Articles by: "Jessica Hall, Vice President of Product Strategy & Design–3Pillar Global"

Rebound ready: Four ways to build digital revenue

June 8, 2020 Jessica Hall, Vice President of Product Strategy & Design–3Pillar Global

We’re in the midst of what Nieman Lab is calling “a profound advertising crisis.” The advertising and media industries have been hit hard by coronavirus, due in part to the cancellation of live sports and the impact of lockdowns on retail brands.

It’s hard to think about investing when things are so scary. However, there are investments you can make that have a good chance of paying off as we emerge from this downturn.

Right now, people are willing to read and view online, and digital content is king. Many premier publications have been providing free access to some or all coronavirus coverage, meaning more views. Travel + Leisure found a savvy (and digital) way to boost its audience numbers. For example, its article about famous museums offering virtual tours generated more than 4 million views. And when it comes to streaming, we predict that those companies with more extensive inventory of content will have a better chance of gaining market share.

Trendwatching

At 3Pillar Global, where we develop digital products for clients in the media and entertainment industries (among others), we have seen firsthand how the transition to digital media and advertising has accelerated rapidly. Americans streamed 85% more video in March 2020 than in March 2019. Newsletter open rates are up, especially in arts, entertainment and fashion. We’ve been told by major publishers that they are seeing significant increases in subscriptions.

Media companies looking to survive the revenue losses of Covid-19 have a unique opportunity to leverage increased traffic to their digital content into lucrative relationships post pandemic. Here are four suggestions for media companies navigating a course forward in the current climate:

1. Demonstrate brand trustworthiness.

Brands like Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic – which have dropped their paywalls for some coverage – have actually seen spikes in subscriptions. The key is to make sure that content is accurate, concise and thoughtful, in order to preserve brand quality and make a lasting positive impression.

However, surging traffic can cause problems with performance and page load time. Consider easing the deployment of new code to prevent embarrassing outages. For example, Zoom delayed all new features to focus on performance and security amid their privacy controversy.

2. Understand and serve the unique needs of your new subscribers.

Media companies have a unique opportunity to drive subscriptions from those who have shied away from paying before. But in order to maximize opportunity, make sure you’re collecting the right data. Understand who these new customers are and what they’re looking for.

With these insights, companies can create subscription models that offer a customizable experience. These might include micropayments for customers who can’t afford a subscription, or short-term subscriptions lasting a few months at a time. Topic-specific subscriptions may attract some new subscribers looking for particular information, and there may be opportunities to partner with other companies, à la ClassPass’s studio partnerships, to attract subscribers looking for variety. Creating value to solve for different needs can keep new customers from unsubscribing.

3. Expand targeted advertising efforts.

Collect insights from your audience data and target your digital advertising efforts. Be creative in your advertising and your digital products. The New media platform Quibi used social media advertising to target millennial customers, and the platform had 1.7 million downloads in its first week.

4. Develop virtual events with customer needs top of mind.

Demand for virtual events is skyrocketing. Financial Times reported that “investors are betting that once people try the digital alternative, many will not want to go back to airless conference centers…” The direct losses from tech events alone have surpassed $1 billion. Even after lockdown eases up, companies will have lower budgets for events and travel, making virtual events more necessary.

Virtual events have the potential to earn more revenue than in-person events, if done well. They have no physical space limitations, allowing more people to participate; top speakers may be more likely to participate virtually than in person; and you can offer in-conference purchases and products only available to participants. Companies like Bevy, Grip, and Bizly have already been thinking creatively about how to equip people and organizations to reach greater numbers, online.

The key to virtual events is understanding customer needs. Some people, for example, don’t go to events for the content or speakers. Rather, they go to network, or for the status of being part of marquee events. A virtual event might not serve these audiences. So, if you still opt for virtual, you will have to get creative in status-boosting offerings.

Conversely, there are customers who wouldn’t have made the cut for an in-person event that you can now serve. For example, TED was highly exclusive. So, the creation of TEDx made it possible to spread more ideas by increasing reach without damaging the brand. Access management platform Okta held a multi-day virtual tech conference that generated thousands more sales leads than its Las Vegas conference; 15,000 people watched the keynote, versus the 6,000 who would have been in attendance in person.

Advertising revenue may be down, but companies do have many opportunities to build strong digital revenue channels. An investment in digital products now is a long-term, not a short-term investment. But its impact will far outlast the current crisis.

About the author

Jessica Hall is the vice president of product strategy and design at 3Pillar Global.

Perspectives

Data-driven digital content is key to brand success

March 23, 2020 Jessica Hall, Vice President of Product Strategy & Design–3Pillar Global

Every company today, regardless of industry, is a digital company. This has to be the case for a company to survive in the connected age.

What this means is that every company has an abundance of data. However, some just aren’t using it to the fullest advantage. That’s one of the reasons many companies choose third-party partners to help them wade through it and strategize a path toward stronger customer engagement.

So what have you got?

The first step to successfully reaching new customers and retaining current ones is by analyzing the data you have. What are current customers interested in? Does one age group, gender or economic background dominate the current customer base? What values and features appeal to them, and which ones don’t? How do they want to receive their information, and why?

One thing that insights provided by data analysis can do is help a company better tell its story. For example, when Proctor & Gamble’s Febreeze originally launched, it was a failure. So P&G hired a researcher from Harvard Business School to help them sort through their data and create new data by interviewing potential customers.

They discovered that the people who needed the product most had no idea they needed it, because they had gotten so used to their odors. With this knowledge, they adjusted their messaging, promoting Febreeze as a kind of “finishing touch” product you use after cleaning a room. Their new advertisements were incredibly successful.

So what do you need?

In other instances, new data forces companies to completely overhaul their digital infrastructure and find new ways to engage their audiences. This was our experience working with PBS in 2009. The data showed the company that users were moving away from broadcast television and towards web-based programming and content.

This posed a particular problem for PBS: The organization was spread out across 187 different member stations, and many of those stations had started to build out their own online viewing experiences. PBS needed a backbone – one strong enough to keep together different kinds of content, different mediums and different platforms.

So that’s what we did. We created a fully digital ecosystem that incorporated content from PBS and PBS Kids and built APIs that transmitted that content to iPads, set-top boxes, and smartphones across the country. As a result, PBS saw a huge spike in engagement. The PBS and PBS Kids app boast over 58 million downloads and their platforms stream hundreds of millions of videos each month.

Significantly, this new digital-first approach enabled the organization to generate even more insights that drove content and strengthened programming. But these huge changes all emerged from that core, data-driven insight. Without it, PBS would have floundered.

Real insights drive results

It’s important to note that not all data is relevant – it’s about knowing what the right data is in a data-saturated era. Data only matters if it gives insights into the people a company is trying to connect with. Then, this data has to be leveraged to communicate with customers in a memorable way. Too many people find their attention divided among multiple phones, laptops, channels, and platforms.

As we enter this new decade, take advantage of these key digital tools, but remember that even the most cutting-edge innovations aren’t what make a sale. It’s knowing who people are and helping them envision who they can be.

About the author

Jessica Hall is vice president of product strategy and design at 3Pillar Global and the co-author of The Product Mindset: Succeed in the Digital Economy by Changing the Way Your Organization Thinks.

Innovation | Perspectives

How adopting a product mindset can help agile organizations win digitally

June 25, 2019 Jessica Hall, Vice President of Product Strategy & Design–3Pillar Global

The fight for talent is on all over the world. Companies need more engineering, product, user experience, QA automation, and developers than they can find and incorporate in their business. In a recent 3Pillar survey, a third of global services decision makers said they used outside partners because they didn’t have the right kind of developers or that their developers didn’t have the right skills to get the job done.

More than ever, companies are bringing in outside help to serve their customers and hit their business objectives. This is a smart move. Most organizations don’t have the resources to hire and retain the talent needed to do this in-house, and it may take too long to hire a person at a time when what’s really needed is a team. The reality is that most companies will better achieve their goals by partnering with those with a diversity of experience.

No matter what “Agile process” you use, working with a partner who understands the fundamental principles that make digital products successful can help your company create new revenue, increase your customer base and spur innovation.

This starts with transitioning from an outdated “IT mindset” to a “Product Mindset.” This means adopting a way of thinking that ensures that people at every level of an organization are making the most effective, data-driven decisions with a shared goal in mind. The most successful agile organizations are ones that are applying these three core principles to make the most of their software development approach:

1. Minimize Time to Value

Most products fail because the team runs out of money and support before the product starts to bring in revenue or serve customers.

Value only exists in the hands of customers. Put the smallest solution to their biggest problems in their hands, monetize it, and learn what to do next. A successful digital product is one that creates dollars, instead of saving pennies.

Partnering with an external technology provider can help agile organizations create a product that furthers learning and starts earning revenue quickly.

2. Solve for Need

Every day, consumers choose certain digital products while failing to choose others. A company must deliver what the customers want and need most, so that customers continually choose to pay for what the company is offering.

Many companies are driven by internal forces. This could mean building products based on what management is asking for or products that reflect what they think customers want.

Co-creating with a development partner that prioritizes solving for need can challenge a company’s entrenched thinking and push back against “requirements.” This kind of partnership will ultimately generate new ideas and can help companies focus on outcomes, instead of attempting to solve challenging technical problems. Technical problems are often an impediment to releasing a successful digital product quickly.

3. Excel at Change

Great digital products are never done. Companies must embrace changing customer needs and a changing marketplace in order to succeed in the digital economy. Often, having an outside partner can spur agile organizations to be more adaptable to change.

This may mean implementing vital elements such as continuous integration/continuous development, automated testing, and development and operations. It may also mean adoption of new tools or new technologies, like robotic process automation or virtual reality.

These partnerships enable technology management to be more adaptable. Software leaders often tell us that their firm’s sourcing policies and contracting rules slow them down. They want to try out interesting software from new providers or an open source community but must wait while their procurement colleagues argue about what are, in their opinion, unimportant legal details. An outside partner that pushes to keep change at the forefront, however, can play a critical role in a company’s success.

Partnering with a software development company that has product-oriented and outcome-driven goals can accelerate the successful delivery of digital products, and help agile organizations compete and win in the digital economy.

About the author

Jessica Hall is Vice President of Product Strategy & Design at 3Pillar Global and is the author of the Product Mindset: Succeed in the Digital Economy by Changing the way Your Organization Thinks (available fall 2019).