About Mumbrella’s 2015 Kickstart Week (and the marketing problem we’re trying to solve)
Mumbrella today launches its Kickstart 2015 Week. Tim Burrowes explains.
Pinch punch, first of the month…
So you may have seen the news story we’ve just posted about our 2015 Kickstart Week.
Today we drop the paywall for The Source. Tomorrow, we launch Summer School. And on Wednesday, we do something special around next year’s Mumbrella360.
It’s a bit like the world’s most boring advent calendar, isn’t it?
But I’ll let you into a secret. While our purpose is – as always – to help our audience in their working lives and careers – there’s an ulterior motive.
You see, we have a marketing problem. And then it occurred to me that we talk every day to the people best placed to help.
So our initiative with The Source today is aimed at addressing that.
Our problem is this: we think it’s a really good product, but we don’t think we’ve been that great at marketing it.
We launched The Source 18 months ago.
It came after we recognised a bit of an unmet need. We used to get a regular trickle of phone calls from people asking if we knew which agency worked with various brands.
Often we were able to help, but we didn’t always have their contact details to hand. And sometimes, we didn’t know the answer.
There was a product in the market already which touched on some of this info, but it was quite expensive.
So about two years ago we began to research and build the product that became The Source. It’s 18 months this week since it launched.
We aimed to offer an affordable pricepoint (from $92 a month) and keep it up to date using a rotating team of five researchers.
We’ve still got a framed piece of paper with some of the names creative agency The Works suggested to us. (In the end, the name The Source rose to the top in both focus groups we conducted and we went with that.)
And The Source is already breaking even.
But here’s the problem – we don’t think we’ve nailed the marketing strategy.
It’s a good product. When people try it, they tend to subscribe. And when they subscribe, they tend to resubscribe.
But we still struggle to explain what the product does when we talk to people about it. I’m nearly 400 words into this piece, and I’m not sure I’ve quite done it yet, have I?
One solution is to give people the chance to try it.
So we do regularly offer a 30-day trial. Like many paywall plays, we take a credit card, and it becomes a subscription if the user doesn’t cancel at the end of that.
And like many paywall plays, handing over the credit card can be a bit of a turn off.
Hence this week’s initiative, of making it open for the next seven days only to anyone who simply supplies their email address.
I’d love people to sample it, because I think many of them will subscribe at the end of the process.
And of course we use all of the opportunities being a sister title to Mumbrella affords us – ads on the site and on our daily email, branding at our events. but I’m not sure that advertising necessarily tells The Source’s story.
So this week’s Kickstart 2015 gives us a chance to not only do a little bit for our readers, but to tap into the wisdom of the crowd. With your indulgence, we’ve got an opportunity to crowd source two things: industry knowledge and marketing wisdom.
First, industry knowledge. No database is ever complete. So I bet there are gaps – despite covering 1,180 brands, 415 advertisers and 324 agencies, I bet there are plenty we’re not covering yet.
And by opening up The Source, it gives everybody the opportunity to check we’re covering their brand and agencies – and to let us know if not, so it can become a better product.
The Source’s publisher Camille Alarcon is standing by to make amendments as you share anything we’re missing. She’s on camille@focalattractions.com.au.
And the other, bigger, part is marketing wisdom.
So here comes my request. Mumbrella is lucky enough to be read by some of the brightest marketing brains in the business.
So we’d love a little help.
If you were marketing The Source, what would you do?
Please – be brutally honest in the comment thread below. Camille and I are all ears.
Tim Burrowes is the content director of Mumbrella
You had me at free.
User ID not verified.
how about kickstarting a name that doesn’t suck ass juice from “kickstarter”?
User ID not verified.
The content is wide-reaching and thus a very broad target market. Change your selling model. One year subscription: $450. 24hour access: $25.
The big players in marketing/sales/advertising (and there are plenty of them) can justify the $450 easily and $25 is a no-brainer for everyone else who needs niche info at a particular time.
User ID not verified.
It is good, useful. But I had to try it to understand that. You need to sell it better on the home page so I understand what I’m going to get.
User ID not verified.
Identify your target market and talk to them. Get them into a room and ask them how they use it, why they need it, why they don’t need it, why they might need it, when they need it, who asks for it, who pays for it? Then get the price point right. Make it the Bible. My gut feel is: Ad sales, agency freelancers, BDM’s, and BTL, ATL, OTL agencies chasing new biz and new marketing managers that need three quotes. I haven’t looked at The Source for about 18 months so I will have a quick look now and add some agencies that i know if you don’t already have them listed. I am looking for a facilitators job and solving marketing problems is what I do. Happy to help you with a workshop should you decide to go down that road.
User ID not verified.
Have promoted this great initiative on Linked In
Good news to the widest audience will attract those in the hunt for what is a unique service.
User ID not verified.
Focus on value added to the user. I didn’t see much about how the product will help the customer in the article, which should be the #1 focus. Maybe it’s benefits are obvious to some, but perhaps focus on the dramatic benefits and consequences of using this service. Thanks for your time.
User ID not verified.
What you are here doing is a great start. Being an SEO geek, and ex media sales, I’d take the Google approach. If I wanted to find out who the media planner was for client X I’d Google [media planning] [client]. Sometimes it would work but for the majority it wouldn’t, so a great opportunity exists right now if you want to put in the effort. Thi would involve the creation of optimised landing pages on the edge the paywall teasing users with the fact you have the information they seek, which gives the user confidence you have the information they are looking for. Sooner or later they will cave and purchase a subscription because your directory kept showing up in results for all those other clients they needed info on. You can partially (and I mean at a minute level) auto-generate pages of content from your database for all the applicable variants a user would normally search for. From there its just a matter of fleshing out each page. Easy for you journos! Let me know if you need a hand. Cheers!
User ID not verified.
Let us know when you’re going to launch a sponsored content section on Mumbrella Australia. Seems odd this offering was made available to the industry in Asia first, unless Mumbrella Asia is now supposed to be the flagship?
User ID not verified.
Hi Justin,
Thanks for the question. The sponsored content section on Mumbrella Asia is something of an experiment – we’re keen to assess both demand from sponsors and reaction from readers.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I agree with changing the subscription model. We don’t all have big marketing budgets, so it would be great if after the 30 day free trial (which is a great idea that you should keep), one listing per day could be viewed for free and if they want to view more after that, users have to subscribe. (I am unsure about keeping the users credit card details during the free trial though as I have read that some people strongly object to this). One month, three month, 6 month and 12 month subscription options could also encourage a wider audience to subscribe (that’s if you want an audience with a range of budgets to subscribe).
User ID not verified.