Strutting your Cyber Stuff: Learn how other magazines employ multimedia marketing to promote their Internet ventures - New Media
Strutting your Cyber Stuff: Learn how other magazines employ multimedia marketing to promote their Internet ventures - New Media
Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management
Most magazines are clamoring to get on the Internet stage, yet when it comes to actually marketing their Web sites, many seem to be waiting in the wings. While investor-backed Internet ventures have been spending millions to plaster their brand names all over television, billboards and other traditional media--in addition to wallpapering the online environment with their logos--most magazine publishers, laboring under traditional budget constraints, are shying away from costly promotions, focusing instead on sensible efforts that promise a sure return on investment.
"Most publications have really taken a wait-and-see attitude about marketing their stuff on the Web, and rightly so, because their profit centers continue to be traditional publishing," says Jim Shulman, president of Marketing Results, a Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania-based marketing consultancy. "The Web is an investment for them at this point, and one that may not necessarily have a quick payback. We haven't seen a lot of aggressive promotion of Web sites out of this yet because it may not make economic sense for magazines."
PARADIGM SHIFT CREATES CHALLENGES
George Vrabeck, chief executive officer of Gr8Ride.com, a Primedia Co. portal that has integrated that publishing company's automotive brands, admits, "Every media company has had challenges with this. That's because it is a pretty radical paradigm shift."
Yet as they finally begin to feel comfortable with their Web offerings and with the online marketplace itself, more publishers are aggressively promoting their Internet properties. At a minimum, this usually involves leveraging the reach of their own multimedia assets. Some magazine companies are also beginning to push their Net properties via outside marketing venues where they believe the productivity of the placement is a foregone conclusion.
Here's a look at how five varied magazine publishers are marketing their Internet ventures.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Mitchell Prayer has the support of a global brand name and formidable multimedia resources to help spread the word, but the president of NationalGeographic.com is also pushing the envelope by marketing his site elsewhere online and penetrating newmedia platforms, including enhanced TV and the wireless Web.
"Right now, we have more than enough traffic to our Web site," he says. "And there's less of a need to go outside, because we're operating at a highly integrated level with our other properties." At the same time, Prayer insists on making NationalGeographic.com a pioneer in plumbing new possibilities because they are "relevant platforms for creating brand awareness and spotlighting the useful services and utilities that we're providing for readers."
There's no doubt about the reach of the National Geographic brand, with its four magazines, all of which are online as well as in print; about 70 new book titles each year; an international TV channel that is now available in 111 countries; and the launch of its U.S. TV channel this month. "Unlike many dot-coms that are spending 100 percent to 150 percent of their funds on marketing, we're in good position, because the National Geographic brand is one of the most trusted brands in the country, if not the world," Prayer says. "So we don't need to commit to that same level of spending that others do."
Praver makes ample use not only of ads in National Geographic magazine, but also of references at the end of most articles that direct readers to additional information that is available at NationalGeographic.com. The online operation is constantly cross-promoting with the TV properties, including a 30-second spot that has been running on the brand's international channel and will be airing on the U.S. channel right from the start.
NationalGeographic.com also has begun cross-promotional campaigns on the Web with sites in which the National Geographic Society has taken equity positions, including iExplore.com and Tripfinder.com. It also has struck deals with Yahoo! and plans to announce marketing arrangements with other portals. Now Prayer is planning to make his site a common presence on next-generation content and marketing platforms, including rich media on the Net, enhanced-TV services like TiVo and mobile Internet devices such as PDAs and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phones. On devices like Palm Pilots, for example, many top brand names are striking marketing deals that have their brand icon pop up on the first screen, for easy access by users.
Praver acknowledges that many a marketer already has been frustrated because the wireless Web and other new marketing opportunities haven't reached fruition as quickly as has been projected. We've taken a methodical and scalable approach," he says, "and we'll just let the marketplace tell us when the time is right."
GR8RIDE
Primedia has funneled the Internet content of all of its 29 automotive magazines--including Automobile, Car Audio and Electronics, Lowrider and Mustang Illustrated--into this online site for hard-core auto enthusiasts. And CEO George Vrabeck is pursuing his single-minded focus on attracting car nuts by slapping Gr8Ride not only throughout all those print magazines but also on TV, at car shows, elsewhere online, and, soon, on flyers in a direct-mail campaign.
"When you're marketing to a real niche audience like this, you don't want to try to be all things to all people," he says. "You want to be very specifically targeted on your niche. The best approach is to go where these people are."
Vrabeck is still relying primarily on reaching readers of the print magazines to drive traffic to the Web sites. But Gr8Ride also is relying on marketing at many of the major car-enthusiast shows held around the country. It will be appearing at as many as 15 events this year, each of which attracts 20,000 to 25,000 people, Vrabeck says. Event sponsorship typically is a relatively inexpensive $100,000 to $300,000 apiece, he says, and additional costs to support the event often amount to two times the sponsorship fee. That works out to a mere $3 cost to reach each user who is registered for an event. "People sign up right there, so you can very directly calculate your return on the event," Vrabeck says. "And for most of these events, it's a great deal."
Vrabeck remains relatively conservative about splashing Gr8Ride's brand all over the place, because he feels it simply isn't necessary to achieve the site's business goals. "We don't want traffic to the site for the sake of traffic," he says. "We just want the true enthusiasts who are interested in our content and products."
INC.
Inc. magazine and the brand's other products and services have been informing, organizing and even inspiring customers for more than 20 years, says Paige Arnof-Fenn, vice president for Inc.com, the brand's Web site. Inc.com, she says, has become a very organic extension of a brand that already has been "trusted in the small-business arena" for a long time.
"We've been able to leverage that relationship with what we've been doing with the online property, so that unlike a lot of pure-play Net businesses out there--which are trying to establish their brand names and make sure their URLs stand for something in consumers' minds--we already stand for something. We already have a plateau. That's a big advantage."
Not wanting to presume anything, however, Inc.com is pursuing a multimedia approach to marketing that "surrounds the consumer at various points in their day, when they're making decisions or starting to plan their day or try to figure out their agenda," Arnof-Fenn says. That includes, for example, having magazine editors and site producers write weekly or twice-monthly columns on various topics that Inc.com then e-mails to willing subscribers. At various times and in different markets, Inc.com also has tried advertising on billboards, in industry trade magazines, in "new economy" publications such as Red Herring and The Industry Standard, in airports, even in taxis and on buses.
The feedback suggests that outdoor and radio ads have been particularly effective, as well as direct-mail pieces, and Arnof-Fenn's staff carefully monitors activity at Inc.com to gauge the impact of the various initiatives. "But there's not any one thing that has moved the dial a great deal," she says. "It's just a matter of surrounding folks at every part of the day."
Online advertising has been fruitful for Inc.com too: e-mail campaigns and the site's partnership with WSJ.com, the online version of The Wall Street Journal. "We're constantly optimizing the online component," Arnof-Fenn says. "When we see that something is working, we'll focus our resources to come down behind those banners and sponsorships. If we're not seeing the traction we need, online is an easy way to constantly be optimizing what we're doing."
TIME
Taylor Gray has been jump-starting the marketing of Time.com since he became the site's president. (He remains marketing director of Time magazine.) "When I came on, it was sort of a casual thing, where we'd try to get some links to Time.com, but there wasn't a real focus on the property," he says.
All that is changing. Positioning Time.com as an unrivaled brand for providing analysis of current affairs, based on the expertise that the magazine staff long has demonstrated, Gray has been able to append Time.com content to more and more news "headline" sites--and to raise the profile of Time.com in the process. For example, he has intensified Time.com's longstanding partnership with America Online by becoming more aggressive about promoting his content to AOL'S news editors.
"We find out what they need to do to complement their news coverage and offer that," Gray says. "Do they need supporting analysis? If it's breaking news, do we happen to have an article about the background? We're pretty adept at filling the analysis gap on the Web, and now we're getting better at promoting that capability--not only with AOL, but also with Yahoo! and other sites."
Along with Time.com's presence on other Time Inc. sites, such as Fortune's and Entertainment Weekly's, the AOL partnership has given Gray the luxury for now of not having to promote Time.com in traditional media venues--which could change, he says. His next challenge is to energize marketing of Time Inc.'s other magazine-related sites, for Time Digital and for the now-defunct print publication Life.
INTERNET WORLD
Because its Internet World magazine is so steeped in the online marketplace anyway, it's only natural for Penton Media to think of the brand as a multimedia property, rather than as a print magazine with tack-ons like a Web site and industry conferences.
"We try to really leverage those three platforms together, and the marketing of them, to reach and touch and serve customers when, how and where they want to be served," says Tom Kuczynski, vice president of Internet World Media. "Each platform has unique characteristics that make it superior or inferior, depending on the customer's needs at the time."
For example, articles in Internet World magazine solicit readers' opinions for posting on the Web site. Several different e-newsletters marketed at the Web site go out to a total of 100,000 subscribers weekly. At Internet World trade shows, the brand's booth contains multiple PCs that passersby can use to access Internet World.com, update subscription information and check industry news. The brand's URL appears on millions of pieces of direct mail that go out each year to solicit magazine subscriptions and trade show attendance.
Kuczynski says Penton executives have been skeptical all along about the insistence of pundits over the past few years that creating separate online-content entities and licensing content to dot-coin startups were the only viable approaches for publishers wanting to take advantage of the Net. "We said on an almost daily basis that we didn't believe in that," he says. "We said the future was truly integrated media companies, and we've been following that mantra for two years. And guess what: It works."
Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management
Most magazines are clamoring to get on the Internet stage, yet when it comes to actually marketing their Web sites, many seem to be waiting in the wings. While investor-backed Internet ventures have been spending millions to plaster their brand names all over television, billboards and other traditional media--in addition to wallpapering the online environment with their logos--most magazine publishers, laboring under traditional budget constraints, are shying away from costly promotions, focusing instead on sensible efforts that promise a sure return on investment.
"Most publications have really taken a wait-and-see attitude about marketing their stuff on the Web, and rightly so, because their profit centers continue to be traditional publishing," says Jim Shulman, president of Marketing Results, a Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania-based marketing consultancy. "The Web is an investment for them at this point, and one that may not necessarily have a quick payback. We haven't seen a lot of aggressive promotion of Web sites out of this yet because it may not make economic sense for magazines."
PARADIGM SHIFT CREATES CHALLENGES
George Vrabeck, chief executive officer of Gr8Ride.com, a Primedia Co. portal that has integrated that publishing company's automotive brands, admits, "Every media company has had challenges with this. That's because it is a pretty radical paradigm shift."
Yet as they finally begin to feel comfortable with their Web offerings and with the online marketplace itself, more publishers are aggressively promoting their Internet properties. At a minimum, this usually involves leveraging the reach of their own multimedia assets. Some magazine companies are also beginning to push their Net properties via outside marketing venues where they believe the productivity of the placement is a foregone conclusion.
Here's a look at how five varied magazine publishers are marketing their Internet ventures.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Mitchell Prayer has the support of a global brand name and formidable multimedia resources to help spread the word, but the president of NationalGeographic.com is also pushing the envelope by marketing his site elsewhere online and penetrating newmedia platforms, including enhanced TV and the wireless Web.
"Right now, we have more than enough traffic to our Web site," he says. "And there's less of a need to go outside, because we're operating at a highly integrated level with our other properties." At the same time, Prayer insists on making NationalGeographic.com a pioneer in plumbing new possibilities because they are "relevant platforms for creating brand awareness and spotlighting the useful services and utilities that we're providing for readers."
There's no doubt about the reach of the National Geographic brand, with its four magazines, all of which are online as well as in print; about 70 new book titles each year; an international TV channel that is now available in 111 countries; and the launch of its U.S. TV channel this month. "Unlike many dot-coms that are spending 100 percent to 150 percent of their funds on marketing, we're in good position, because the National Geographic brand is one of the most trusted brands in the country, if not the world," Prayer says. "So we don't need to commit to that same level of spending that others do."
Praver makes ample use not only of ads in National Geographic magazine, but also of references at the end of most articles that direct readers to additional information that is available at NationalGeographic.com. The online operation is constantly cross-promoting with the TV properties, including a 30-second spot that has been running on the brand's international channel and will be airing on the U.S. channel right from the start.
NationalGeographic.com also has begun cross-promotional campaigns on the Web with sites in which the National Geographic Society has taken equity positions, including iExplore.com and Tripfinder.com. It also has struck deals with Yahoo! and plans to announce marketing arrangements with other portals. Now Prayer is planning to make his site a common presence on next-generation content and marketing platforms, including rich media on the Net, enhanced-TV services like TiVo and mobile Internet devices such as PDAs and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phones. On devices like Palm Pilots, for example, many top brand names are striking marketing deals that have their brand icon pop up on the first screen, for easy access by users.
Praver acknowledges that many a marketer already has been frustrated because the wireless Web and other new marketing opportunities haven't reached fruition as quickly as has been projected. We've taken a methodical and scalable approach," he says, "and we'll just let the marketplace tell us when the time is right."
GR8RIDE
Primedia has funneled the Internet content of all of its 29 automotive magazines--including Automobile, Car Audio and Electronics, Lowrider and Mustang Illustrated--into this online site for hard-core auto enthusiasts. And CEO George Vrabeck is pursuing his single-minded focus on attracting car nuts by slapping Gr8Ride not only throughout all those print magazines but also on TV, at car shows, elsewhere online, and, soon, on flyers in a direct-mail campaign.
"When you're marketing to a real niche audience like this, you don't want to try to be all things to all people," he says. "You want to be very specifically targeted on your niche. The best approach is to go where these people are."
Vrabeck is still relying primarily on reaching readers of the print magazines to drive traffic to the Web sites. But Gr8Ride also is relying on marketing at many of the major car-enthusiast shows held around the country. It will be appearing at as many as 15 events this year, each of which attracts 20,000 to 25,000 people, Vrabeck says. Event sponsorship typically is a relatively inexpensive $100,000 to $300,000 apiece, he says, and additional costs to support the event often amount to two times the sponsorship fee. That works out to a mere $3 cost to reach each user who is registered for an event. "People sign up right there, so you can very directly calculate your return on the event," Vrabeck says. "And for most of these events, it's a great deal."
Vrabeck remains relatively conservative about splashing Gr8Ride's brand all over the place, because he feels it simply isn't necessary to achieve the site's business goals. "We don't want traffic to the site for the sake of traffic," he says. "We just want the true enthusiasts who are interested in our content and products."
INC.
Inc. magazine and the brand's other products and services have been informing, organizing and even inspiring customers for more than 20 years, says Paige Arnof-Fenn, vice president for Inc.com, the brand's Web site. Inc.com, she says, has become a very organic extension of a brand that already has been "trusted in the small-business arena" for a long time.
"We've been able to leverage that relationship with what we've been doing with the online property, so that unlike a lot of pure-play Net businesses out there--which are trying to establish their brand names and make sure their URLs stand for something in consumers' minds--we already stand for something. We already have a plateau. That's a big advantage."
Not wanting to presume anything, however, Inc.com is pursuing a multimedia approach to marketing that "surrounds the consumer at various points in their day, when they're making decisions or starting to plan their day or try to figure out their agenda," Arnof-Fenn says. That includes, for example, having magazine editors and site producers write weekly or twice-monthly columns on various topics that Inc.com then e-mails to willing subscribers. At various times and in different markets, Inc.com also has tried advertising on billboards, in industry trade magazines, in "new economy" publications such as Red Herring and The Industry Standard, in airports, even in taxis and on buses.
The feedback suggests that outdoor and radio ads have been particularly effective, as well as direct-mail pieces, and Arnof-Fenn's staff carefully monitors activity at Inc.com to gauge the impact of the various initiatives. "But there's not any one thing that has moved the dial a great deal," she says. "It's just a matter of surrounding folks at every part of the day."
Online advertising has been fruitful for Inc.com too: e-mail campaigns and the site's partnership with WSJ.com, the online version of The Wall Street Journal. "We're constantly optimizing the online component," Arnof-Fenn says. "When we see that something is working, we'll focus our resources to come down behind those banners and sponsorships. If we're not seeing the traction we need, online is an easy way to constantly be optimizing what we're doing."
TIME
Taylor Gray has been jump-starting the marketing of Time.com since he became the site's president. (He remains marketing director of Time magazine.) "When I came on, it was sort of a casual thing, where we'd try to get some links to Time.com, but there wasn't a real focus on the property," he says.
All that is changing. Positioning Time.com as an unrivaled brand for providing analysis of current affairs, based on the expertise that the magazine staff long has demonstrated, Gray has been able to append Time.com content to more and more news "headline" sites--and to raise the profile of Time.com in the process. For example, he has intensified Time.com's longstanding partnership with America Online by becoming more aggressive about promoting his content to AOL'S news editors.
"We find out what they need to do to complement their news coverage and offer that," Gray says. "Do they need supporting analysis? If it's breaking news, do we happen to have an article about the background? We're pretty adept at filling the analysis gap on the Web, and now we're getting better at promoting that capability--not only with AOL, but also with Yahoo! and other sites."
Along with Time.com's presence on other Time Inc. sites, such as Fortune's and Entertainment Weekly's, the AOL partnership has given Gray the luxury for now of not having to promote Time.com in traditional media venues--which could change, he says. His next challenge is to energize marketing of Time Inc.'s other magazine-related sites, for Time Digital and for the now-defunct print publication Life.
INTERNET WORLD
Because its Internet World magazine is so steeped in the online marketplace anyway, it's only natural for Penton Media to think of the brand as a multimedia property, rather than as a print magazine with tack-ons like a Web site and industry conferences.
"We try to really leverage those three platforms together, and the marketing of them, to reach and touch and serve customers when, how and where they want to be served," says Tom Kuczynski, vice president of Internet World Media. "Each platform has unique characteristics that make it superior or inferior, depending on the customer's needs at the time."
For example, articles in Internet World magazine solicit readers' opinions for posting on the Web site. Several different e-newsletters marketed at the Web site go out to a total of 100,000 subscribers weekly. At Internet World trade shows, the brand's booth contains multiple PCs that passersby can use to access Internet World.com, update subscription information and check industry news. The brand's URL appears on millions of pieces of direct mail that go out each year to solicit magazine subscriptions and trade show attendance.
Kuczynski says Penton executives have been skeptical all along about the insistence of pundits over the past few years that creating separate online-content entities and licensing content to dot-coin startups were the only viable approaches for publishers wanting to take advantage of the Net. "We said on an almost daily basis that we didn't believe in that," he says. "We said the future was truly integrated media companies, and we've been following that mantra for two years. And guess what: It works."
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