Are you struggling to generate sufficient revenue for your publication? In this article, we’ll explore four common reasons why your publication might be falling short financially and provide effective solutions to overcome these challenges. Discover valuable insights and practical strategies to boost your publication’s revenue and thrive in today’s competitive media landscape.
4 Reasons
You’ve got too much tech
Audience data is the most valuable currency media professionals have. The right data gives you the blueprint for connecting with and converting everyone in your audience, no matter where they’re engaging or what segment they’re in
In one glance, you can see exactly what resonates with each of your audience members. With that information, you can create bold, daring content with confidence — and make bets in the right places.
Sounds great in theory. But if your audience data is spread across your email platform, event management system, CRM and 10+ other tools? You’re not just missing out on those insights. Your team’s spending valuable hours transferring that data between systems, standardizing it, and making it ready to use. And by the time it’s ready to activate, your audience is probably long gone.
Data silos wastes valuable time and money. But even worse, they keep your team from creating the personalized, customized content your audience expects.
So if your numbers are lagging, take stock of your tech stack. Odds are that you’re using overlapping tools that silo your data and cost unnecessary time and money.
Some questions to get you started:
- How much time does your team spend sending audience data between platforms? Or cleaning, manipulating and clearing it of duplicates?
- Do your email campaigns always get delayed because you’re waiting on that spreadsheet of new subscribers… for two weeks?
- Can your team easily create new audience segments as new information and form submissions come in? (Example: If someone downloads an eBook about investing, are they automatically added to a new “downloaded eBook” or “interested in investing” segment? Can your email team query your database and create that segment themselves?)
- Can you easily see how your audience engages with your website? Does your whole team have access to that information?
- Do your audience profiles update in real time?
Consider ways to streamline your tech stack and combine multiple functions into one platform.
One of the best ways to do this: Use a customer data platform specifically for media. These tools take in audience data from every channel you use to reach your audience, standardize it, and store it in one place for your entire team to use.
Once the initial workflow is set up, incoming data is also added to someone’s profile – and relevant marketing segments ‚ in real time. So every time someone clicks an email or reads an article, your entire team can see that they engaged — and target them with the right message or content.
Your team gets a single view of each audience member’s activity across every channel — all in one place. No manual transfers or uploads necessary.
Consolidating your tech stack can’t make up for a bad content strategy or spammy email practices. But it will save your team time previously spent moving audience data between tools — and remove the guesswork from your content development strategy.
That’ll give your team the time and space they need to experiment — and create something that really connects with your audience.
Some other factors to consider:
Choose your channels strategically
Evaluate new social media and distribution platforms critically. FOMO might convince you to try out that trendy new platform “to see what happens” (see: every lukewarm, low-engagement corporate TikTok in your feed).
But for every Duolingo that goes supernova on TikTok, there are 50 or 100 other companies that never find their audience due to audience mismatch or worse, fall flat on their face. (See: 90% of “cheeky” corporate brands on Twitter).
That’s not to say you shouldn’t experiment with new platforms. But if there’s a fundamental mismatch between your content and the channel’s audience/vibe, even the best content won’t garner the ROI you need.
Automate subscription management
We’ve all forgotten to renew a subscription or gotten a shipment late. From the consumer perspective, it’s annoying but inevitable. But for publishers, these unforced errors cut into revenue and threaten long-term financial health.
So how can you avoid these unforced errors? Automate subscription management and billing.
By outsourcing manual processes like fulfillment, entitlement management, payment processing and more, you can avoid losing revenue for preventable reasons.
Or for a more optimistic view: The less time and money you spend managing existing subscriptions, the more time you can spend earning new ones.
Shopping for new subscription management tools? Some important features to consider in a subscription management solution include:
- Product and print fulfillment
- Digital fulfillment
- Entitlement management
- Credit card processing and national change of address verification
- Auto-renewal and payment recovery processes
- Content metering and paywalls, with reporting and databases that connect to the rest of your tech stack
- Subscriber segmentation and automation tools
- An integrated subscriber database that includes someone’s interactions across every channel
- Integrations with email and marketing automation tools, so that you can easily send and automate renewal reminders, payment failure notifications, welcome emails — and prevent involuntary churn.
- Integrations with data management tools — like a CDP specifically for media — so you can easily view and query your subscribers based on their level of engagement, date of last engagement, payment history, order volume, and more. Use this to re-engage at-risk subscribers or better yet, identify promising cross- and up-sell opportunities.
2. You’re not getting enough paid subscribers
The profit equation’s got two key elements: maximizing revenue and minimizing costs. So far, we’ve focused heavily on the latter. Now let’s look at the former.
If you’ve got a revenue problem, chances are that you’ve got a churn problem as well. Below are some surefire ways to boost your subscription rates:
Use your newsletter as a subscription feeder
Research from the New York Times shows that email newsletter readers are twice as likely to become paid subscribers than non-readers. Better yet, they’re 7% more likely to stay subscribed as well, according to the Boston Globe.
Intuitively, this makes sense: Through newsletters, you can breed familiarity, establish your credibility and connect with your readers over a longer period of time. And unlike paid ads, social media and other methods, people can read newsletters on their own time and on their own terms (as long as you’re following anti-spam guidelines, that is). So they’re more likely to receive your promotions enthusiastically — and ultimately pay for a subscription.
But most newsletter readers won’t subscribe unless you put the idea in their head. Drive paid subscriptions from your newsletter readers with these tactics:
Differentiate your content and learn more about your audience through preference pages
Use your email data to inform your content, and vice versa: Newsletters are a regular source of information about your readers — what they click, what they open, where they scroll, where they’re coming from. And just as important, you can see what doesn’t work for that audience. So lean heavily on your email reports and website analytics to form your content strategy.
Your newsletter is the one place where your audience can regularly engage in predictable, routine cadence — so prioritizing that channel is one of the best ways to create a regularly engaged, consistent base over time.
Don’t give away the farm: Compared to the rest of your audience, your regular newsletter readers are the most likely to be interested in a paid subscription. But in a bit of paradox, they’re also the most likely to be complacent. After all, if they’re already really happy with your free newsletter, they’ll need an extra incentive to subscribe.
Counter this by putting some of your premium content behind a paywall, then promote it in your newsletter. You could sneak peek a paragraph of the article like the Atlantic does — or just link to the post, (Consider running an A/B test to see which variation yields the most traffic to your meters. Then, if you’re an Omeda user, you can use our URL Click Report to see how each one performs and adjust accordingly.)
Don’t want to paywall your content? No problem — add onto your subscription package instead. Consider creating subscriber-exclusive job boards, community boards, events, webinars or even swag. This way, your audience gains something by subscribing rather than losing something if they don’t.
Segment your newsletter audience by engagement level, then display targeted offers to your most engaged audience. The newsletter reader that scans your email every Monday morning, then forgets about you for the rest of the week, is different from the person who only reads twice per month, but also regularly visits your website and attends your events. So your promotional strategy needs to account for someone’s engagement across every channel, not just email.
To do this: Use a lead scoring model to quantify each newsletter reader’s engagement across every channel, from events and email to website and ads. (You can do this easily with Omeda’s CDP. See how IRONMARKETS used lead scoring to refine its ad packages here.)
Once you’ve set up lead scoring, you can separate your most engaged newsletter readers from your somewhat engaged and least engaged audience. From there, display targeted personalizations for each group, with different messaging and firing frequencies for each.
For your most engaged readers, you might display a promotional pop-up that fills their full screen every time they visit your site.
But such an aggressive approach might turn your less engaged readers away. So for them, you might use an exit-intent pop-up that only fires once they’re about to leave the site — or display it less frequently.
The key is to differentiate your promotional strategy for each person’s interest level — and meet them when they’re ready to buy.
(Wondering how to do it? On Omeda, you can build these custom audiences in your database, then display different personalizations to each one. So you can adjust your messaging to each person’s level of interest without creating more work than it’s worth.)
- Consider offering newsletter-exclusive discounts: Your long-time newsletter readers have already invested time and energy into your brand. So they’re already more loyal than your standard new subscriber. Consider rewarding them with a newsletter-exclusive discount. That alone could convince on-the-fence readers to take the leap and subscribe.
Acquisition aside, this offer shows your longtime audience that you value their contribution and starts your relationship on a strong note (and since newsletter readers are more likely to stay subscribed , the initial investment is likely to pay itself off in time). - Make sure your content is relevant: After decades of reading digital content for free, many people are reluctant to begin paying for it. To get subscriptions from this group, you need to prove your publication’s value for them, individually, at first encounter. As a starting point, consult your website tracking activity, CDP data, etc., to ensure that you’re covering the topics your audience cares about most.From there, use on-site personalizations (i.e., pop-ups) and content recommendations to guide individual website visitors to the articles they’re most likely to enjoy, based on their previous browsing and purchase activity. Personalized recommendations alone can increase your time on site, repeat visits and ultimately subscriptions: 18% of people who click a Content Recommendation module on Omeda client sites go on to click two or more links.
- Offer personalized subscription options: Personalizing content to individual readers entices them to read. Tailoring your subscription packages to them will encourage them to pay for it, too. Using your website and subscription data, look to create different subscription bundles (or “build your own bundles”) that align with your target subscribers’ biggest interests. Also consider using dynamic pricing to offer different prices to audience members with different levels of engagement (using the same lead scoring and differentiated promotional strategy we described above).
3. You’re not monetizing your content effectively
Maybe you’ve got a lot of traffic and even a lot of repeat visitors, but the revenue isn’t keeping pace. If you’re in this situation, consider how you can monetize more of your content. More on that below:
Optimize your paywalls or metered access models
Not getting enough bang for your content buck? Consider placing more (or all) of your content behind a paywall.
If your content is strong (and distinctive) enough, this alone can yield new subscriptions: According to the American Press Institute’s Media Insights Project, 47% of new subscribers sign up after running out of free articles on a site they like and respect.
But paywalls can just as easily push potential subscribers away if they’re not implemented strategically. Some factors to consider as you plan your paywall:
Choose between a soft meter or hard paywall: First, decide how many articles visitors will be able to read for free before “charging” them for additional access. There are two important variables to consider here: Some people will be reluctant to pay for a subscription before they’ve previewed a representative sample of your content — but leave too much content free and they won’t be incentivized to buy at all.
So as you introduce your meter, experiment with different access levels. Legacy news providers like The New York Times and The Atlantic offer readers two “free” articles per month whereas The Wall Street Journal requires readers to pay before reading anything.
You can also try different display options for your meters. Some publications like The Atlantic allow visitors to read a paragraph or two of a metered article before it’s blocked by the meter message. Others, like the WSJ, leave only one sentence visible for non-subscribers. For best results, try out different display options to see what generates the most subscriptions.
(On Omeda, you can use our website analytics solution to see how your whole audience — or individual segments like non-subscribers or different job titles — interact with each page. See how your audience
What kind of content should be placed behind a paywall?: Next, decide what types of content should be open to everyone and what should be metered.
Best practice is to meter content that’s truly distinctive — proprietary research, expert insights and other highly tactical advice that your readers can’t find via a standard Google search. (Check out more best practices on gated content here.)
If you’re not getting enough conversions from your long-form articles, consider metering more interactive and digestible content, like interactive research reports and infographics, quizzes or event recordings. The format itself doesn’t matter as long as you’re providing value and getting submissions in return.
What audiences should I target with a meter? You need to have someone’s trust to earn their business — and that’s often a long-term game. And if you block someone’s access to your content too early, they might not ever come back for more.
Avoid this by triggering meters only for custom audiences. You’ve probably seen publishers display meters for someone that’s visited your site 5+ times, but leave it open for first-time site visitors.
To make the most of your meters, your targeting needs to be even more specific. For instance, you could also target your meters based on someone’s previous engagement history, job title or past purchases.
Maybe your research shows that mid-career professionals in manufacturing are the most likely to pay for a subscription, but only if they’re already regularly reading your newsletter. In this case, you’d display your meters only to audience members with relevant job titles (as obtained via form submissions) who have also opened your newsletter X times in the last 2 months.
This way, you know you’re reaching people only when they’re ready to commit — and that you’re giving them the right message.
This specificity is possible on Omeda; With our personalizations, you can target custom audiences with a meter, like all known website visitors, members of an ongoing marketing automation campaign, or specific audience segments like “all audience development managers. (And for even more precision, you can rank different personalizations in order of priority!)
Develop premium content offerings and subscriptions
Not ready to implement a hard paywall yet? Rather than taking away access from those who don’t pay for a subscription, add content, services and resources for those who do. This way, readers will perceive your subscription package as an add-on to something they already love, rather than a necessity for maintaining access.
Your specific add-ons will depend on your publication: You could provide first-look access to exclusive industry research, interviews or podcasts. Or you can offer subscribers access to relevant experiential opportunities, like access to exclusive networking circles, VIP packages at your events, or access to AMA-style consulting opportunities (This is especially effective if you’re running a B2B publication of similarly grouped industry professionals.).
Optimize for mobile
While websites still deliver the most audience members, mobile users tend to be more engaged, according to Poool’s State of Digital Publishing Report.
To maximize participation (and subscriptions), ensure that your publication, associated newsletters and subscription pages are all fully optimized for mobile (and that they appear in both standard and dark mode).
4. You’re not giving your advertisers enough ROI
Revenue comes from two key places: your paid subscriptions and your advertising income. So let’s focus on the other side of that coin: your ad strategy.
If you can’t help your advertisers convert, you’re stuck relying on a constant stream of one-time advertisers rather than getting a reliable stream of revenue.
This doesn’t just create cash flow issues — it demands additional resources from your marketing and audience teams that could’ve been spent on content development.
Does that sound too familiar? Try these techniques to retain and attract your advertisers:
Know your audience
Ten years ago, advertisers saw that they got X impressions, X click-throughs and X revenue and, if it met expectations, they were happy. But the calculus has changed: Advertisers have realized that mass appeal won’t help them get business from each person behind the screen. Now, your advertisers need a blueprint for converting each individual within your larger audience.
And to drive revenue from advertising, you need to create that plan for them. The obvious answer is to give them your audience data. But that’s pretty hard to do when you don’t have any information about 95% of your audience.
That’s the case for most publishers. And we don’t need to explain why advertisers would pause at that, do we?
To engage your advertisers, you need to scale your ability to identify, engage and convert our unknown audience to paid subscribers and support our ad business.
The solution: Choose a customer data platform for media that converts your anonymous visitors into known leads. This will help you create more engaging website experiences for everyone in your audience — and give your advertisers more ROI to boot. Everybody wins.
Provide omni-channel exposure
Say you’re on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and you’ve hit the last question. You’ve only got one shot at the grand prize and now you’re sweating on national TV.
But if you had three chances to guess the right answer? You’d be feeling a lot better about your chances.
That’s the logic behind omni-channel ad packages: The more exposure you can give your ad partners, the more likely they’ll reach your audience in the places they want to engage. In a media landscape that’s getting more and more fragmented, this will become even more important moving forward.
So how can you implement this without overworking your marketing team? If you’re using an end-to-end audience management platform, you can pull in data from your CDP and use it to execute campaigns across email, Facebook Ads, and your website. Then you can evaluate and replicate those campaigns all in one place.
