strategic planning foryour magazine
TRANSCRIPT
A publication of Magazine Training International
planningfor your
Strategic
magazine
2DVD Courses
Blog
Manuals
Conferences
Resources
Magazine Directory
...encourages, strengthens, and provides resources to Christian magazines in the Developing World.
Magazine Training International
3
Magazine Training International5376 Tomah Dr. Suite 210Colorado Springs, CO 80918
Tel: +1 719 598-9743FAX: +1 719 598-1007
Email: [email protected] site: http://www.magazinetraining.com/Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MagazineTrainingInternational http://www.facebook.com/MTI.In.IndiaBlog: http://www.magazine-mavin.com
© Magazine Training International
“Strategic Planning for Your Magazine” is a unit in the “Publishing Handbook”
produced by Sabatier Consulting. Other manuals on magazine publishing may be
purchased at www.magazinetraining.com.
Strategic planning for your magazine
Written by Lou Ann Sabatier
4
A publication of Magazine Training International
A leading expert in publishing and business strategy, Lou Ann Sabatier
is chief executive officer of MediaDC, Clarity Media’s Washington Group, which includes The Washington Examiner, The Weekly Standard, and the Web site Red Alert Politics. Before joining MediaDC, Lou Ann served as the founder and principal of Sabatier Consulting, where she worked with over 100 media clients, giving them the tools they needed to increase profitability through strategic planning, audience development, financial management, fulfillment, production, advertising sales, and operations management. Prior to founding the consulting firm, she worked as a literary agent, the managing director of an international economic magazine, and associate publisher of a national opinion magazine. She speaks widely at conferences and workshops throughout the U.S. and Canada. She is a frequent speaker at Folio publishing seminars in New York and Chicago. Lou Ann joined Magazine Training International as a trainer in India and also serves on the Board of Directors.
About the Author
Lou Ann Sabatier
5
THE IMPORTANCE OF STRATEGIC PLANNING
WHAT TO INCLUDE IN THE STRATEGIC PLAN
ASSESS WHERE YOU ARE NOW
DETERMINE WHERE YOU WANT TO GO
DECIDE HOW YOU WILL GET THERE
Contents
6
12
16
21
23
CHAPTER 1
importance
planningof strategic
The
7
A publication of Magazine Training International
The importance of strategic planning
The most creative business and product strategies are developed in publications where communication
between departments is good and everyone sees the publication as one team, not as individual departments.
A strategic plan is like a map that shows you how to get from one city to the next. An operational plan is like a map that shows every street, park, and public building. The task of developing an operational plan becomes much easier once strategic thinking is done.
Take close look
of its
at youra
preferencesmarket
andprejudices customers.
and the
8
A publication of Magazine Training International
1 Take a close look at your market and the preferences and prejudices of its customers.
2 Perform an audit of your own resources in people, dollars, and publications/services.
3 Brainstorming and/or creative thinking then takes place in order to create a group of potential strategies.
Evaluate each in detail, examining the potential upside and downside risk.
4 If you know the potential of a group of alternative strategies, and also their requirements in resources and
their risks, it becomes easier to decide which to pursue, if any.
The importance of strategic planning
Define some objectives for yourself and your publication
9
A publication of Magazine Training International
The importance of strategic planning
The best publishers and managers develop a sense of timing and of pattern that has to be relied on when
the quantitative data isn’t available, or when it would be too expensive or difficult to acquire.
Strategic planning must precede any new projectHere are some events that may trigger a strategic planning study:
• When a publisher reaches a certain size or complexity and corporate objectives are not automatically known or understood by all department heads.
• When changes in the environment—the competition, the government, the economy, lifestyles—must be responded to in a conscious way by the publishing company.
10
A publication of Magazine Training International
The importance of strategic planning
A good plan:
• must be lived with.
• includes guideposts in the budget column of your monthly statements.
• is fallible in the variations between actual and budgeted sales, costs and profits.
Strategic planning is the process of directing a publication’s resources toward selected objectives
11
A publication of Magazine Training International
The importance of strategic planning
A publication’s resources include its concept and format, its staff, its image in the minds of customers and its
finances.
Your strategic plan is tied to all the elements of the business:
• editorial
• circulation
• advertising
• production
CHAPTER 2
Whatinclude
strategicplan
in the
to
13
A publication of Magazine Training International
What to include in the strategic plan
Strategies will tend to be combinations of three sets of questions under the umbrella of “What is the maxi-
mum that can be achieved in this direction?”:
1 Editorial and Production related decisions such as content and format, frequency, number of editorial
pages, amount of color, etc.
2 Circulation decisions such as paid versus controlled, sources of subscriptions, types of offers, promotion
budgets, rate base targets—and most importantly—price of subscriptions and renewals.
3 Advertising decisions such as cost per thousand, pro-motion levels, rate base, and the position the maga-
zine and its sales team take in the marketplace relative to competitors.
What can be achieved?
14
A publication of Magazine Training International
What to include in the strategic plan
It is important that management be aware that goals, within the strategic plan, can sometime be antagonistic.
When departmental goals conflict with corporate goals, the corporate goals will always lose out. For example, most advertising directors have a number of advertising pages as the performance target; but if a disproportion-ate number are sold in only one or two issues during the year, and these issues then require additional editorial pages for balance, it is very possible that the extra adver-tising pages are actually sold at a loss.
Corporatewill always
when
goals
departmentin conflict
goals.with
lose out
15
A publication of Magazine Training International
What to include in the strategic plan
Strategic plans may have variances of a different kind than operating plans (budgets & goals which support
strategic direction and objectives). It is not enough to look at the immediate cause of a variance. You need to reexamine your assumptions, even your theory.
CHAPTER 3
whereAssess
you arenow
17
A publication of Magazine Training International
Assess where you are now
• Macro factors—What is happening nationally and internationally that affects your business?
• Market factors—Define what markets you are in and how big they are. How are your markets changing? What are the industry forecasts for the future of your markets: growing, emerging, mature, stable or declin-ing?
• Magazine industry factors—Are publishers down-sizing? Are advertising pages up or down in the indus-try?
• Competitive factors—Do an objective assessment of all media competitors within your markets. Do you compete primarily with magazines or other forms of media?
• Internal factors
Look at how your company fits into the world as a whole and what factors will influence your future prospects:
SITUATION ANALYSIS
18
A publication of Magazine Training International
Assess where you are now
1 Is it tangibly different from the competitors in terms of appearance, content and readership?
2 How is it priced and how important is price to buy-ers?
3 Is there a corporate growth plan with explicit goals and targeted levels of achievement?
4 Does redesign or repositioning come up for regular and repeated consideration no matter how success-
ful?
5 Are new start-ups or acquisitions part of the plan and is there an individual or group assigned to this re-
sponsibility?
You must take a hard look at the publication and its managers in terms of the following questions:
19
A publication of Magazine Training International
Assess where you are now
6 Does the acquisition or start-up group have a budget and the authority to assign funds?
7 Is there a compensation plan that rewards entrepre-neurship and risk taking?
8 Is management willing to accept failure?
9 Does top management provide consistent commit-ment to the exploration of new ideas in sales ap-
proaches, production processes, and editorial content?
10 Does top management stress long-term profitabil-ity as well as short-term returns?
20
A publication of Magazine Training International
Assess where you are now
11 What are the strengths and weaknesses of your company? Can you start new products effectively?
12 What resources are available in terms of staff ex-pertise, capital to invest in acquisitions, and so on?
13 Are you increasing market share?
14 Identify opportunities and threats. Are there publishers in similar markets in the U.S. that you
should acquire or do a joint venture with? What are the barriers to entry in your markets?
15 What do your advertisers really think about your publication(s)? Blind interviews are a good way to
answer this question.
CHAPTER 4
whereDetermine
you want to go
22
A publication of Magazine Training International
Determine where you want to go
To determine direction, you need to set objectives. Objectives are broad statements, such as “We want
to increase market share.”
For each objective, develop one or more goals that sup-port it. Goals are more specific and measurable than objectives. For example, if your objective is to increase market share, you may set goals of increasing advertising pages by 10% and circulation by 5% to reach that objec-tive.
Developto
goals objectives.your
support
CHAPTER 5
get therehowDecide
you will
24
A publication of Magazine Training International
Decide how you will get there
Figuring out how you are going to achieve your objec-tives and goals and how much reaching them is go-
ing to cost is operational planning. It requires concrete plans for each area of the business that describe what needs to get done and who is going to do it.
Operational plan components:
1 Editorial plans
2 Marketing plans for advertising and circulation efforts
3 Manufacturing plans
4 Ancillary product plans
25
A publication of Magazine Training International
Decide how you will get there
5 Plans for new product introductions
6 Potential merger, acquisition and/or divestiture activ-ity
7 Financial budgets
You constantly need to compare your strategic and operational plan with actual results. This is like keep-
ing score. What worked and what did not?
Review how you did
26
A publication of Magazine Training International
Publishing resources available from Magazine Training International
Manuals (available in print or in PDF format on CD):
• Managing the Magazine with Confidence and Skill English Bulgarian Chinese (simplified) Chinese (traditional) Korean Romanian Russian Spanish
• Advanced Business of Magazine Publishing English Russian
• Editing the Magazine English Bulgarian Romanian
• Design for Magazines English Bulgarian Chinese (simplified) Chinese (traditional) Croatian Romanian Russian Spanish
• Writing Effective Magazine Articles English French Polish Romanian Russian
Audio/Visual resources:
• DVD course: Managing the Magazine with Confidence and Skill Subtitles available in: Chinese (simplified) Chinese (traditional) Russian Spanish • DVD course: Design for Magazines Subtitles available in: Chinese (simplified) Chinese (traditional) Russian Spanish
• MP3 audio course: Writing Effective Magazine Articles