Why subscription marketing?

All the current hot discussions on website business models, paid content, converting free-to-paid magazines, charging for news audience development etc., come back to one thing: subscriptions marketing.

Those discussions are similar in scope to the economists, accountants and bankers who, until recently, forecast continual growth. Now, of course, we are well into a long, scary recession and everyone knows they got it wrong.

But, despite all that, I see that financial and economic forecasts are creeping back into mainstream media on the assumption that readers have forgotten that they were massively misled just a few months ago by the very same people.

You just cannot tell what an audience will do or how they will react.

Publishers, meanwhile, are busy debating the popular subjects listed above – free-to-paid, paid content, new revised business models etc. – which is really all about three things:

1. Their business models are wrong

2. They have run out of money

3. They should have monetised editorial content years ago

What every publisher knows
Every publisher knows advertisement revenue falls during a recession by up to 40% or thereabouts. The difference this time is that no-one thinks that revenue will come back: it’s going – gone – to the Internet.

As so many companies in other markets have discovered – publishing, oil, motor, property, banking – no business can lose a large percentage of income without serious damage. Not unless they have an effective survival strategy that prepares them for future changes.

So why subscription marketing?
Subscription marketing has the answers, because it’s all about maximising long-term income from your target audience. The debate about paid content and free-to-paid is mostly unnecessary because a series of tests within a market is all that’s needed to answer the two vital questions.

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Why subscription marketing?