This module is about producing original, in-depth, issue-led journalism designed to inform the public debate.

In a previous module about identifying the target audience and its information needs we dealt with the first stage in establishing a strong media business.

This second stage deals with producing content aimed at meeting the needs of that target audience group.

Establishing a differential

To survive in a fiercely competative media world a news organisation must offer something different. There are many demands for the attention of your audience. What you offer has to stand out.

For a broadcaster or publisher with a public service remit the role is to cover the stories that are often ignored by others. This doesn’t mean that your editorial proposition has to be worthy, boring and dull. Just the opposite – these will be stories about the issues that really concern your audience.

These stories will need to be produced in a way that uncovers angles and reveals information that will help your audience better understand the issues that affect them.

Such issue-led journalism is essential for informing the public debate.

It’s the opposite of simply repeating the information handed out in news releases, or reporting about official, stage-managed events.

Those stories have to be covered, too, but the role of the journalist is to dig where others don’t and to shine a light in dark places in order to uncover information that, otherwise, might remain hidden.

It means journalists have to set the editorial agenda rather than be led by an agenda set by others – that is the role of the journalist.

But setting the framework for that to happen is the role of the senior management team. This modules looks at how to do that.

Defining an issue-led journalism strategy

Image by David Brewer released via Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0

Gather your senior management team. Include representatives from editorial, commercial, technical and business development. It will be the same team that helped you identify the target audience in a previous exercise.

In that exercise we looked at the target audience profiles, and tried to imagine the issues that most concerned them. Now we turn to the part of the process where you list those issues.

Wherever this exercise has been carried out, the answers are roughly the same. The issues that most concern the target audience are usually:

• Jobs
• Homes
• Health
• Education
• Crime
• Environment
• Security
• Future
• Technology
• Transport

Your list of 10 issues might be different, but it will probably contain many of the above.

Note that politics and corruption are not listed as main issues, despite being suggested as such almost every time this exercise is carried out. This is because politics and corruption are often common to all issues, rather than being issues or topics in their own right.

Involve your senior editors

So, we have made a start. This list is the beginning of your unique editorial proposition which you will investigate on behalf of your audience.

However, at this stage, it all looks a bit dull. These are just words. We need more. So we move onto the next step.

Gather some of your senior editors and invite them to think of 10 topics for each issue. For example, let’s take health. Topics under the issue of health might include the following:

• Hospital waiting lists
• Abortion
• HIV/Aids
• Fake drugs
• Lack of medicines
• TB
• Malaria
• Health education
• Hospital cleanliness
• Quality of medical staff

Ask the editors to write down at least 10 topics for each of the 10 issues. So, we now have 10 issues, multiplied by 10 topics for each issue, which equals 100 ideas. But these are still words on a list.

Now comes the fun part.

Involve all your producers and reporters

The editors now hand this list to the reporters and ask them to think of at least three story ideas for each topic.

The reporters gather and discuss the ideas, thinking of how to illustrate each issues through examples reflecting the lives of the target audience groups identified earlier.

A reporter might know someone who has had a back-street abortion. They might have heard that hospital waiting lists in their area of the town are lengthy. Perhaps they have heard of someone who has become sick after visiting hospital. Or maybe they could imagine a scenario and then talk to people in the street to see if they know of such an incident and can introduce them to someone who can tell their story.

Let’s take the topic of health education. We might find that the list compiled by the reporters looks something like this:

• Young people unaware of the risks of HIV/Aids
• Stigma preventing people from admitting they are ill
• Illness spread through the poor preparation of food in hospitals

Whatever the story ideas your reporters suggest, at the end of this stage of the exercise you will have three story ideas for each topic.

So you now have 10 issues multiplied by 10 topics multiplied by three story ideas, which equals 300 possible stories.

These stories will be timeless, meaning that they are not related to a particular event or announcement.

They will have a long shelf life, meaning that they will not go out of date quickly.

And, most of all, they will be stories that are unique to your news organisation, and which you are likely to want to return to in the future in order to follow up developments.

You will be producing stories that, had it not been for your news organisation, would never have been told.

This is your unique editorial proposition, which is your market differential.

The Planning Editor

These stories are then managed by the planning editor, who has the responsibility for ensuring that all the story ideas are well planned, produced for multiple devices, and followed up.

S/he will keep a calendar with these stories plotted. Each story will have a follow up date. It might be three months or six months, perhaps even a year. But it is important that each story is revisited to find out what has changed since it was first covered.

Please refer to the training module about forward planning for media organisations in which we look more closely at the role of the planning editor.

So we now have 300 story ideas revisited at least once a year, which equals 600 stories.

This is about 12 original stories a week.

These are stories that your competitors won’t have. They will be forced to follow your lead.

However, by the time they do, you will have published the next set of original stories. They will be forced to follow again.

You will have taken control of the news agenda. This is now the central part of your editorial strategy to provide issue-led journalism that informs the public debate so that your audience can make educated choices.

This is responsible journalism.

And it is clever journalism, too, because, if your audience feels you are covering the issues that matter most to them, they are more likely to trust you and continue using your news services.

This will increase your opportunities for revenue generation.

Monitoring and saving costs

Now you have the list of issues, topics and stories, share it with your sales and marketing team so that they can build campaigns around the content they know you are planning to produce.

The strategy above also saves resources and costs.

You can often cover several well-planned stories in the one trip making sure you get the best value out of your journalists, technical teams and editors.

Becoming a news leader

When I did this with the Serbian broadcaster B92 in Belgrade in 2005, the competition started to ask where they got the news releases from – the competitors were accustomed to having all news delivered via the wires, through news releases, or via organised and stage-managed news conferences.

They found it hard to understand that the stories were produced through the process of journalism forward planning and not as a result of the process of public relations.

Once you have decided to produce issue-led journalism there will be no stopping you. You will be the agenda-setters.

I have carried this exercise out from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe and the results in all cases have been impressive.

The post Establishing a market differential with original journalism first appeared on Media Helping Media.

Sales is one of the most important elements of a media company’s commercial strategy. The sustainability of the business relies on its ability to generate income. Projections of revenue generation in the business plan will act as the guide to what is possible and will temper or encourage commercial ambitions.

Sales is one of the most important elements of a media company’s commercial strategy. The sustainability of the business relies on its ability to generate income.

Projections of revenue generation in the business plan will act as the guide to what is possible and will temper or encourage commercial ambitions.

These guidelines are deliberately general so that they can be applied to any kind of media business, whether it is print, broadcast or online.

And because advertising still generates the lion’s share of income for most media businesses, the focus in this article will be optimizating this revenue stream.

The four pillars of your sales strategy

Having worked on the commercial side of media businesses for many years, I have seen many unfocused sales strategies which can run to 100 pages or more in length; this is not the way to do it. A good sales strategy should give you a clear answer to the following four questions:

• What do you want to sell?
• To whom do you want to sell?
• How do you want sell?
• At which price do you want to sell?

It looks almost too simple, but if you have worked out a sales strategy which delivers straight answers to these four questions – the four pillars – you will have defined a strategy which is more likely to succeed. It will also help your sales people carry out their job, and it could help you establish a market leader position.

The rest is about sitting down with your management team and working out a plan for each of the four pillars. The following are some examples.

Q1: What do you want to sell?

This is a broad area covering topics such as:

• Which target audience do you want to sell to?
• Which kind of adverts, formats or sponsorships do you want to sell?
• Which advertising/sponsorship packages do you want to sell?
• Which other related services do you want to sell (competitor surveillance, content, production, etc)?

There are no general answers to these questions because they are all affected by local regulations, market standards, technical skills and your own editorial profile. But when it comes to defining which target audience to focus on, there are a few general terms which should be considered.

When starting a media business you will lack the historical research data needed to help you outline which target audience to focus on. You will need to choose a target audience profile to enable potential clients to see a connection between that profile and the content produced by your newspaper, magazine, radio channel, etc.

When audience data start coming in, you can then begin to see the actual profile of your audience. Based on this, you can decide whether it is possible to broaden the commercial target group or, perhaps, start selling packages for more than one target group.

Q2: To whom do we want to sell?

Don’t just start running after the biggest spenders in the market. Focus your sales effort on advertisers with a target group which is in line with your reader/audience profile.

If your commercial target group is defined as men aged 25 to 50 with middle to high income, it may not make sense to chase clients in the health and beauty category. Start by listing the most obvious categories. For the target audience profile mentioned above, a list of possible categories could be:

• Cars
• Financial services
• Beer and alcohol
• Telecommunications
• Computers and IT equipment
• Airlines

After defining the categories that are most likely to appeal to your target audience, make a list of the 10 to 15 most likely advertisers within each category. Make sure that only one sales person is responsible for each category as he or she will pick up valuable knowledge about the industry as they work their way down the list.

Make sure you hold meetings with both the advertiser and their media agency. You meet the advertisers to get the orders; you meet the media agency to avoid creating enemies.

Some people recommend focusing only on the advertisers because the media agencies may come across as arrogant, negative and interested only in reducing prices. There is some value in this approach, but try to put yourself in the advertisers’ place. If you paid somebody to be the expert in a certain area and they advised you not to choose a specific supplier, would you then choose that supplier? No, probably not.

Some sales strategies focus only on media agencies as they control the bulk of all media spending in the market. Forget it. The media agency is never going to do the sales work for you. It is up to you to convince the advertiser that they should have a preference for your media organisation. Once you have created this relationship, the media agency is unlikely to stand in your way.

The general rule is to keep your eyes focused on the advertiser and be aware that you have to do all the sales work. However, keep the media agency informed about what you are doing and offer them the same information as you are giving to their client. Try to strike a healthy balance between the two in order to avoid the situation where the media agency stands in the way of you getting the order.

Q3: How do we want to sell?

This is an extremely important area. By setting a clear path for your sales people to follow, you are helping them find the right way to move. And by making that road clear and visible they can use all their energy selling. You are forming the sales culture in your company. Having a clearly-defined and healthy sales culture is probably the most important single factor in becoming a commercial success. There are internal and external considerations.

Internal

• What kind of sales culture do you want?
• What are your core values?
• How do you want to measure the performance of your sales staff?
• What are your rules for holding meeting with clients, the number of phone calls etc?

External

• What story do you want to tell the market?
• What are your unique selling points (USPs)?
• How do you make sure that everybody in the team is heading in the same direction?
• Which position in the market are you aiming to occupy/dominate?

Here are a few examples of internal subjects which are of great importance.

Sales culture

Make sure you create a competitive sales culture where the most successful sales person is rewarded in terms of money, credibility and attractive clients. Good sales people are competitive and they will function well in this environment. Those who don’t like this environment are unlikely to be successful sales people and you probably don’t want them around anyway.

Core values

Define a set of core values which your sales people have to apply to everything they do. One of these could be: “We never speak badly about a client.” I have heard a sales person calling a client stupid because the client didn’t appear to understand the sales pitch. But actually it is the other way around. It is the sales person who is at fault by not being able to articulate the benefits in a way that the client understands. By establishing your core values you are less likely to have one of your sales team give up on a client because the message being conveyed has not been understood.

Measure performance

Make sure you measure the performance of your sales staff. Keep an eye on their results and make their track record visible for the entire sales crew to see. Show all results for all members of the sales team on a weekly basis to make clear that you are creating a competitive environment where performance is recognised.

In terms of external areas be sure to focus on the following:

Make sure everybody is telling the same story about the company when they talk to advertisers: Who you are, what your goals are, how you want to achieve them, what makes you different, etc.

Set up an internal workshop for the sales team where they define the USPs of your media company. Involve them in the process of finding the best sales arguments. If you do, they are more likely to understand the arguments and use them. As a result, your sales team will be moving in the same direction and will be offering a unified message to the market.

Decide which position you want to take in the business to business (B2B) market. For example “The professional and analytic player”, “The fast and furious”, “The upcoming star”, “The bad boy”, etc. This will help you decide how to address sales-related issues.

Q4: At which price do you want to sell?

Study your competitors and decide which position you want to take. Make a printed rate card and send it out to the market. This will prove you are a serious player intending to be in the market for a long time.

Of course it is difficult to decide which price level to put in the rate card, but it is better to make it more expensive than too cheap. If the price level proves to be too expensive you can always introduce some new discount packages, i.e. “introduction package”, “summer package” “rotation package”, etc.

If you start by making your rate card too cheap, you will later be faced with the cost of making a new one. Also, if you send out a new and more expensive rate card you risk bad media publicity, such as “X-Media increases prices by 25% against poor audience growth”.

Consider selecting the biggest media agency to represent you and pay them to help formulate your strategy. Raise the issue of the rate card and invite them to come up with a recommendation. By adopting this approach you will obtain a professional view on what the market price should be and the media agency will put you on their media plan.

The post How to develop a media sales strategy first appeared on Media Helping Media.

A media business is like a table with four legs. These are the media organisation’s target audience, the core editorial proposition that it offers to that audience, the values that the business holds dear, and the market that sustains the business.

Each leg has to be strong and firm. If one leg is weak, the table wobbles. A shaky media organisation is not good.

Leg one – identifying the target audience

First you need to know the profile and needs of your target audience. You can do this by hiring an expensive market research team, or you can use informed guesswork. My preference is the latter. In my experience this works well, and the exercise can be carried out in less than a day.

Gather your senior team from editorial, sales, marketing, and business development. Obtain some existing market data; it’s likely that the local audience segments have already been identified. If not, it’s not difficult to work this out.

Audience segments are groups of similar people with overlapping interests.

Focus on three audience segments and super-serve them. Try to imagine one character that best represents each group. Download pictures from the internet of people who fit the character profiles you have identified.

Ask the following questions:

• What are their interests and what stories would they read?
• What are their concerns? You need to find the answers they require.
• What would turn them off? Identify the stories they would probably skip.
• What is their lifestyle, are they married, in a relationship, single, have they got children?
  Are you catering for their personal and lifestyle interests?
• What do they buy and what are they unlikely to buy? Make sure you have the right adverts in your output.

Once you have these profiles, share them with your journalists so they know who they are writing for. Do the same with the sales and marketing team so they know what adverts the audience would be interested in.

When this exercise has been completed, print these three character profiles and stick them on the newsroom and the sales department walls. Make sure that every story is written for these audience groups and uses the language that they understand. Advertising on your site should reflect your users’ interests and aspirations.

Leg two – set out a unique core editorial proposition

The next leg is the core editorial proposition (CEP). Every news organisation must have one. It defines what you offer that nobody else offers, or the way you research and present material that is different from what your competitors are offering. This is your market differential designed to win over the audience groups you are targeting.

And if you think you already have one, think again; changing audience behaviour demands a regular review of what you offer. A CEP that is more than a year old is a museum piece.

Your CEP sets out what your news organisation offers. It is about what you say that nobody else says. It helps clarify the standards of presentation and subject matter the users can expect you to produce.

In marketing terms, it can be an important process in defining your news brand. In terms of your online and mobile services, defining your CEP also helps you decide what to include and what to leave out. It helps journalists decide how to ensure the online version of your output is focused.

It will offer your audience clarity and comfort as they begin to get to know how to access and use your news on the various devices on which you are delivering your content. Linked with a multiplatform authoring strategy generated from a converged newsroom, it will also offer a consistency of editorial message across all outlets.

Social network strategy

As part of the CEP, you need to define your social network strategy. It’s important you do this because your audience may already be ahead of you and you don’t want to appear out of touch and irrelevant. You will need to decide how you use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube for both newsgathering and news dissemination. Too many media businesses fail to think this through when they should be harnessing social networking for the benefit of both the audience and the media business. A well thought-out CEP can take as little as half a day to figure out, jot down, and begin to implement.

Issue-led journalism

Central to all this is carrying out an exercise to identify the issues, themes and stories your news organisation covers that address the concerns and interests of your audience and, in turn, help inform the public debate.

This will create your issue-led journalism strategy that will deliver a wealth of original stories, planned in advance to save resources, and which will give you a news lead and a clear market differential.

Leg three – the market

Once you know your target audience and have defined your CEP, you can start to plan your revenue-generation strategy. As stated before, the sales and marketing team and the business development team should be part of the process of defining the target audience. If they are not, they will have a difficult job monetising the content. If they are involved they will have a head start in thinking through their sales and marketing campaigns.

Once you have circulated the profiles of the characters you are going to super-serve, sales and marketing can get on with the job of building campaigns around those characters.

Leg four – your values

Your audience will return if your content …

• is compelling, well produced, original and distinctive.
• addresses the issues that concern them most.
• is easy to understand and accessible on multiple devices.
• can be trusted – the integrity of your news organisation is essential.

The ethics that underpin your editorial and business decisions need to be visible in all you do. It is important to set out a code of ethics and ensure that all those who work for you, whether in the newsroom or out in the market, abide by those rules and apply them to all their dealings with the public, clients, stakeholders and suppliers. You might want to publish your promise to the audience, including your code of ethics, in an “about us” page on your site.

The post Setting up a media business – four essential steps first appeared on Media Helping Media.