Inspiration For Media From Outside The Industry

“Executives are not investing to build; they are just trying to keep the lights on for as long as possible. How uninspiring.” - Jacob Donnelly, A Media Operator

The Media business is facing an “extinction-level event”.

With about 50% of HoK’s clients selling published content, we’re invested, and we’re facilitating change with learnings and inspiration from other recurring revenue industries. I can’t overstate the value of our unique experience at this moment in time — being able to cross-pollinate proven net-growth tactics from one industry to another, centered on the experiences and expectations of the repeat-customer to build sustainable growth.

I’ve observed media leaders share knowledge and best practices across businesses more than in most industries, there’s less concern for competition and more emphasis on the common good. In the age of growing traffic this approach worked well, a win for one publisher often applied successfully to another — SEO, social, video ads, paywalls, and deeply discounted intro pricing all come to mind as tactics that spread quickly across the industry — but represent significant challenges today.

Keeping in mind that nearly all consumer product companies are bought into, and dependent on a healthy media ecosystem for advertising, marketing and growth — what happens in media has implications for everyone looking to acquire, engage, and retain customers. So as traffic takes a nosedive and the media industry faces an existential crisis, media leadership simply cannot solve the current problems with the same thinking that created them.

“There are those who are limited by their challenges, and those who always challenge their limits.”
From Liz Wiseman’s book
Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smart

Let’s explore the value of external inspiration, because often the best way to be better is to look past current goals and think from another paradigm. Here’s some insights and 9 questions to get started.

Average People Are Productive, Successful People Are Learners

Knowledge is cumulative and builds upon itself creating the potential for exponential returns. If you’re willing to consider:

1- Can we kill our playbook before the market does?

2- Who can identify our blind spots?

These days we’re obsessed with productivity “hacks”, searching for the one thing that will solve our biggest challenges. Product and Marketing execs are no exception, facing constant pressure for growth MoM, QoQ, YoY, and hopefully finding just enough wins to carry on.

This productivity approach often works in the early stages of the tactics or the product itself, but over time the returns are diminishing. Sustained growth gets harder.

The very ideas so freely shared across the media industry are ultimately defining it’s current collective crisis. An economy of traffic monetization, dependent upon 3rd party platforms, tech, and associated complexities have created a trap most can’t get out of. When faced with a complex decision, people tend to accept the status quo.

First Principles

What is a fundamental truth in media that cannot be deduced further? Media needs an audience, aka the consumers, and needs to understand them better.

“The best solution is not where everyone is already looking.”
James Clear on how first principles drive innovation

First principles thinking requires us to dig into the fundamental truth, unobstructed by the complexities of 3rd parties and corresponding productivity hacks.

Media is generally over-invested in the advertising market, regarding their customer as the buyer of advertising, not as the consumer of their content. While media leaders are mired in the complexities of this ecosystem that has demanded more page views at the cost of the consumer experience. And yet, without the content consumer there is no audience for the advertiser to buy.

Learner Lisa would ask: What is the value of this product to the consumer and how can we sustain that ongoing?

3- Do we resonate with our customers?

4- How can we better measure value? - If you haven’t received our new Guide to Repeat Customer Growth Metrics, click here and we’ll send it over ASAP

Control What You Can

5- Are we doing everything you can with what we have?

6- Are we willing to learn with low risks more often?

7- Can we (re)build relationships with our customers before AI does?

What’s happening in the media industry is a warning to all, so much of marketing and growth is dependent upon external factors and it captures massive investments attempting to control the uncontrollable, such as traffic.

Meanwhile customer experiences, loyalty and referrals struggle to capture the priority of effort and investment, and yet it is the most controllable contributor to growth.

Engagement is it. Engaged customers bring in their peers and stick around longer, creating more value. Engagement playbooks built on a culture of experimentation are the future. That’s easier for established brands, harder for new entrants, critical for both before the next wave of AI intermediation

Total Revenue Optimization

8- Do we know the revenue profile of a customer?

9- How can we diversify customer engagements?

Subscriptions alone are not the answer. While it is true that the healthiest media companies today are also the ones that have been building and optimizing a subscription product, subscriptions are not the sole solution to the industry’s crisis. Frequent readers of this newsletter will be familiar with the idea that subscription and recurring revenue products are closer to the customer by default, but not always be design.

The value of the product to the consumer is varied and evolving. It starts by understanding that “the consumer” is in fact a diversity of people with a diversity of jobs to be done. And over time, the reason they started using the product may not be the reason they’re using it now.

Empathy for customer value and adaptability to meet their needs, creates revenue opportunities in many forms: subscriptions, ads, commerce, events, etc. But these should not be internal P&L’s unrelated to each other, they’re all part of a consumer’s total revenue profile.

In the same way Whole Foods Market can maximize the value of their vegetarian and carnivore customer segments, most businesses can diversify the solutions they offer to create more value to the individual consumer.

There you have it, 9 questions to get you started. Remember, if you need the metrics guide, just click here and we’ll send it over.