14 mistakes that will kill your marketing

We all make mistakes – usually because we lack information. That’s OK. In marketing, ignorance is a perfectly acceptable excuse. Most mistakes, however, are due to a refusal to accept there is a better way of doing things.

In publishing there is no room for a closed mind. It invariably leads to a great deal of unnecessary expense and lost revenue. Albert Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Yet many marketers in the UK do just that. They continue to copy their own and each other’s mistakes day after day, year after year in a downward spiral of ever-reducing response.

But it’s folly to copy a promotion or method unless you have it on independent authority that response has been good. You will also need to discover what lies behind its success, because it’s often not obvious. Indeed, it’s in the originator’s interests to keep it hidden.

The secret behind every successful business

The key to boosting income is to understand why something has worked and how - and if - you can adapt that principle to your own publication. That specific knowledge is vital to your business success. It’s highly unlikely, however, that the marketers who developed the winning technique will tell you how they are doing it. That’s their secret.

That’s why, as with accounting, law, horse trading, blackjack and other potentially lucrative work you need an independent authority or inside source to explain the best way to proceed. The purpose of this article is to lay down the framework for a successful subscriptions business. With that in place you are more likely to spot useful methods you can use, get a feeling for where the money is, and quickly bring it in. The subscriptions business is, after all, about making money.

Let’s start at the end

Copywriting is easy. The difficult bit is bringing the money in. Every salesperson knows that closing the deal is the hardest part of the sale. That’s why so many promotions don’t work too well.

Creating a promotion is about pressing the reader’s ‘want’ and ‘need’ buttons. If you know and understand your readers and get each stage of the sale right, you can close easily and in large numbers. Starting with the close of the sale means you don’t loose sight of the purpose of all that activity. (Which is why you can’t use editorial staff to write a promotion - they generally don’t understand what makes their readers buy.)

Why it’s time to catch up

We began this article by talking about ignorance and closed minds. There is an easy cure for ignorance and that’s finding a reliable source of information. A closed mind, however, is much harder to fix. But unless we continue to learn, we can’t grow. Unfortunately, when it comes to progress it seems that most of our readers’ hands are tied. A look at the average renewal series or in-magazine promotion reveals that most publishers are still between five and ten years behind current best practice standards.

As for direct mail packs, believe it or not, most of the readers of InCirculation probably don’t have one! That’s one of our important killer mistakes. Creating a direct mail pack must, surely, be your first step; otherwise you are not in business. Once you have a pack that is proven in your marketplace all other kinds of promotion can swiftly follow.

The reason for publishers’ reticence in commissioning a direct mail promotion (or the equivalent in email format) could be a basic misunderstanding about the place subscriptions marketing has in the publishing mix. Or it could be you have tried a subscription promotion in the past and been disappointed. Or (more likely) it’s because your company refuses to invest the money. We address those points below.

A new way of publishing

Now is the time for new thinking. The face of publishing is changing more rapidly now than at almost any time in recent history, mostly because of the web. There is lots of subscription money in most markets. No matter what kind of publication you produce, in whatever market and in whatever format, there are techniques that can be transferred to suit your operation and lift profitability.

You may have been publishing for two hundred or just two years. You may have a tiny or huge market. Whatever decisions you have made in the past and whatever problems you have come up against, it’s worth testing a new approach.

I would urge publishers to consider another of Einstein’s observations: "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

So let’s move on and upward by investigating the fourteen common marketing mistakes I most often come up against:

1. "Let’s think about subscriptions once the magazine is up and running."

The best and most profitable time to sell subscriptions is before launch. That is when response will be at its highest. Subscriptions should be a major source of revenue for publishers and can eclipse advertisement and newstrade income. Marketing should take equal place with other departments such as editorial and advertising. It’s folly to turn your back on a lucrative stream of revenue.

2. "Once people see my magazine, they will subscribe."

If you have ever heard the term ‘Sell the sizzle not the steak’ you will know that a powerful description of your new publication will bring in far more money than promoting when the product is in your prospect’s hands. (In fact, that’s the best way to kill the sale.)

3. "We sent out a promotion but it didn’t work."

The most common error when creating a promotion is to fail to sell the benefits of the publication. A vital test when assessing creative work is to ask ‘what unique benefit does this publication offer the reader?" If you include reader testimonials (as you should do) could they be used to describe another publication? If they are unique, they can’t be.

4. "We’ll wait to create a renewal series when subscribers are coming up for expiry."

You should be upgrading subscribers with early bird offers as soon as the orders come in. A prospect is at his most receptive when he has just bought from you. He will buy other products too. Put yourself in the place of your readers and ask: "What else would I like that’s similar or complementary to this subject?"

5. "We didn’t make a profit on our first effort so we cut our marketing spend."

Does any business bring in a profit in the first year? The answer is hardly ever. There is always an initial investment to get the product accepted. It’s a mistake to look for a quick profit from a subscription promotion. Unless you understand marketing budgets you won’t recognize what a good response is and your business can’t grow. Most profitable subscriptions businesses, from the tiniest business newsletter to world-wide giants like AOL and Sky succeed because they set achievable return on investment targets, taking profits beyond year one.

6. "We don’t have an in-house list of leads."

Without a list, you don’t have a business. Remember, the foundation of your business is not your publication, but the readers of your publication. Much of your activity should be directed at building a database of quality prospects by the most effective means possible. Inserts, advertisements, competitions and prize draws are proven ways of list-building. And with the right design and copy your website could become a gold-mine.

7. "We set an annual budget for a fixed number of new subscribers."

A fixed budget will fatally curtail your promotional activity. You will be unable to take full advantage of a favourable response when it happens. A subscriptions marketer should be allowed to make his money where he can. That’s where he gets his motivation from.

8. "We save money by writing copy in-house."

As with legal and tax advice, it’s unlikely your in-house staff have the expertise to maximise revenue. And it’s not just about copy. Your promotion is a salesperson in print and the whole concept must pull together to attract prospects, bring them to the close and take their payment. You can’t simply copy a promotion because you like the look of it – you need to know what the return on investment was and what aspects of the concept will make it work for you.

9. "We spent a fortune on our last mail pack."

Keep the production costs of your mail pack low, otherwise you will become reluctant to continue promoting and testing new ideas. It’s the message that counts, not high production value in design, photography and paper. This can become quite a battle - it is in the interests of agencies and designers to push your message up-market because that’s where they make their money – and where you’ll lose yours.

10. "Our website is a brochure for our company and publication."

Your website must work far harder than a brochure. It should be search engine optimized to bring in as many visitors as possible. Create pages and copy to capture as many leads as possible for conversion to paying subscribers. You’ll need expert advice, so chose your consultant carefully and check him out with other clients before appointment. Make sure you can establish a trustworthy rapport. Trust is vital because website work is one of the few areas where ignorance and baloney exist in such quantities together.

11. "We can’t test different subscription rates because we publish our prices in the magazine and on our website."

There are techniques for price testing that will solve that kind of problem. Indeed, unless you are price testing at least twice a year you are breaking the first rule in marketing: charge what your market will bear. In most markets today, readers are not particularly price conscious and are happy to spend more money on their subscriptions if they are given a good reason.

12. "We make it easy for subscribers by offering all kinds of payment options."

‘Closing the deal’ is famously difficult, even when you are asking for just £30 or £40. That’s why response to a seemingly well-constructed promotion can be low. The main mistake publishers make is to offer multiple payment options. When you insert options for cheque, credit card and direct debit, you can induce ‘option paralysis’ by giving the prospect the chance to prevaricate. As you are not standing in front of him, he simply puts your coupon to one side and thinks: "I’ll decide later." Which means never.

Among salespeople there is a well-known tactic called ‘you can have it now’. That’s when you say, for example: "Sign here and you can take it away with you." It’s just one way to bring an instant sale, which is what you need to encourage.

13. "We do our marketing twice a year."

We are talking about subscriptions, remember, not newstrade sales. The reason publishers pay for a newstrade promotion twice yearly is because they wouldn’t get extra distribution without it. The high street is a completely different market. With subscription sales your mission is to establish an ongoing, profitable marketing programme, not a one-off ‘campaign’. Campaigns belong to the world of the advertising agency. If you plan your marketing to happen, say, in April and September, you will miss the millions of subscribers who prefer to purchase in January. And there are many other months when your bait will bring plenty of fish to your nets.

14. "We don’t have a budget for subscriptions."

If you haven’t any marketing money, you can’t promote. If you can’t promote you can’t bring in new business. If you don’t bring in new business you can’t grow. If you can’t grow your publication will die. It’s the same in all fields: without customers you’ll eventually go under. Selling subscriptions is like most fields of endeavour: you must speculate to accumulate. Fortunately, the standard rule of thumb is to spend a pound to bring in a pound, so the risk is minimal. All you need to do is ensure you spend wisely.

Ours can be a lonely business

One final word of advice: don’t work in isolation. Subscriptions marketing needn’t be such a lonely business. In fact, you need to talk with experienced colleagues. What may start as an exciting ‘new’ idea often turns into disappointment as you learn that not only has your idea been tried before, but that it failed miserably just as yours did. Unfortunately, no-one bothered to tell you.

There is rarely any need to reinvent the wheel because there are very few new ideas in marketing. The great breakthroughs often come from a clever person taking a tried and tested formula from one industry and adapting to another. That’s what AOL did and they made enough money to buy out Time Warner, who pioneered many of the marketing principles described in this article. The other internet service providers are still waiting to catch up! But that’s another story.