To counter the increasing competition from digital media, print newspapers need to take action and set the course for the coming years. The German strategy consulting firm Roland Berger has conducted a study on how to position print media for the future. The average circulation of daily and weekly German newspapers decreased from 31.4 million in 1997 to 26 million in 2007, a 17% decline. In the same time period, newspapers such as Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit were able to increase their circulations by 8% and 7% respectively.
What makes these newspapers successful? Roland Berger has identified nine key success factors, summarized below.
1. Positioning within the target group. The critical success factor is to create a comprehensive publishing strategy where the publication concept is aligned with the reader market and advertising market strategies. In the Netherlands, the daily financial newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad identified three strategic target clusters (investors, entrepreneurs, high potentials). Each cluster was analyzed in terms of interests, needs and media preferences and was then targeted by specific content in the newspaper.
2. Focusing on premium readers. They are by far the most attractive target. Premium readers have and will remain loyal to print media despite increased use of digital media; they are prepared to pay for print media and they are an attractive segment for the advertising market. The fact that Süddeutsche Zeitung and Spiegel were able to increase their subscription fees by 65% and 39% respectively from 2000 to 2007 illustrates that readers of quality media are prepared to pay for quality.
3. Attractive image ads and premium classifieds. Print media continues to have a competitive advantage over online media for image advertisements and premium classifieds such as real estate, says the report. They should exploit it.
4. Focus on inherent strengths to differentiate from digital media. These strengths include quality of the product (content, design, images, paper etc) and providing the readers with an individual experience that allows them to set aside quality time by providing opinions, agenda setting and background orientation rather than news.
5. Growth in niches. Whereas the mass market is widely covered and saturated, there is still growth potential in niches, especially in the magazines and special interests area.
6. Resizing content is a possibility to improve profitability. By publishing content in different formats, channels and regions as well as exchanging content with third parties, profitability can be improved.
7. Investing in the brand pays off. In an increasingly fragmented media market, the brand is becoming more and more important in order to build readership and attract advertisers. Especially branding towards the younger target groups is important to build future readership.
8. Diversify. Events and seminars are an attractive extension of the publishing activities. The next step of brand extensions after the additional products (books, CDs, DVDs) is events and seminars, which allows the publisher to build a community around the brand. For example, each year, Die Zeit, for example, holds more than twice as many events as other published newspapers.
9. Innovation and the ability to develop new products is crucial. The successful newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit used as examples have both been able to reinvent their offerings in a print media market in crisis. Read the full report in German.
Helena Ahlstrom is member of Schibsted’s trainee program. She works in Paris.
Related columns:
- Throwing a lifeline to an endangered species, print? CEO Eric Schmidt spoke in San Francisco, at an event hosted in San Francisco by Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. There, he addressed the collapse of advertising revenue in print media: “It’s a huge moral imperative to help here”. Schmidt didn’t provide any detail on how the search company could throw a [...]...
- The J-curve of the global print press The J-curve is an economics metaphor, a way of saying things will get worse before getting better. That’s the prospect for the global print media sector. For the American press, advertising revenue keeps dropping at a steady yearly rate of 12% to 15%. No industry can withstand a sustained double-digit decrease of its core business. [...]...
- The Future of Print is in India Rupert Murdoch is planning the launch of an Indian edition of The Wall Street Journal.He’s not alone to look at this gigantic market where print press enjoys a double digit growth. “Last year, all of India’s papers added 12 million new readers, says Raju Narisetti, the editor of the business paper Mint points. That is [...]...
- The economics of moving from print to online:
lose one hundred, get back eight Let’s kill a myth. The dream of a compact newsroom, able to output a high-intensity general news website doesn’t fly. Numbers simply don’t add up. And here is why. . First, the cost structure of a daily. In a typical operation, the biggest costs are industrial ones: around 25%-35% for paper and printing; another 30%-40% for [...]... - From superblog to “Internet newspaper”, the lessons of the Huffington Post What’s so special about the Huffington Post? How come that what started as a political blog three years ago now epitomizes the “superblogs” threat to mainstream media? And, perhaps more important, what causes a blog to mutate into something now perceived as a mainstream media — and do the economics work? . From a content perspective, the [...]...
