The circulation climate isn’t just tough; something much bigger is going on. And the only way to see what’s happening is to understand our consumers better and accept that they may want to access our products across multiple formats and platforms. This is a catalyst for change within the way circulation professionals think and act. And it’s a wonderful opportunity.
Traditionally, the objective of the circulation team has been to deliver the largest volume or the highest quality readership for the advertising team to sell. Moving forward, the focus needs to be on delivering an audience across print, online and direct, and at events, both efficiently and profitably. Our audience will be one which advertisers want to interact with. In short, in future, circulation departments need to be slick consumer marketing functions which are relentlessly focused on understanding consumers to ensure that content is delivered in a format the consumer wants, when they want it.
The temptation of centralising specialist departments focusing on newstrade, subscriptions and marketing should be resisted in favour of true consumer marketing functions where strategies to grow total audience (print circulation plus online users) are developed with consumers at their core.
Who are our competitors?
While publishers continue to compete with established competitors at the newsstand and for subscribers, in today’s environment, we have new competitors online which include digital magazines, online retailers and specialist sites.
Take the UK surfing sector as an example. The established market leading magazines, Wavelength and Carve, compete with at least four other regularly published paid-for UK surf titles and a number of imports. However, online competitors include specialist sites which compete for traffic, consumers’ time and money and advertisers’ budgets. The same is true for many specialist magazine publishers.
The most effective way of managing multiple platforms is to position the consumer at the core of an integrated marketing strategy to drive total audience growth cost effectively. Understanding each distribution channel is key. The issues and opportunities associated with retail, subscription, free and digital channels need to be carefully bench-marked by individual source to optimise return-on-marketing-investment.
How consumers purchase and consume media is changing rapidly. Magazine purchasers vote with their feet as well as their wallets, switching products frequently and buying them in different retail outlets. Additionally, as internet usage becomes part of everyday media consumption, users are deciding what content they want to receive, read and share with others, all at a time to suit themselves.
Understanding this changing behaviour is important, but before we try and determine our product’s format and platform strategy, we need to improve our understanding of consumers.
Creating a consumer segmentation model
We can all create a straightforward one-line definition of our brand’s consumers. For example, "our readers are mountain bikers", they "are golfers…" or they "want to improve their health and well-being". However, while these one-liners provide a reference point, they are bland generalisations which do not help us create effective marketing strategies to power growth across retail, subscriptions and digital.
If, for example, we segment readers of a mountain bike magazine or users of a mountain bike website, we begin to understand that different types of mountain bikers buy magazines or use websites for different reasons.
Step 1: identifying the key segments
Reader surveys, online research and the various lifestyle databases can each help us define the characteristics of our key segments. For example, mountain bikers may belong to any of the following segments, with their associated characteristics:
* Racers (Regularly competes (sprints up to endurances))
* Fitness Riders (In it to get, or stay, fit and in shape)
* Tourists (Regular holidays riding trails in the UK or overseas)
* Weekend trail-blazers (Live for the weekend, trail-riding all over the UK)
* Free-riders (Cool tricks and obstacle negotiation)
Step 2: Understanding each segment
Having established key segments, we need to understand each through reader and online surveys, to identify the following:
| Why... | do you mountain bike? |
| Where… | do you mountain bike? |
| Who... | are you? (life-stage, lifestyle, where you live etc…) |
| What… | - editorial content is important to you? - added-value influences purchase at retail / of a subscription? - else do you enjoy doing? |
| Where… | - do you shop – generally and for your mountain biking stuff? - else do you go for other information relating to mountain biking and other key interests? |
Step 3: Developing a strategy to drive audience growth
By understanding our consumer segments intimately, we can adjust our content strategy and target our marketing investment to achieve our audience objectives most cost effectively.
a) Increasing circulation
We prioritise the segments and identify the most effective method of getting each to purchase our magazine.
* Is this segment likely to subscribe? If so, identify the most efficient subscription channel(s) and ensure our subscription creative includes compelling benefits which this segment will buy into.
* Where do they shop, generally, and are we listed in this retailer’s range? If not, build a consumer-oriented proposal to support our listing aspiration and create a retailer-specific trade marketing plan which reflects the retailer’s category objectives.
* Are we making the most of the opportunities in specialist outlets? Ensure we have efficient supply chain and display solutions for bike retailers.
b) Increasing online users
* How do they use the internet? Understand why each segment uses the web and which sites they use to ensure our site meets at least some of their primary needs and create a strategy to drive those users to our site.
* What partnerships can we secure to allow them to sample our content? Working with competitors can work on the web. Don’t build constraints without exploring whether there are reciprocal deals which can get our content out there.
* How and where do we promote our web address to drive traffic? Do the easy things first and don’t over-invest in promotion; ensure we are constantly improving the quality of our content and navigational systems to optimise repeat traffic and maximise online subscription sales.
* Identifying the most effective channel to optimise return-on-investment. Prioritising each consumer segment and every distribution channel is crucial to ensure that we achieve the best return on marketing investment.
Our audience strategy depends on whether we are going for volume (do we simply want to be the biggest?) or quality (is our strategy to deliver the most targeted and relevant audience to advertisers?). Either way, we need to understand each segment in terms of volume potential and attractiveness to advertisers.
Having identified all potential distribution channels, it is important to understand the cost of acquisition through each. For example, selling subscriptions from our own website will clearly have a lower cost per acquisition than selling a sub via direct mail. Likewise, driving traffic to our website through in-magazine promotion will be more cost effective than promoting the website using other media.
Having prioritised audience segments and identified the costs associated with each potential distribution channel, we can create marketing strategies specific to particular audiences and channels in order to achieve our audience targets most cost effectively.
c) Improving our content strategy
We can use our audience segmentation model to drive our content strategy in print and online and to improve the quality of our front covers, as well as the design and navigation of our website.
By prioritising key segments, which are likely to change based on seasonality, we should work with our editorial team in the following ways:
* Getting our covers right. Ensure the cover has cut-through at retail, includes a cover-line targeting each key consumer segment and passes the two metre test.
* Improving web design. Our website must have stories, video, information and click-throughs to influence key consumer segments to click and navigate effortlessly around the site. The site will include slick online subscription marketing techniques to drive subs for our print product.
It’s not all over for print circulation - far from it. I believe passionately that we are able to improve circulation performance by building strategy around the purchaser. However, there are four reasons why it makes sense for circulation professionals to engage with a total audience strategy (print circulation plus online audience):
1. This approach truly positions the consumer at the core of our marketing strategy which is built around what the consumer wants, in whichever format and at whatever time, which is the way modern media works.
2. We must become more focused on return-on-investment. Everything is measurable online and whilst the same is true of subscription marketing, we must get into the habit of measuring and benchmarking audience performance across all channels, for print and online.
3. Other parts of our industry are thinking this way. Advertisers want to understand total audience and ABC has re-structured to facilitate this approach, as well as launching the new multi-platform monthly report which will detail month-on-month and year-on-year figures for both online and offline properties.
4. At a time when many print circulations are in decline, it is exciting to work on a strategy to drive growth – and total audience provides that opportunity. In doing so, and by understanding both online users and print purchasers, it is far more likely that this additional insight will provide new opportunities to increase sales of the print product.
There can never have been a more exciting time to work in circulation. But only if you are prepared to embrace change, put the consumer truly at the heart of your marketing strategy and accept that your role is now about total audience growth and not just print circulation.
