The future then is all about innovation, spotting emerging opportunities and having the flexibility and skills to rapidly develop new products and services. And the transition to digital content means that former publishers have to learn the techniques of technology firms in quickly experimenting, prototyping and evolving their new products.
So digital media innovation has to be part of the mainstream for publishers, not a minority activity. But how can established media businesses create a culture of experimentation, failing fast and technology-led product development? And what are the challenges for smaller independent publishers who have to innovate on limited resources? The Digital Media Innovation Conference, taking place on 8 April in London, aims to tackle both these issues, with a range of case studies from publishers who are successfully innovating. In this preview, we share some of their top tips for developing new digital media products that grow revenues.
How EMAP has invited customers into its NPD process
B2B media are moving towards more data-driven, enterprise-level services, where the usability of an online service and how it fits into client workflow, is as important as the quality of the underlying content. Rebecca Clayton, CMO, explains how EMAP invited eight organisations to become build partners and help shape the development of their new product, from inception to launch. "We wanted to ensure that this product really helped key suppliers in the industry, to understand what opportunities existed and how to pitch successfully, so we involved a representative group at an early stage to explain what their key problems were and how we could solve them. We made some significant changes to our original plan as part of this process"
How Euromoney are able to quickly prototype new content services
In many publishing businesses, content is unstructured, un-searchable and held in silos determined by past publication structures or now-outdated market segmentation. Through the concept of a new Linked Data model, Euromoney is now able to better monetise these silos as well as swiftly bring prototypes of new content services to market. Ben Jones, CTO, has been the architect of this change, but admits that the cultural and organisational challenges are as important as the technology learning curve: "We had to start with a separate hothouse digital team that applied agile methods, and carefully managed top management expectations; we are now extending this approach across more of the organisation."
Why XpertHR allowed people to access its premium content for free
XpertHR, part of RBI, is a well-established brand for HR professionals in the UK, but when they chose to launch in the US, they were relatively unknown. They took the risk of allowing people to sign up for free access to a limited amount of their subscription content, and it has massively paid off in full-rate subscription conversions. David Shepherd, content & platform director, explains: “we have made all our subscriber content available for registered users to sample, so they choose what is most valuable to them. As well as providing great subs leads, we gain insights into their content preferences.”
How Elsevier markets to a fragmented audience and customise pricing
Elsevier's science and technology books are used by a wide variety of academic, government and corporate researchers, and are often purchased by those researchers or by various information managers and librarians – a scenario familiar to many publishers. Cory Polonetsky, marketing director, explains how Elsevier manages multi-channel marketing: "We create high-quality content that helps many kinds of researchers, but they can’t benefit from the content if they can’t find it, see the value, or afford it. So we develop targeted packages, messages and pricing models to suit each segment. These are the vehicles that get great content to the researchers who will put it to great use."
Why Immediate Media is putting data at the heart of its business
Specialist consumer publishers have long known that their subscribers are their biggest fans and advocates of their brand, and the most receptive to special offers for new content or merchandise. Immediate Media has taken this much further, by building a central database to capture subscriber and registered user data and enabling a whole new revenue source from travel and financial services. Jess Burney, director of enterprise, CRM and subs explains, "We have invested in a single database and brought in dedicated staff in the enterprise team to create and market compelling offers that appeal to our audience.”
What are BVR's New Product Success Rules
In the scramble to improve short term revenue, how do publishers know they are doing the right work to contribute to long term value? How can they develop, prioritise, plan for and launch the best opportunities for 2014 and beyond? David Foster, CEO of independent US-based publisher Business Valuation Resource, decided to do some research: “Through interviews with 50 leading publishing CEOs and analysis of information industry valuations, some surprising new product and growth “rules” can be seen.”
How Asset International launches innovative information products from publishing businesses
Asset International is a business information provider, providing leading marketing solutions to complement its data & analytics global offerings in the institutional finance sector built around a series of acquisitions of established brands. CEO Jim Casella is focused on launching new and innovative information products globally, and is keen to involve clients and sales teams in the development process. “We built a new global product, Simfund Global Pro, from the ground up with full client participation, and partner with clients to innovate in our industry-leading surveys. We focus strongly on encouraging our US and European sales teams to work together on new product launches.”
How Incisive Media is transitioning from 121 to enterprise subscriptions
As the needs of business customers become more complex, a subscription to a single publication may not meet all of their needs, and different departments in one organisation may have varied requirements. So it makes sense to offer bespoke enterprise subscriptions that allow users to access a wide range of digital content. But this creates problems for sales and marketing teams trying to monitor renewals and win new business. Ben Wood, group marketing director at Incisive Media, has completely re-thought his renewals data and also re-organised the subscription sales team by market sector. "We need to be able to track how 121 subscribers are becoming absorbed into enterprise deals, so we are working hard on our data and pricing. And the subscription sales team is now split into groups aligned with each industry sector."
How Les Echos is creating customised web and mobile subscriber services
Les Echos provides free business news and also subscription services for deeper analysis and data. They are now developing new services that allow customers to select their own topics of interest and receive a feed of relevant stories, both from Les Echos itself and selected external sources - corporate subscribers can also specify the sources they want to include in their own feed. One product is a web-based feed of articles, another is a tablet-friendly edition with visual navigation. Olivier Delteil, head of digital innovation, explains how this has been adopted by large organisations: "Some corporate customers include their own internal news feeds along with the Les Echos news plus articles from individually selected industry sources so their senior team get a comprehensive tailored briefing in one place."
All these speakers will be sharing how they got their innovations off the ground and the challenges they faced along the way at the Digital Media Innovation Conference on 8 April.
The event is designed to help publishing and media businesses learn from the experiences of their peers in identifying and executing digital media innovations. As well as keynote sessions from media industry leaders like Colin Morrison and David Gilbertson on the different challenges of innovation faced by large and small media organisations, there'll be new research from Outsell on how best to manage an innovation project. Plus a series of interactive small group roundtables where attendees can share best practice and pick the brains of industry experts.
Pioneering new ideas in media and publishing will be celebrated at the 2014 Media Innovation Awards, held at the end of the conference.
Conference details
Venue: One Wimpole Street, London
Date: 7-8 April 2014
