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What Can Association Publishers Learn from Trade Publishers? Digital Marketing Take Aways

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We recently came across the post, "Digital marketing scales and that could create new opportunities for capable publishers" by Mike Shatzkin of The Idea Logical Company

While written with trade publishers in mind, it has some good news and helpful takeaways for niche-market, mission-driven publishers -- especially those who are Tizra users.

 The post puts a spotlight on publisher Open Road Integrated Media's success with discount pricing and vertically-focused digital marketing campaigns, and their continuing expansion as a marketing services provider for competitive publishers.

Open Road offers those competing publishers visibility for their niche titles in its highly target-marketed newsletters, reaching an ever increasing number of niche readers. In a win-win arrangement, those publishers reach more potential readers, and Open Road is able to share news about additional relevant titles - making their newsletters even more valuable for the readers. Open Road also benefits from additional revenue, and perhaps even more valuable - behavioral data points on what interests their audience and drives sales/conversions.

How is this relevant to Association Publishers?

 Reading between the lines and omitting those bits that don't apply to a direct-to-consumer/member publisher, the post delivers some reassuring news for association publishers: vertical publishers with access to a niche market of eager readers are in an enviable position. As association publishers, your readers are members who have already accepted you as a trusted source of relevant content, and you have direct and exclusive access to them.

How can you apply some of the ideas presented in this post to your own publishing program? We've identified three key take-aways that mission-driven/association publishers might consider to bring greater value to members, build brand awareness, and boost the overall bottom line.

Price-Driven Promotions (for marketing, discovery)
  • Open Road's Early Bird Book newsletter highlights free and discounted titles, with data showing that bargain-hunting readers of Early Bird Books also buy related, non-discounted titles.  Because Tizra publishers can implement price changes and content access/configuration in real time, experimenting with price-driven promotions is easy. 
Among the possibilities: offering limited time or scarcity-based discounts; offering entire books or partial books for free; offering discounts to sub-sections of members; etc. The data you can gather about what promotions motivate purchases can be very valuable, and price-driven promotions can lead to purchases of relevant, full-priced content.
Content Marketing -- (for brand awareness, discovery, marketing)
  • "Sometimes adapting something from the book and other times creating original content of interest to the vertical audience" are other ways to optimize the value of your books/content. Sharing pieces of your premium content via newsletters, blog posts, etc., can drive readers (including interested non-members) back to you for other offerings - both content- and membership-related.
Marketing Services -- (for additional revenue stream, added member value)
  • As an association publisher, with exclusive access to a vertical audience, you might consider offering your marketing services (via your association's newsletters, blogs, events) to like-minded publishers who want to promote their titles to your membership. Vetting the titles ensures they meet your standards, and makes such a marketing service even more valuable to both participating publishers and your members.
Given that Tizra was developed for the broader publishing market, it's not surprising that our platform offers easy and cost effective ways to execute tactics like these.  Drop us a note, or sign up for a demo to see how.
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