Publishing and subscriptions marketing: 15 blunders
28 February 200815 marketing blunders
Peter Hobday looks at the common mistakes publishers make that eventually lead to ruin
In my time in publishing I have worked with three people who understand how business works (rather than just publishing). Brian Gilbert, who ran United Trade Press in the 1990’s and the Wilmington Group until 2002, has commercial instincts that transfer to any market. Sylvester Stein of Electric Word and John Gommes of Chartsearch are the same. They have chosen publishing but would be successful in any business because they understand the elemental workings of the marketplace.
They make business seem simple, but it’s a rare talent as I will demonstrate in this article. The right way to do business does not often coincide with how a publishing company is run. Intelligent people make mistakes just as thick people do, only bigger because more people believe in them.
So how do you define a successful businessperson? Firstly, they don’t do it for money. Money is what you get out of an ATM to spend in a shop. These men work towards influencing and controlling markets – and make £10m, £20m or £30m in the process. The millions they make are are simply the measure of their control of that market.
Isn’t marketing simple? Is it important?
They look like an easy couple of questions but many editors and publishers get the answers wrong.
In fact, there is nothing as easy, yet harder for them to understand.
Of all the three major publishing disciplines, marketing, editorial and advertising, marketing comes first because unless you have a market, you don’t have a product to edit or to sell advertising in. But marketing can be difficult and that is why many big publishers major on buying up smaller ones: there is no marketing involved.
Here, then are fifteen money-blowing mistakes gathered from UK publishing companies. Each blunder is guaranteed to destroy the success of your publishing effort:
1. Misunderstanding the role of marketing: for many, marketing means advertising and promotion. That’s why you hear editors, in particular, say: “What this product needs is more marketing!” But marketing is more elemental than that. Marketing must always come first for a publication to succeed. For example, don’t believe that ‘marketing’ can follow a launch. That approach is the wrong way around. First you must find your market.
‘The market’ is just how it sounds: a street market like Portobello Road. There are rows of stalls selling antiques and other stuff with people handing over money. So your first steps are to find out (1) if a market exists for your product (2) how to reach it and (3) how much those people will pay. What you don’t do is to create a publication and put it into every outlet possible at great expense to watch it fail.
2. Up-selling and renewing is where the money is: this is a big subject, so here are just a few pointers: renewals don’t just happen like a pension when your reader’s subscription expires. Upgrade and up-sell promotions must go out as soon as the new reader comes aboard. If your subscriber programme doesn’t include a right-up-to-date-state-of-the-art renewal series then you are not really in the marketing business. Don’t assume your publication is all the contact your reader needs. The principle to follow is ‘keep sending out promotions until they become unprofitable’ – that is, the revenue is less than the cost of despatch. Many publishers make more money from selling ancillary products than they do from the subscription. This principle applies to all publications, including newstrade and free magazines.
3. Limiting the activity of your marketing department: ‘giving’ a budget of £50,000 for promotions, fulfilment, production and for sending out copies of the magazine is no way to market. Your subscription marketing department is not a cost centre, it’s a revenue centre and income earned should be re-invested to build profits. And don’t heap magazine fulfilment costs on to your subscription costs, or you will limit growth. If subscriptions don’t increase profits for your company then you’ve got your publishing model wrong.
4. Rules are not meant to be broken! There are almost no new ideas in our business. Unless you know and understand why the rule was made in the first place, you are not qualified to change it. If you are unsure, talk to a marketing expert. We have lots of results from the testing we do. Yes, we publishers are operating in a new digital age, but the marketing rules still apply.
5. Yes, ‘listening’ is important. But who are you listening to? Listening to opinion is vital, but it has its place. Do not invite your editor, advertisement director, managing director and other board directors to comment on your next promotion. The people in your company are rarely in your target market. Even if they are, their few, often ‘political’ opinions count for nothing against a scientifically conducted test using a proper sample of around 5,000 people. Remember – many a promotion has failed because of the opinions of one or two influential colleagues who have no experience in the field of marketing.
6. Don’t waste money on beautifully designed four colour promotions: readers are impressed by the message you send them. That message goes in a letter. The words do the selling, not the gloss – although you’ll need to explain that with tact to the art people involved.
7. Don’t combine marketing and admin functions: use managers to manage, copywriters to create promotions and administrators to keep records and handle production. Think of it as an editorial department (kind of). Here is an advertisement from one of the bigger publishers to show how to kill off your marketing by combining too many disciplines:
Subscriptions Marketing Manager
You will be handling twelve titles reporting to individual publishers. The applicant will have an excellent creative copywriting track record. You will be running a busy fulfilment department so will be familiar with data-base management and computer systems. You will be responsible for printers and mailing houses so will be used to working to tight deadlines. You’ll be managing a junior executive.
8. Don’t use a direct debit as a method of payment: unless you tie it into a really clever, hot offer. Although direct debits are used to pay electricity and other bills, that’s no reason to include them in your coupon. They limit response and usually stifle creativity. They are mostly used by publishers who aren’t very creative and prefer standardised systems (as do utilities and banks, for example). Businesses do not usually use direct debits to pay for items such as subscriptions. And if you want to seduce a consumer into subscribing, offering a complicated, long form to complete is as appealing as handing out mortgage applications. Unless you are running a bank, don’t act like one.
9. Don’t be afraid to do deals with a competitor: don’t think of a deal as giving money to the opposition. Look beyond that. Your competitors have access to thousands of customers in your target market and there is no cheaper way to reach them than through joint deals. But you must have a long-term business agenda. As Sky’s Murdoch taught Virgin TV’s Richard Branson when he bought their programmes: plan your deal so if it goes wrong it doesn’t provide your competitor with thousands of your customers.
10. Sending sample copies of your publication with a sales letter: you may think your publication is your best ambassador and the reader will respond with a subscription order. However, except for a few specialised markets, sending a free sample copy will kill response.
11. Keeping your direct mail letter ‘short and to the point’: – don’t try to cram your sales letter into a single side of A4, believing ‘No-one has time to read long letters.’ Your letter is a salesperson. Would you limit a sales conversation? In consumer and specialised markets, long letters from 8 to 32 pages are proven to increase response significantly over shorter ones.
12. The more choice you give, the less people will subscribe: on your promotion order form, do not offer all the different methods of payment such as cheque, postal order, direct debit and credit card. More choice does not mean more people will pay. In practice, the more options you give the lower the response. It’s called ‘option paralyses.
13. Use the right person for the job: it takes a long time to create a good promotion, five days or more. You may think that no-one knows your product better than you and your team, but you will not save money by creating the promotion yourself. It won’t work very well and you won’t use it more than once. A good promotion can be used for years and the creative fee amortised as a staff cost over many months. Anyway, if you know how to sell the benefits, can handle any objections the reader may have and ensure your letter will bring in lots of long-lasting, profitable subscriptions for years to come, then why aren’t you earning £100,000 to £200,000 a year as a copywriter?
14. The right free gift will always increase response: you may feel that nobody would subscribe just to get a cheap incentive gift like a watch, carry-on bag, ‘free report’ or calculator. For example, you wouldn’t want one, would you? (‘Oh go on then – I’ll just take one for my son/daughter/wife/mother.’). Remember, a free gift never killed a promotion.
15. Use the right typeface: these days we all have access to a huge variety of typefaces, but don’t waste time searching for a replacement to the ‘same old’ Courier typewriter face for your letters. If you use anything different, response drops at least 20%. Believe me when I say this has been tested over and over again. And the rule doesn’t change, even if your readers are young, fast moving or into design or art.
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©Peter Hobday, www.marketingforPublishers.com.
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