The Ps of Marketing Newspapers

The struggle that modern newspapers face in ensuring they remain viable and vibrant products, may have its root cause in the fact that as an industry, we’re trying to bend the rules of modern marketing.

Marketing theory states that there are four Ps that must be in alignment for a product to sing – Product, Position, Promotion and Price. Each of these four must sit parallel and in synergy with each other.

The theory goes that if you have a product that is well thought out, is delivered to its market strongly, promoted well and has a price that reflects its perceived value, it will go gangbusters in the market.

If even only one of the Ps is out of kilter however, it will wreck the ability of the other three to succeed. It doesn’t matter which one, and one is enough to derail a product totally. No matter what your gut instinct tells you, “you must align your Ps”.

The second law is that when deciding where to place your product, you need to make a key decision – are you going after a mass market, in which case you will compete strongly on price? Or are you going after a targeted market with a quality product that is proud to differentiate itself, in which case you can charge more, and in fact should to show the market your value.

I learned all of this as part of a 16 week course that was a precursor to an MBA and covered the key fundamentals of marketing, management and finance. This of course, makes me an instant expert, but we were encouraged to apply our knowledge back to our own businesses and industry and it didn’t take long to see where so many newspapers may be going wrong. Newspapers after all, are not brain surgery.

As online news forces metropolitan print newspapers to try to differentiate themselves by offering quality, depth and unique insights in reporting – as opposed to simply responding to breaking news – we are working enormously hard to become a quality product that offers an attractive, affluent and educated audience for our advertisers.

But we are striding boldly in this new direction with a pricing strategy that is mired in the olde-worlde of mass marketing.

Does the non-committed reader of a broadsheet newspaper really stand in front of a newsstand and scratch his head thinking “Well, I want to read a quality product with some depth and investigative reporting, but heck, the tabloid paper is 20c cheaper”?

No, he does not.

So the obsessive angst that metropolitan newspapers have over making their cover price as cheap as possible and “similar” to a competitor operating in a totally different demographic is an obsession that is ensuring our product is singing out of tune with its market. And it’s robbing us of valuable income.
In a world where a decent cup of coffee can easily leave one out of pocket for $3 or more, charging just over $1 for a single copy paper and claiming it is quality is contradictory madness. Our cousins in magazine land have got it right – the quality magazines are unabashed about charging up to $11, and how much do they have to read really?

If we wish to go after a targeted market, we need to leave behind the old thinking that circulation is king. In the new world of websites attracting millions of eyeballs on an hourly basis, the case for circulation is simply making ourselves vulnerable to ruthless advertising agencies looking for any excuse to squeeze ad rates.

In a market where quality, connection and response is prized above all, we should have a cover price that reflects this. Roll the strategy through gently by all means and keep subscriptions the same as this can be used to prove how we value loyalty. But put the cover price up at a level that reflects the value we offer our reader. Quality journalism lasts much longer than a cup of coffee.

First appeared in INMA Ideas magazine, 2008. www.inma.org.au