Golf Clubs Buyers Guide Magazine
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Niche Publishing Goldmines
I was publishing NCEast, a regional magazine; the North Carolina Travel and Tourism Guide, Welcome to Wilmington, a slick four-color newcomer'sguide to this major metropolitan area; Homebuyer's Handbook, a real estate buyer's guide; Washington and Beaufort County Magazine, a city magazine; and Renter's Helper apartment
directories in nine mid-Atlantic cities. Earlier I had published the Mecklenburg Gazette, a weekly newspaper, and Dollarsworth, a free circulation shopper.
Brains and Time, Not Cash
None of my start-'ups cost me one single cent in out-of-pocket cash. Getting into borne town publishing, I found, takes its toll in brain power, time, and energy, but requires little cash investment. Others may find this claim hard to believe, but it's true. I have always been able to finance my books, magazines and newspapers with sweat equity and the cash flow generated by the projects themselves.
Who Can Succeed?
I am convinced that I could take my computer, a toothbrush and a change of clothes to any town or city in the United States and generate a substantial income for myself in entrepreneurial publishing. What I can do, you can do too. I know successful entrepreneurial publishers who have backgrounds in sales; others come from the ranks of graphic designers; some are free-lance writers who are tired of sending articles to other people's magazines and have created publications of their own. Some are simply, management types with an idea they believe in, and the willingness to give it sty.
What Will Work: The Two-Way Test
Successful publications match large numbers of product-purchasing readers with similarly large numbers of ambitious, space-buying advertisers. To insure that this happens, and happens quickly, the start-up publishing entrepreneur should look for projects that have the possibility of intensive sales in a limited geographical area. Expanding the coverage area beyond the easy reach of on or two people can create real difficulties - and much greater expense.
A city magazine, for example, is relatively easy to publish; a regional magazine (the mountains of your state, for instance, or the coast) is more difficult and more expensive; a statewide magazine requires an entire staff of sales and production people. A-national magazine requires all of the above, plus a high-risk investor with several million dollars of idle money in very deep pockets.
When you focus rightly, several good things happen: You can start your business with little or no cash up front. You or your ad salesperson can make calls and sell the product without traveling anywhere overnight. Circulation, distribution and promotion are easily and inexpensively managed. You can do these jobs yourself if necessary.
What kinds of publications fall into these categories? There are many, but here are some that I have personally published:
Local Tourism Guides
Tourism guides range from tabloid newspapers to full-sized, extra-slick color magazines. The most popular format is the digest-sized (5.5" x 8.5"), saddle-stitchçd, four color publication printed on economy, enameled stock. I have however, seen long-lived, successful tourism guides printed in black and white, with a little spot color thrown in.
The tourism guide has very short, pithy articles on things to do and places to go. Iris filled with little maps to help readers find their When 1 say "entrepreneurial publishing" I am not talking about way around. It lists restaurants and their specialties, nightclubs traditional trade hook publishing, in which you sell a product (your and every other possible kind of vacation or travel activity, book) through distributors and bookstores. That is a high-risk, including everything from the miniature golf course built to capital-intensive business, fraught with peril for the small guy. To create a cash flow that can float your business, pay your rent and buy new
shoes for the kids requires at least ten successful tides in print. And even when your books sell, the returns come in slowly and unpredictably. No, I am talking about advertising-intensive periodical publishing, which can often be undertaken with no capital at all. In periodical publishing, the advertising that you sell pays the way.
The publications themselves are often distributed free, or in some combination of paid and free. When there is a price printed on the front of your tabloid or magazine it is usually done as a marketing ploy, designed to lend perceived value. You do not depend on subscriptions or newsstand sales to snake a profit, of advertising space. Given away free in motel rooms, welcome centers, convenience stores, newsstands and every other conceivable place, these guides are always consulted by ever-renewable numbers of vacationers. Advertisers will be eager to buy space in any well-designed and widely-circulated guide to reach this constant stream of visitors.
Newcomers Guides
We are a mobile nation. The average family in the United States pulls up stakes and moves to new cities, towns and neighborhoods every five years. This means that 20 percent of all families in America are on the road at any given time.
We are also a nation of consumers. We need things. We need people who can do things for us. And when we move we need them all at once. Last week, securely nestled in our old home, we knew which doctor to go to. When we had a toothache, we knew which dentist to call. We knew where to go to buy a new car and where to get the insurance for it. We knew where to shop for clothes, go to the movies, eat a good meal, buy a book. We knew how to register the children for school, where to get the electricity turned on and how to subscribe to cable TV.
Yes, last week we knew all of these things. But this week we don't know any of them. We are in a new home, in a new neighborhood, in a new city - maybe even in a new state. We need to find these things out all over again. And this is precisely what a newcomer guide helps readers do.
While the tourism guide focuses only on entertainment/leisure advertisers, in the newcomer magazine everyone from plumbers to electricians to interior designers and new car dealers are prime targets. For this reason newcomer's guides are a staple of the independent publisher. Every metropolitan area of more than 30,000 is prime territory for such a publication, and they can be quite successful on a smaller level in much smaller towns. I published one successfully in a town of 14,000.
City Magazines
City (or county) magazines are attractive projects for the independent publisher. These are four-color, 8 1/2" x 11", self-covered glossy magazines. They focus on the culture, history, personalities and business of a single community.
Since the advertising rates will be relatively high, the city magazine needs a fairly large metropolitan area to support monthly or bi-monthly publication. But an annual city magazine can be successful in small towns.
There are fringe benefits that some entrepreneurial publishers will enjoy. As editor and publisher of a "real" magazine (as distinguished from the promotional Chamber of Commerce variety) you will be courted and admired by writers and artists, and be invited to be the featured speaker at many a civic club dinner. You will have a showcase for your own writing, and even begin, over time, to wield a bit of influence in molding and mobilizing opinion in your community through the articles that you publish.
City magazines are most successful when they are part of a mix of publications brought out by the same publisher. They are not likely to produce a large enough cash flow to float your business as a single activity. At least that has been my experience.
Chamber of Commerce "Quality of Life" Magazines
If you are planning a move to a new city and you write the Chamber of Commerce for an information packet, you will receive maps, pamphlets and other materials. Among these will be a publication that looks like a magazine, with a strong mix of editorial and advertising. These are the so-called "quality of life" magazines that virtually every Chamber of Commerce in the country publishes annually. It is not a real magazine like the ones you buy on a newsstand, but rather a strong promotional piece dressed up to look like a magazine.
Since each issue is good for as many as two or three years, there is no regular publication date, and so producing such a product doesn't constitute an onerous commitment. If you do a fantastic job you'll be asked back. You can decide at that time whether you want to do the magazine again or not. Usually the money is good, the time commitment reasonably small, and the public recognition for you and your new company both gratifying and valuable - a combination of benefits that is hard to resist.
Again, you have three pluses going for you: intensive sales, in a limited geographical area, with targeted circulation. I won't say that ad sales are ever easy, but with the quality of life magazine they are as easy as they're going to get. The businesses that are Chamber members have been conditioned to "participate," issue after issue, year after year. There may be a grumble or two, but most of those who bought last year will buy again this year.
Association Directories
My introduction to publishing association directories came when a friend suggested that I design and print a directory for the newly-formed North Carolina World Trade Association. The directory would carry the names and addresses of the hundreds of members of the organization, plus advertising from many of them. I would produce the directories free of charge for the association, and give them a check for 10% of gross advertising revenues.
I was immediately interested, for three reasons:
1. The project could easily be handled by the people I had in place - by me alone, if necessary.
2. I did not carry the financial baggage of excessive overhead the other, larger, periodical publishers would have to factor into their profit and loss analysis. I could be very competitiveat no loss in quality or profit.
3. The ads could be sold by telephone, for the most part, to members of the association. There would be no need for any resemble the Aztec Empire, to true golf courses, parks, flea markets, but on the sale specialty shops and other entertainment possibilities too varied to catalog here. There would be no need for any hard sell, and there would be triple motivation for these members to buy:
- First of all, they could afford it. Most of the advertising prospects - major banks, shipping lines, large industries had budgets more than adequate to handle the cost of advertising. Since it was an annual publication, their cost would occur only once each year. Availability of funds would be no problem.
- Furthermore, they would be likely to buy ads, at least in the first issue or two, purely out of loyalty to the organization.
- Finally, the directory would offer a strong, targeted advertising opportunity. There was no other place where these advertisers could so easily reach their most sought-after potential customers: those involved in the import-export trade and international distribution of manufactured goods.
Check your yellow pages for association names and addresses. Perhaps there is a directory out there for you.
Weekly Newspapers and Specialty Tabloids
Weekly newspapers and specialty tabloids are very attractive entrepreneurial projects, and well within the reach of the two-person publishing company. Such publications-have a lot going for them and are easier to get going than you might think. These publications also meet our criteria for success: they have a clearly defined and limited trade area and target a finite list of advertising prospects, all of whom are easily reached. Moreover, tabloids are inexpensive to design and produce.
There may be some modest start-up costs, mainly for office space and initial supplies. (You can avoid the space cost have a large enough basement or double garage that could be converted into an office.) Most equipment, chiefly your computer, laser printer and fax, can be leased. Production tables, files and other paraphernalia are generally very simple to design and can be homemade.
These virtually negligible up-front costs are more than balanced by the short weekly billing cycle you will be working on. By the time your next month's lease payments come due you will already have four or five (yes, some months will have five Wednesdays in them!) weeks' accounts receivable to pay them. If, in the beginning, you do not need to draw out great amounts of cash for your own living expenses, it really is quite possible to start a newspaper and pay for it out of current revenues.
This is precisely what I did with the Mecklenburg Gazette, a weekly newspaper that I owned in Davidson, North Carolina. When I got hold of it, the newspaper was literally a week away from bankruptcy. I had no cash to speak of-just a few thousand dollars in savings to live on until advertising revenues started coming in.
Among the population segments that could form the base of a profitable publication are people with shared interests, ethnic and religious groups and, for university towns, guides for incoming students.
Apartment Comparison and Real Estate Guides
You go into a motel in a new town. In one corner of the lobby are wire racks stuffed full of pamphlets and booklets offering apartments for rent and homes for sale to every eventual newcomer who might be passing that way. These modest publications are chock-full of ads, each of which may cost anywhere from several' hundred dollars to a thousand or more dollars per page. Some of these publications may be tabloid style, but most will be brilliant, full-color booklets and magazines printed on slick paper. All of them are free.
Where there is a great deal of money being spent advertising in a niche market publication, there is also a great deal of it to be made. It was not unusual for one 126-page issue of my apartment directory to contain over $100,000 in advertising.
How Much Can You Make?
Independent, home-based publishing is a business in which you can earn almost as much money as you desire to earn, so long as you are willing to work for it and learn the business. Some people have a laid-back style, want to live simply and modestly, and find the publishing life a delightful way to do it. Others will put in the effort and brain power to earn sixty or seventy thousand dollars a year. And some ambitious souls shoot for the biggest prize of all-they want to develop strong publications, duplicate them in every imaginable market, franchise them, go public and become millionaires.
Each of these scenarios is a possible one. The one you choose will depend on your temperament, and your mastery of the success principles and trade secrets of the business
Can I guarantee your success? No, I cannot. I do not know the intensity of your ambition, your capacity for work, or your skill in managing the work of others (always a key element). What I can guarantee is that the ideas presented in this article have worked for me; they have worked for others; and they can work for you, to the degree that you study them carefully and put them into practice with energy and intelligence.
Dr. Thomas A. Williams is the author of 14 books, including Publish Your Own Magazine, Guidebook, or Weekly Newspaper, a complete start-up guide and operations manual for entrepreneurial publishers. He is also the originator of many magazines, guidebooks, newspapers and tabloids, and operates his publishing company, from his home in Savannah, GA. Williams can be reached by email at bookpub@comcast.net and at http://www.pubmart.com
About the Author
20 Business-Building Practices
You have nurtured your idea, created a business plan, and secured financing. Now for the make-it or break-it question: How do you continue to grow your business year-after-year?
Building a better "mousetrap" doesn't guarantee that the world will beat a path to your door. And, contrary to the inspiring message in the movie, "Field of Dreams," there are no assurances that, "If you build it, they will come." Increasing demand for your products/services and growing your business is realized by the creation and implementation of well-defined strategies.
Two major factors of marketing are the recruitment of new customers (acquisition) and the retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers (customer relationship management). Once you have converted the prospective buyer, customer relationship management (CRM) takes over. The process for CRM shifts from that of being the marketer, to that of being a builder of relationships. Building customer relationships involves nurturing the links between you and your customer, enhancing the benefits that sold your customer in the first place, and continuously improving the product/service in order to protect your business from competitive advancements.
The marketplace is ever changing; therefore, a marketing strategy that works today does not necessarily mean that the same strategy will work in the future. These changing environments necessitate the need to continually analyze and measure the results of each and every one of your promotional efforts. A system that tracks and monitors incoming sales inquiries, by the lead source, is imperative.
The basis of your business development strategy is the recognition of the concept that marketing is a process and not an event. Building a business is, in fact, building a brand. Building your brand is a process that consistently broadcasts your message through a number of different channels to a targeted audience. The trap in event marketing is that it creates the effect of start and stop marketing and produces gaps in the frequency of your promotional efforts.
The need for a written marketing plan is critical. The American Marketing Association (AMA) states, "Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives". Your marketing plan is your road map that guides you through the marketing process.
There is a variety of ways to generate greater demand for your business. Whether you are starting a new business or jumpstarting an existing one, you need to identify at what stage of the business life-cycle your company is currently in. This information will impact your choice of strategies.
Here are twenty (20) effective business-building practices:
Review your unique selling proposition: The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is your biggest marketing weapon and the key to differentiating your business. What is a USP? In essence, it is a simple statement that sums up the unique features, benefits and value that you provide, that no one else can. You arrive at your USP after you identify the features, benefits, and advantages of your company's products/services. After you apply the same process to each of your competitors' products/services, then compare and isolate the elements that distinguish you from your competition.
Establish a marketing communication budget:: Determining and allocating a specific amount of money to fund your marketing strategy cannot be overstated. Whether you use the affordability method, percentage-of-sales method, competitive-parity method, or objective-and-task method to determine the amount of your marketing budget, you must pre-establish an amount of money that you will spend on marketing activities to achieve your sales/revenue projections.
Incorporate integrated marketing communications: A management concept that is designed to make all aspects of marketing communication such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing must work together as a unified force. In practice, the goal of IMC is to create and sustain a single look and message in all elements of your marketing campaign.
Utilize indirect marketing: Needless to say, putting more "boots-on-the-ground" in your sales and marketing activities can pay huge dividends. Some of the more popular indirect marketing methods are networking, strategic alliances, independent sales representatives, affiliate marketers, and dealers/distributors.
Ask for referrals: You know the importance of referrals. But, if you do not continually ask for referrals, you will not generate them. It makes good business sense to always ask for referrals. Just ask your customer if they may know of other companies that could utilize your products/ services. You may be pleasantly surprised by their reply.
Explore different markets: If your products/services are presently being sold to one or two different markets, then it is time to explore the opportunities that may be available to you in other markets. A little brainstorming with your staff about this often produces a good "hit list". As they say, "think outside the box".
Consider additional channels of distribution: There are a number channels of distribution that may work for you. For example, selling direct, such as via mail order, Internet and telephone sales. Companies also use sales agents who sell on their behalf and/or distributors (also called wholesalers) who sell their products to retailers. And finally, there may be possibilities of selling direct to retailers and end users.
Expand your geographic reach: Additional channels of distribution are often needed for you to expand geographically. You may want to consider the possibility of franchising or licensing others to promote and sell your products? Increase product/service offerings: This is a very common method to increase sales/revenues. Important considerations when evaluating a new product/service offering are: Can the new product/service be sold to your existing customer base? Does the new product/service complement your existing products/services?
Differentiate your business: Differentiating your business means that you define your company in relationship to the competition and that you communicate to your customers the value added benefits of doing business with you, versus doing business with your competition. Differentiating your business also means that you continuously make improvements to sustain a leadership position.
Identify your customers' competitors: A great source for new prospective customers is your customers' competition. In most cases, these competing companies have the same or similar needs as that of your existing customers.
Survey your customers: In order to effectively differentiate your business, you need to look at your business from your customers/prospects' perspectives. A customer survey is a great avenue for your customers to express their opinions, to air their complaints, and to voice their satisfaction with your business. The information collected from a customer survey provides the foundation for your marketing strategy.
Profile your competitors: A competitive analysis lists your leading competitors. It summarizes their products and services, promotional strategies, distribution methods, strengths and weaknesses, locations, offerings, prices, and branding. A competitive analysis also outlines strategies for gaining an edge and defines a course of action to take in order to keep competitors out of your market. The analysis helps you expose the competitor's weaknesses and areas of vulnerability. With this information, you are better equipped to craft competitive and marketing strategies that you may choose to fine tune your brand and your messaging.
Acquire new customers: This is a given…your business cannot sustain itself without the addition of new customers. New customer acquisition is a process that combines market data with direct marketing tools to identify and reach high-potential prospects and convert those prospects into customers.
Mining your existing customers: It is far less expensive to generate additional business from your existing customer base than it is to generate new business from new customers. A regular review of your customers' buying history and frequency of purchases can reveal some interesting facts about your customers' buying habits.
Create customer loyalty programs: As the marketplace continues to be more competitive, more and more businesses are offering loyalty programs. These programs help to transform first-time customers into repeat customers by rewarding them with incentives, coupons, certificates or discounts.
Up-sell: Capitalize on the untapped value of your existing customers by promoting related or more expensive products/services. As an example, your customer who regularly buys golf balls is a strong candidate to purchase golf clubs, apparel and other golf accessories. Make a routine practice of recommending additional items that can be added to your customer's order.
Merge or acquire a competitor: The benefit of combining your company with another company creates an immediate sales growth opportunity simply from the acquisition of their existing customer base. And everything else being equal, the new "combination business" should have the potential to become even more profitable than the two businesses operating independently. This potential for increased profitability comes as a direct result of both sales increases and operational efficiencies (opportunities to reduce total costs) that accrue from combining the two businesses.
Use SWOT analysis: SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It is an assessment technique that paints an accurate picture of how your business stacks up based on those four factors. SWOT can identify your venture's pros and cons, so that you can align internal strengths and weaknesses with external opportunities and threats. This exercise is essential to sound strategic planning. With SWOT, you can identify and prioritize the issues that will accelerate success.
Revisit lost customers: According to the research in the book, Customer Winback How to Recapture Lost Customers and Keep Them Loyal, written by Jill Griffin and Michael Lowenstein, a firm has a 60% to 70% chance of successfully repeat-selling to an active customer. A 20% to 40% chance of successfully repeat-selling to a lost customer and only a 5% to 20% chance of successfully closing the sale on a brand new customer. These statistics suggest that a key opportunity exists for businesses to increase or maintain a customer base by mining and evaluating their database of defected customers. Bernd Stauss and Christian Friege make this argument even more convincing in a case study entitled, Regaining Service Customers. Their findings show that the net return on investment from a new customer obtained from an external list is 23% compared with a 214% return on investment from the reinstatement of a customer who has defected.
Dead prospect files: Dig out your old prospect files and make a "hit list" comprised of all of the old prospects that you think may still have life. Contact each one of them. Express your wish to discuss their present-day wants and needs, as well as, the opportunity to explore the possibility of you servicing their needs. Which of the above business-building practices have you, can you, or will you implement in your business development strategy?
Copyright © 2007
Terry H. Hill You may reprint this article free of charge in your newsletter, magazine, or on your website, provided that the article is unedited, and that the copyright, author's bio, and contact information below appears with each article. Articles appearing on the web must provide a hyperlink to the author's web site.
About the Author
Terry H. Hill is an author, consultant, trainer, mentor, and the founder & managing partner of Legacy Associates, Inc., a business consulting firm based in Sarasota, Florida. Legacy, http://legacyai.com, is the parent company of the online small business, entrepreneurship, and management training website, http://www.TrainingforEntrepreneurs.com.
A veteran chief executive, Terry works directly with business owners of privately held companies on the issues and challenges that they face in each stage of their business life cycle. Terry is the author of the business desk-reference book, How to Jump Start Your Business. Contact Terry by email at http://www.legacyai.com or telephone him at 941-556-1299.
