Building a content subscription business is like cultivating a garden - it requires patience, diligence, and a willingness to adapt to changing conditions. Any news publisher or media company can thrive in this digital landscape, but only if they carefully tend to the needs of their customers and cultivate a strong product/content fit. Like a gardener choosing the right tools and techniques to nourish their plants, businesses must also select the right technology to bridge the gap between their offerings and the needs of their audience.

As the economic climate shifts, businesses must be even more attentive to the needs of their customers. Consumers are more cautious with their spending and expect real value for their investment. The desire to retain subscribers can sometimes lead to hasty decisions that can undermine long-term success.

In this article, we will explore some common missteps in the journey to build a successful subscription business. From choosing the wrong metrics to partnering with the wrong technology, we'll examine the pitfalls that can derail even the most well-intentioned efforts. We'll also discuss the importance of relying on human support, both internally and externally, to ensure that your business is positioned for growth and success. With creativity and integrity, businesses can navigate the challenges of the digital landscape and cultivate a thriving subscription business.

The Lack Of Investment In Data Analytics Tools: A Cause For Concern

Not long ago, analytics were a domain managed by data wizards. They would secretly work with data for weeks and give detailed reports to C-suite members. However, today, working with data in silos is a recipe for disaster. Being able to use data and capitalize on insights can help news and media organizations have a competitive advantage early on in their subscription journey.

Here are some ways in which investing in good data analytics tools can help you define a clear value proposition and set your subscriptions business for success.

Access to historical and real-time data, as well as a reliable data analysis tool, can help to

• Spot trends and reduce churn

• Take prompt actions to minimize expenses and maximize conversions

• Avoid data fragmentation, siloing, and save time spent cross-verifying data from multiple sources

Advanced analytics tools enables decision-makers to:

• Gain more extensive and detailed insights about customers

• Analyze a broader range of factors, including affluence, different levels of price sensitivity, brand affinity, and significant behavioral traits of potential customers

• Move beyond broad customer segmentation based on age, gender, and location.

Launching a subscription business without a strategy: What Quick Fixes Won't Fix

Any business that wants to launch a sustainable subscription model needs to do their homework first. Without a clear understanding of your target audience and the value they are being offered, it's easy to fall into the trap of seeking quick fixes instead of finding long-term sustainable solutions.

Deciding which content should go behind a paywall or is likely to drive subscriptions is a crucial decision at a publisher’s end. For a long time publishers have been relying on vanity metrics like page views and locking long form articles behind the paywall. This strategy works well but treats every user the same and leaves the opportunity to drive better subscription as well as ad revenue.

Advanced analytics and intelligence help publishers go beyond vanity metrics to understand content's actual outcomes. These advanced analytics tools can score content on multiple levels of engagement, segmenting by section, tag, author, or topic. This lets publishers see which articles are most valuable and which are suitable for driving maximum user engagement and website traffic. As a result, they can make better decisions about what content to produce and how to monetize it.

The delusion of Single health metrics: Why we should look at the whole picture

When it comes to judging the success of your subscription business, it's important to take a holistic view and not just focus on a single health metric. Conversion rates, for example, can be misleading. Lower rates might actually be good if you're getting a lot of page views or have a large audience. Similarly, higher rates might not mean as much if you have fewer people coming to your platform. So it's important to take a holistic view before making assumptions or projections.

As Piano.io found, there is a massive 600X difference in conversion rates between websites at the higher and lower end of the spectrum. This means that fixating on conversion rate as the only metric for checking the health of your subscriptions business is futile.

Conscent's user loyalty metric, 5F1R, is designed to categorize users based on their engagement with content on a publisher platform. 5F1R has a longer learning curve when mapping the activity of a user from Day 0 to Day 30. In comparison to industry benchmark metrics RFM and RFV, which have limitations since they only take into account a user's loyalty in relation to industry standards, 5F1R provides more detailed insights into a user's journey on a platform over the course of 30 days.

It can be assumed that if a user does not return to a platform within 30 days, they are no longer interested in it. This is called "churn" and usually requires the attention of a publisher to improve the onboarding flow and better cater to each audience.

All these metrics when compared together can offer a deeper understanding of user behavior and content consumption. This will in turn maximize revenue and increase the sustainability of your content subscription business.

Prioritizing Value Generation: The Key to Success in Subscription-Based Games

According to Nic Newman's 2023 Reuters Institute Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends Predictions Report, news businesses are more focused on retaining existing subscribers than acquiring new ones. This approach can give news businesses an advantage in the subscription market, especially when taking into account the current challenges of inflation and high energy costs impacting households - pushing users to be more conscious of their needs.

To achieve success, publishers need to make sure that their content and products match the needs of their audience. This balance is something that Dmitry Shishkin has learned a lot about. He uses diagrams to show how both NYT and BBC have created user needs models that help them figure out what content and products to create.

Unofficial User Needs model of New York Times audience

Original BBC User Needs Model

However, this audience needs vs. publisher offer can only work if some automation tools are bridging the technological gap between both. For instance, newsroom content generation is an act guided by data or the external needs of a consumer.

( Note: To clarify, we are not discussing the tonality or biases here, but different user expectations when interacting with your content. Some of those needs are listed above.)

Using machine learning algorithms to evaluate and test different combinations of content and user behavior can help paint a much clearer picture of how newsrooms can contribute to both the quality and distribution of content. This type of personalization can also be extremely beneficial in driving users to need your product or service on a daily basis.

Breaking Silos: Making it an Organization-Wide Practice

Data visualization is a key ingredient in the recipe for success when it comes to analytics-driven growth. When used correctly, data visualization can help bring diverse teams together by providing a shared language and understanding of data. This , in turn, can help align around common goals and push the business forward.

Data visualization is important for a few reasons:

• It helps to democratize analytics and allows people from different departments to understand and use data to drive growth.

• It helps bond team members around data and goals, so everyone works together to push the business forward.

• It helps C-level executives understand what's happening in the business and make decisions to help the company grow.

Conscent's beautifully crafted visualizations tools help publishers see data in a whole new light. The dashboard allows organizations to make real-time decisions with confidence, by seeing possible outcomes clearly.

At Conscent, we understand that your user needs can evolve over time, and that your product and content strategy may need to change as a result. We believe that data and the ability to act upon insights is the key to success in the long term. If you're losing your audience halfway through the retention cycle or unsure about how to bridge the supply and demand gap for winning audiences, we're here to help.