Lawrence Mitchell, Marketing Director at Reed Business Information discusses RBI’s journey from traditional magazine publisher to multi-channel publisher.
‘If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.’
Kurt Lewin, psychologist
Having worked in the publishing industry throughout the digital revolution, I can honestly say that Kurt Lewin, one of the pioneers of applied psychology, is absolutely right. I’d also say that change, of the nature that the publishing industry has experienced, also requires vision, money, bravery, a willingness to tear up the rule book, sheer determination and a process of experimentation that never ends.
Over the last decade, the internet has had a dramatic impact on the publishing industry, changing the very nature of the products themselves as well as the way that customers are acquired and retained. Throughout this period, I have worked for one publisher, Reed Business Information (RBI), and watched as it transformed from a traditional, magazine publisher to multi-channel publisher, with digital at its heart.
Back in 2001, the year I joined RBI, the business produced business magazines and knew how to do this well.
Nine years later, the number of digital products now outnumber the printed titles; the methods used to promote and sell the products has also expanded dramatically to include email, search, social media as well as the more traditional direct mail, print and events.
RBI’s journey from traditional publisher to multi-channel publisher has been a fascinating experience and people often ask ‘How did they do it?’ The truth is that it has been a roller coaster ride and like any good adventure, there were highs and lows, mistakes that were made and quite a few unforeseen obstacles that leapt out to challenge us when least expected. The distraction of a failed divestment process in 2008, for instance, and then the recession in 2009 which, like most publishers, had a big impact on advertising revenues. Throughout these turbulent times though, RBI continued to invest in innovation, training, research and technology which has put the business in a good position to service customers better now that things are starting to improve.
The five key strategies to change which RBI employed
1. Know where you’re going
RBI realised quite early that its customers’ media consumption preferences were changing, a foresight gained thanks to having a presence in the technology media space where the structural shift occurred long before other b2b sectors. Foresight doesn’t always lead to success. Indeed, with such a foresight, you have a number of choices: stick your head in the sand and hope the problem will go away; panic and start doing lots of things without thinking anything through properly or accept that life happens; face up to the problem and go through a period of pain, including product cannibalisation, to avoid future agony. RBI chose the latter, by developing a strategy to rapidly expand the portfolio of commercial websites through both organic innovation and acquisition.
2. Learn to think differently
If you have always worked in magazine publishing, you can’t be blamed for trying to solve customers’ problems by launching another magazine or a website that behaves like a magazine. However, to get started on the digital innovation journey and to take the people along required a complete step-change in thinking, skills and approach. An innovation consultant was promptly recruited and introduced a process of innovation which is now hard-wired into the culture at RBI.
The other critical input into the digital product innovation approach was the requirement for a much deeper understanding of our customer base than ever before. We invested in research and spoke to many customers about their working day; the tasks they do; what they liked and what they disliked. This data was analysed and transformed into insight, which was later packaged as personas to bring the voice of the customer firmly into the development process.
The result has been a growing portfolio of digital products across RBI’s main sectors: HR, Aviation, Commercial Property, Chemicals, Banking and Technology. The magazines are still a key part of the portfolio, but have become more sophisticated, presenting information in more illustrative ways and directing readers to the web for more detail.
3. Invest in skills and knowledge
None of the innovation would have happened without a big focus on developing the knowledge and skills of our people – marketing, editorial, sales and IT. This investment took the form of traditional training programmes on all aspects of digital marketing and publishing; as well as ‘sharing programmes’ to encourage people to share their experiences of working with different aspects of digital – everything from developing a digital publishing strategy through to online lead generation and how to take advantage of the many opportunities that social media presents to brands today.
4. Identify the IT systems you need
If you’ve ever tried to introduce a new piece of technology into an organisation with legacy systems, you’ll agree that some software suppliers may play down the enormous amount of work that’s required just to get the system implemented in the first place, let alone learn how to use it! However, technology is the great enabler in all of this and has been a major investment for RBI. Over the last five years, IT systems to support multi-channel campaign management & measurement; managing digital content; tracking user behaviour online; budget management have all been upgraded to achieve two things: 1. improve the efficiency of operating in a much more complex multi-channel world; 2. deliver a more consistent and joined-up customer experience across both online and offline channels. This is still very much ‘work in progress’.
5. Measure, track and report a few simple metrics
The final step is also ‘work in progress’ and probably always will be. Over the last 12 months, we have been working with a web analytics consultant to reduce the amount of reporting and link web analytics data with financial data to determine the overall output from a website.
Like most businesses, RBI went through the excitement of just being able to measure things in the digital work that aren’t possible in the offline equivalent without expensive market research. For example, finding out what content is popular in a magazine, or how many people open a direct mail piece, but don’t take any further action.
In the digital world, all these things are possible. You can tell exactly what content is popular; where people arrived; left; came from and a host of other very interesting metrics that, if analysed and interpreted correctly, will support both strategic and tactical decision-making.
Thanks to technology and a small team of analysts, RBI now has a much simpler KPI report for each of our digital business models as well as better insight on campaign performance throughout the sales & marketing funnel. Pulling all of this data together and delivering a personalised and consistent approach to communications across multiple channels is one of the biggest challenges that RBI marketers face today.
So in summary, the RBI story is an interesting one for anyone who faces structural change in their marketplaces and need to change what they deliver and how they deliver. Technology, processes and innovation are all important ingredients, but success really comes down to people. In other words, with the right people and the correct balance of knowledge and skills, you’ll be able to speak to your customers, understand their issues and then turn that insight into an opportunity for growth.
Lawrence Mitchell
Marketing Director, Reed Business Information
Reed Business Information Blog