Being prepared: integrated marketing is the most important development in magazine publishing in recent years. But to take advantage of it, you must be organized for it

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Oct 1, 1991 by Terrence M. McDermott

Integrated marketing is the most important development in magazine publisbing in recent years. But to take advantage of it, you must be organized for it.

Terry McDermott is resident of Cabners Publishing Company, the largest publisher of business-to-business magazines in the U S. Through its parent Reed Intemational of London, it also provides other communications and information services for marketers-including trade shows, research, direct mail, forecasting, reprints and on-line databases.

In the last decade, Cahners Magazine Company's revenue mix bas changed from a 92 percent dependence on display advertising to 80 percent. Our goal is to reduce that to 75 percent by 1995. Do we expect the 75 percent to yield significantly greater revenues than today's 80 percent? Absolutely. And that's not the only change we see on the horizon.

Some of us believe that before the close of 1999, our readers will be utilizing new media technologies now on the horizon to create their own morning newspapers through menu selections offered on their computers. Our own core business-to-business editorial products will also be available through that same database, accessible by something as simple as an electronic clipping service that sorts by key word, headline or story concept.

And what will advertising be like on this system of the future? Well, just take a look at today's Prodigy online service for an example of a prototype of the electronic magazine of the future. Is this, then, what integrated marketing is-a kind of informational Star Wars?

No, not exclusively, but it does serve as a powerful reminder of the stronger, more responsive relationship we as publishers must forge with both our consumer and business-to-business marketing targets in the coming decade. The declining cost of computer technology has already significantly enhanced our knowledge of the attitudes, buying habits and preferences of those to whom we send all of our information products. Now we must combine all the marketing components into a strategic sequential support system of print and electronic advertising, direct marketing, and sales promotion.

Today, integrated marketing has, through compelling repetition in trade journals and at conferences, risen to the top of the list of things publishers have to ponder.

It's too easy to reject integrated marketing as merely a pitch for changing leadership in the total marketing-support buy. It may well represent the total marketing-support spending in the future. But just who will get the biggest piece of that pie will be determined by the ultimate test of provable communication and sales-support efficiency.

Do the print media need to adopt a more effective response for advertising? Yes, and database management, in a variety of ways, will be the source of ad growth in the 90s.

Over time, we can sell the new cadre of financially-oriented, short-term thinkers on the long-term return on investment in advertising. But, if you want to be there to lure them to a better balance for advertising versus trade shows, direct mail, promotion and direct relationship vehicles, you must be organized to share in the short-term revenue mix.

The high affinity that business-to-business readers have for their publications will make the task of creating direct marketing and database management products somewhat easier for trade publishers than for consumer publishers. Special-interest consumer publishers, however, can create (and are creating) new products in the direct relationship area that go far beyond selective binding for advertising targeting.

We can turn our special-interest consumer book circulations into truly responsive database marketing products that help mass marketers sell directly to the end-user. Add cross media matching in-house and then our readership-driven lists become formidable support systems for any marketing attack a client pursues. Integrated marketing at its best yields greater responsiveness to the advertiser's total marketing effort.

A word of warning, however. Marketers who completely ignore context for the sake of delivery method, who confuse methods of identifying and reaching buyers with marketing communications that lead to sales and brand support, will lose sales and market share-no matter how integrated the marketing effort. The point of good marketing is to sell; the point of great marketing is to sell at a market share that yields the highest perceived value and quality for your brand and the optimum profit margin for your effort.

If selling is the point of marketing, then the point of integrated marketing is, for publishers, to ensure that advertising increases its provable efficiency in the marketing mix. It also suggests that publishers examine the inherent opportunities in other growing components of the integrated marketing mix: direct marketing, direct mail, database management and sales promotion.

But where are we in terms of market potential of our core product, print media, and our core sale, display advertising? Is marketing communications spending shrinking because of structural changes as well as economic contraction? Not in terms of total percentage of GNP spent on marketing communications, although the total number of advertisers has dwindled. In fact, the period from 1992 to 2000 will produce a larger total marketing spend every year.