Case Study: Future Proofing Profit in B2b media

In this case study, read how Mike Migliore stepped in at a well-known B2B defence publisher to ensure a profitable transition to a direct-to-consumer revenue model. Mike launched the marketing function, defined the strategy and laid the groundwork for major marketing programmes. 

The challenges facing traditional publishers are as numerous as they are threatening. Navigating simultaneous transitions from print to digital, casual to subscription and known to unknown costs—all whilst continuing to produce quality editorial—demand that publishers acquire the right customers and maximise their value. 

Mike specialises in realising customer value across the marketing mix, using advanced data to ensure that diverse efforts in product, pricing, acquisition, retention and loyalty maximise the lifetime value of customers. 

The publishing landscape in the defence industry is not as digitally fluent as the mainstream consumer market for news—most defence publishers are still primarily advertising funded and printing magazines. In fact, advertising revenue had sustained this medium-sized publisher for 40 years but, as the B2C market for news evolved, the publisher realised that there was a competitive advantage in becoming the first B2B publisher to transition to both a direct-to-consumer (DTC) revenue model and a digital-first strategy. 

The Challenge: 

The publisher set itself three overarching objectives to achieve this digital-first vision: to define a marketing strategy, design the major marketing programmes across channels that would acquire and retain customers and finally to launch the marketing department. 

The work: 

The client was working to a six-month implementation timeline and needed a partner that could work quickly. 

Performance and Market Analysis (Month 1): 

• To determine the best strategy for growth, the business’s previous performance, the competitive environment and both product and marketing were assessed in context. 
• I also undertook customer surveys to ensure that unanswered questions were answered. 
• Analysed competitor messaging to assess the best way of positioning the subscription news product below-the-line and defined unique selling points. 

Realistic Growth Forecasting (Month 2): 

• By creating a bottom-up acquisition and churn forecast by channel (PPC, display, social, email, affiliates) and proposition (pay monthly and pay annually), Mike could set achievable targets to determine success for all subsequent work. 

Marketing Strategy (Month 3): 

• Once the context was understood and objectives agreed, I set out the roadmap and phasing of tactics to achieve these goals.  
• Strategy was designed to be audience-led, rather than channel-led, ensuring a consistent message across channels for key audiences, rather than conflicting messages across channels. 
• Tactics fell into three areas: marketing, product and proposition, shop, with each having a 12-month volume and revenue target to ensure adherence. 
• Tactics were phased to deliver maximum impact for minimum effort, ensuring high marketing return on investment and included major programmes in each of the marketing funnel areas: acquisition, conversion, and retention. 
• Marketing technology solutions for the shop and CRM were also made with business cased recommendations. 

Resourcing and Marketing Team Structure (Month 4):

• Once the strategy had been agreed, headcount and ways of working needed to be defined to ensure uninterrupted delivery of the strategy. 

· Recruitment, Training and Deployment (Months 5-6) 

• I led the recruitment for new marketing team resource and trained new team members, ensuring that the strategy would be implemented on time with maximum impact. 

The results: 

Full deployment within the six-month timeframe; all objectives achieved. With the strategy now in market, commercial impacts will be clearer in the coming weeks.