back to thedrum.com
Digital innovation remains one of the biggest priorities and challenges for publishers this year. Full Fat Things builds tools and solutions that enable those publishers to focus on what matters most to their business, audiences and bottom line.
With the variety of platforms, formats and commercialisation models emerging and evolving at a rapid pace, there are many possibilities and opportunities. It’s hard for media organisations of any size to know where to start. Or how to prioritise unpredictable fledgling digital products.
Digital panic and FOMO are real. And it can be tempting for businesses to try everything on for size when trying to grow digital revenues. But rushing to a conclusion of a specific format, outcome or just the latest shiny new thing isn’t always right. When looking at competitors’ successes and innovations, we encourage them to answer the question: is your infrastructure and business model aligned with those challenges?
What works or has worked before? Does it naturally map to a digital strategy and align with the core business? When those questions can be answered, we look to figure out the back-to-basic product propositions...
Use
How, where, and why will the customer interact with products and services in a digital environment?
Discoverability
How, where, and why will they find them? Influencers, classic digital marketing. We all know classic SEO is dead.
Value
It can be tempting to focus on aesthetics and wow factor – that can be valid – but will it translate to profit?
There are several ways publishers can grow into multi-channel media operations. We have worked with many different organisations to get results in many different ways. One thing we caution against is trying to do everything at once, without resourcing up sufficiently for success, as it will stunt growth and challenge morale. In print, publishers picked a priority from subs or advertising. We encourage them to do the same thing in digital. And to focus on the business outcomes and not just on the technology or platforms.
Is it possible to monetise digital products through advertising, affiliates, ecommerce, paywalls and micro-payments? Absolutely.
Is this all possible with the same team? Unlikely.
And is it a good idea to lean solely on the same people conducting business as usual? Almost certainly not.
We help customers pick goals. And to make them realistic for the business they have or the business they want in the future. We encourage them to be honest about their appetite, investment, commitment and buy-in to make sure they’re prepared with the skills and resources necessary to give them the best chance of success.
This doesn’t mean just doing more of the same in a digitised way. We specialise in finding the things at the centre of a business that make it tick and translating that to digital possibilities.
Publishers usually have one or two really core strengths that make their products special. These strengths include truly unique content or access, authority and perspective on a particular subject or a super valuable, hard-to-reach audience. Identifying what makes the business special, and in which order, helps determine development priorities.
If there is already knowledge and confidence in why a business or portfolio exists and is successful – simply put: why customers choose it – our experience is that the raw ingredients to create amazing digital products and services are already there. We just help find the right tools to bring them to life.
Our team at Full Fat Things has a combined experience of over 70 years in the publishing industry. We partner with organisations like Future, EMAP, The Economist, Key Publishing and Which? on B2B and B2C products.
We become the integrated extension of in-house publishing teams. We enable publishing specialists to focus on the content and audiences that drive their business by providing the technology to deal with the rest.
Let's talk digital publishing: https://www.fullfatthings.com/contact-us
