Nick Ferris’s marketing tips, media swaps continues with a look at how he transformed a traditional print business in the internet age.As we have previously described, Nick Ferris had to guide a print business in a rapidly transparent information age. Over the years sales of the print product were slowly declining and it was getting harder and harder to get the contact information in the directories themselves because of privacy concerns as well as opt in and EU laws that sprung up from the rise of emails.
So there were several challenges facing the business. The onset of the internet made it easier to find out some of the contact information people previously paid for. Laws and regulation made it harder to research and so it became obvious that at some point the product would no longer be viable as a profitable business. Nick Ferris had to therefore come up with a solution to help maintain what was a very profitable business long term.
In discussions with his team and over several months of brainstorming the idea was finally drawn up. The concept, recalls Nick Ferris, was to take a traditional print product and publish online. And that’s where several revenue streams and business models could be tested for the long term viability of the business.
The first step was to plan out the business in intricate detail - revenue projections, staffing requirements and most importantly build costs. Back then, Nick Ferris, was at the cutting edge of web technology and it was still in it’s relative infancy so getting companies to quote to build the project, as well as design the UX/UI was a drawn out process.
Next Nick Ferris has to build the project.
Continue reading Nick Ferris’ other articles on all aspects of traditional and nontraditional marketing. He has held global marketing jobs in B2B and B2C companies in UK, USA and Asia and some places inbetween,
