Rick Jones of DJG Marketing Answers The Big Q

The economy is starting to feel like it could start moving in the right direction soon, particularly as the summer ends and the business world kicks it up another notch.  Rick Jones, President and CEO of DJG Marketing since its founding in 1993 and a former director of research and marketing development at Reader’s Digest, shares marketing tips for the days ahead.

THE BIG Q: HOW DO YOU PREPARE ON THE MARKETING FRONT FOR WHEN THINGS TURN AROUND?

Now is not the time to be paralyzed by the difficult and unprecedented market condition that has befallen the media industry (not just magazines).  Rather, we need to reestablish the connection to the core of our brands, our relationship with our customers and the value of the niches we serve.

While some category’s viability may be waning in the evolution of media options, let us never undervalue the role of the editor to help guide consumer inspiration and education. 

Here are a few things we should all be doing today:

• Be ready to market and sell in a multi-channel world.  We will emerge from this recession a very different business and we need to be trained and educated in multimedia research, marketing and positioning.
   
• Revitalize your branding story.  Do you know how many magazines don’t even have a positioning statement on SRDS?  If you don’t, write it.  If you do, make it better.  Challenge yourself and your marketing and sales staffs to improve their storytelling skills.
   
• Make advertising information easy to find on your website.  Go ahead, open your magazine home page.  How prominent is it to find About Advertising?  If you’re like most publishers, it’s a button or link at the bottom of the page, maybe the top.  Is it prominent?  Not usually.  Make it easy!  And please, don’t make a buyer have to register to get media-kit info.  Hang it all out there for everyone to see … even your competitors.
   
• Improve your Internet promotion and marketing skills.  It is tougher and tougher to get face time in sales calls.  Make sure your email communication is clear, concise and screams brand benefits.  Offer links to your websites, weblets or even a Facebook page.  Personalize it.  Make it approachable.
   
• Define and own your niche – Budgets are tight, all right non-existent, but you need to invest in defining the niche you serve and highlight all the ways that you serve it – both on the page and beyond.  Bring your customer to life, make them relevant.  Review every piece of your promo material.  If it doesn’t do this, rip it up and start again!
   
• Start today by restoring some PR budgets – Find a story.  Promote it.  The media are looking for interesting news.  Are you creating it?  If not, start today!    
   

-Interview by Mark J. Miller