will be a most powerful set of USPs when used in his forthcoming presidential campaign. It has already proved to be a stronger message than the counter argument that he lacks experience.
If the Republican party try to use the ‘lack of experience’ argument against Obama, the evidence is that it will fail once again to persuade voters.
Based on the quality of the material available for the sales message (and I speak here as a non-political professional copywriter and marketer), my prediction is that Barack Obama will be the next president of the USA.
You just can’t beat good marketing.
(Please note the date of this analysis and prediction is made on 12 May 2008.)
Thanks to www.opensecrets.org and the Center for Responsive Politics for their contributions to this article.
Comments:
Nathan Reynolds
Arkansas, USA
I like your analysis. I think marketing has been a big part of this campaign, even more so than previous ones. As always, candidates choose a message to be the theme of their campaign, and then design their campaign marketing to support that message.
One fault that the Clinton’s campaign had (I think) was not focusing on a specific message, but rather focusing on the results and brand of the last Clinton in office. The brand was very well marketed – very careful to have ‘Hillary’ be on all the signs rather than ‘Clinton’ to avoid any confusion and the wrath of the conservatives here.
Obama’s team have been very good about message control, both with campaign employees and volunteers. Their latest approach has been to signal to regular Democratic 527s (groups that advertise against a candidate’s opponent with any amount of money) that they do not want their help, which goes a long way for message control. It’s hard to run a campaign based on hope and change when you have a group claiming to represent you attacking the other guy. You can read more here:
Part 2: Why is Barack Obama’s sales message stronger?
How Obama and Clinton ask for money
Comment here:
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