Elements of Newspaper Design - Essay Example

Marketing Management Through this paper I intend to explain and discuss the marketing strategy of a well known daily newspaper and review how it has achieved its present position. For this purpose we will start of with a brief introduction as to what marketing strategy actually is and a brief background of the newspaper that I have chosen this purpose and then we will move on to discuss the various dimension of the marketing strategy of this respected newspaper. Introduction – Marketing Strategy Defined It is a set of ideas and logics by which an organization plans to achieve its marketing goals and objectives. It can also be explained in terms of a strategy that is aimed at customer satisfaction and product differentiation. Broadly it tells who the product will be sold to, the marketing mix and its differentiation and positioning plans. Financial Times The daily newspaper that I have selected for the purpose of this report is Financial Times. It is a corporate or business daily newspaper that is published in United Kingdom but is rotated all over the world. It was launched in 1988 by Horatio Bottomley. It was initially known as the London Financial Guide but was renamed later in the same year. In the early years it was in competition with another publication known as financial news but then both the papers were merged into 6 pages newspaper. It has a worldwide publication of around 432,990 (Mikdashi 2001). Marketing Strategy of Financial Times It is sub-divided into the following domains: Market Segmentation and Targeting In this case the business usually divides the market into sub division based on some common characteristics such as demographics and then one or more segments are selected as target audience. This way they are able to cater to the needs of the audience in a better way. Segmentation can be based on multiple characteristics even. Initially Financial Times was only published in UK and was targeted for business people in that region but as globalization increased and the world started shrinking FT increased its coverage and started seeping from the UK boundaries. The first target audience was Germany with publication in Frankfurt then slowly it became a global newspaper with special additions and supplement for UK, USA, Middle East, Asia and continental Europe. Therefore people all around the world come under their scope and there is no segmentation in terms of geographic region. As the name suggests Financial Times is a business or corporate newspaper which is read by people who belong to the corporate world or students who plan to join it soon. This is the major most focus market of Financial Times. Apart from this people who have interest in the financial working of the market are also under the light of FT. It is even very influential on British government policies and thus the government body is another major target market. Thus we can say as a conclusion that the targeting of Financial Times is based on occupational division and psychographic segmentation but not on the bases of geographical basis. Market Differentiation and Positioning After it has been made clear as to who is the target audience the business can move ahead with its strategic planning because all the aspects have to be adjusted according to that. Market differentiation means how the firm differentiates with other products belonging to competitors. Whereas market positioning is what kind of perception does an organization forms in the minds of his consumer of his product in comparison to that of his competitor. As we can see both these factors are related to the competitors thus they are usually dealt with together. When it comes to Financial Times its main competitors is Wall street Journal which is a New York based publication (Leab 1970). However it is far ahead of its rival which has an international publication of around 2 million only. And moreover it is a century older than its competitor and thus has a prestige attached to it. To further differentiate itself it has more additional supplements for international regions in comparison to New York Times that has only two supplements. The distinguishing is further emphasized by the pink paper that is used by Financial Times that makes it stand out in front of all other newspapers at a particular stall. The positioning strategy used is to portray the newspaper that provides up to date and reliable information regarding all international and local news. The news is so reliable that the government forces use it to make their national level decisions. Marketing Mix After it has also been decided that what kind of an image has to be created of the product and what competitive advantage it will have over other products it is time to bring them out and this can be done by using the four forces of marketing mix namely product which include the physical characteristics of the product including its packaging, the price, which is the amount of money the consumers will have to pay for it, place, how will it be distributed to the target market and finally the promotion strategy tat will be used to persuade people to buy the given product. We will deal with each one of the four Ps of marketing separately and will explain how Financial Times uses it to have a successful marketing strategy (Zeldes 2002). Product As already mentioned Financial Times is a 6 page newspaper that is Pink in color which is very eye catching. Moreover, it uses a paper that is easily recyclable and thus is environmental friendly and sends a good message to the readers that the organization cares about the welfare of the society at large. We can discuss the various aspects of the newspaper section wise. Section one holds the news which has both international and area focused news related to the business world. This section has a unique part known as the Lex corner which holds analysis of issues related to the business world. Section two is companies and markets and holds information such as those related to commodities and capital markets. Then there are supplements throughout the week related to the hot topics that have come up or world events that require additional focus and attention. And the best known feature in the FT weekends that holds the summary of all the events that have taken place throughout the week along with other interesting information and sections such as travel and lifestyle (Ames 1989). The layout of the newspaper is very simple and like all other newspaper that are sold with columns and a big portion for advertisements including on the front page. However, the column that is found on the left hand side and that tells all the other important news that can be found inside is eye catching and a popular are that is regularly viewed by readers who do not have the time to go into the details of each and every news. Price As for all newspapers, their main cost is usually covered by sponsorship and advertisement that they get however they still charge readers something to avoid wastage of copies due to people picking it up free in the market and some say it is to cover the cost of the paper only. It costs 1 pound in weekdays and 2 pounds on weekends with little bit of a difference all around the world (Rankin 1986). The prices are at par with other international newspaper. Newspaper industry does not face price wars nor is their demand so much linked with prices its related more with prestige and reliability of news thus price is not major concern. Despite this Financial Times have special offers for people who are buying in bulks for their libraries or staff members at their firms. Place The distribution network of Financial Times is not much different from any other newspaper. It is collected by either individual newspaper distributors from the publication center or is provided to newsstands all around the city in bulks from where the consumers either buy it directly or newsboys are used to deliver it to their homes. In terms of their corporate market or when it comes to their business to business relation their terms and conditions are a little more flexible. They even deliver in bulks to respected universities, offices and libraries and have a proper contract signed with them. Promotion This is the process of transferring information about the product or the company to the potential customers or declared customers in a way to persuade them to buy the product more often and more frequently. Financial Times is a very well established newspaper and mostly people believe that thus it does not require clear cut promotion but Financial times still carries out both below and above the line promotion. Above the line promotion refers to clear cut advertisement and Financial Times uses almost all mediums of advertisement including Billboards, television and obviously the internet. I have even seen advertisements of Financial Times on vehicles thus it has even covered the scope of mobile advertisement. As far as the below the line promotion is included it uses a lot of those strategies that are more subtle in nature and provokes and attracts people in an indirect way. These techniques are especially reserved for their demand from the corporate side. The strategies that they use include direct mailing in which they mail libraries and other centers that stock newspapers informing them about their offers and also enticing them by saying that they are willing to form a working relationship with that firm (Mulford 2000). Apart from direct mailing, they also use sponsorship like they sponsored the US Presidential campaign of Barrack Obama and they also used discounts and membership offers as already mentioned above that organizations could buy in bulk at a discount and with delivery services provided by them only. Carrying out the Marketing Plan For forming the above mentioned policies and going ahead with the plan, a series of steps are required. The first step in these series is conducting market research. This is basically the research conducted to find out details but the clients, competitors and other market conditions that can affect the performance of the business in this case the success of the daily newspaper. Financial Times did not start of as an international newspaper and was only based in the United Kingdom however through market surveys oversea they discovered the worldwide demand and started international expansion. Alongside this they keep eyes open for customer feedback and they even have an option on their internet website that allows the readers to provide feedback and give any comments on the new that was published. Through this feedback they also find out a lot about their customers and their opinion and it is also a very cost effective method of data collecting and gathering. Apart from this they even keep their eyes open for any business opportunities in the form of new offices, business, libraries, public places or government interaction areas. Whenever they find out that such an opportunity they conduct further market research to discover whether it is feasible and profitable (Gowers 2005). After this feasibility study is conducted a little bit more research is conducted for drawing an enticing proposal from the new business relationship. Once the information has been collected in the raw form it is processed and brought in the form in which it can be truly useful and can be used by higher authority to make crucial decision. With the implementation and checking of the market policies the marketing strategy is completed. Global Perspective Financial Times is an international newspaper that takes the global perspective in all its dealings and business dimensions. It was initially based in UK only as mentioned before but then as they saw the trend towards globalization it started moving out from the boundaries, Frankfurt followed by other destinations until it was practically read all over the world. However, along with expanding they realized that they need to cater to the separate needs of all the regions and thus one by one started publishing are focused supplements (Cameron 2001). They have realized that businesses al around the world are entwined and so is the news related to them and thus it is not enough to just focus on one area and deliver the news regarding that as now due to globalization one business based in Japan is affected by the other based in Australia and thus everyone is now interested in financial and business news from all around the world. We can judge the extent of global perspective of FT by the fact that it considers Wall Street Journal its biggest competitor which is based in New York. Online Marketing As the trend of E-news increased and people started switching to the computer screens from the daily paper Financial Times moved ahead to cover that area also and started off its website which is ft.com.uk. This website has subscription offer through which the readers can get all the news on their computer screen with just a click of the mouse and with a small amount of monthly subscription. Not only this, they have other services for their cliental and business people who want to access corporate information (Haldane 2004). For instance, searching for old information through an inbuilt search engine is one of the additional services. Apart from this the website also offers information about the deals and condition of contract that they have to offer to their potential clients. It has a complete guide line or help connection for its customers. Another service that it offers is old issues of its newspaper which people present as gifts to each other because people find it very interesting to read what happened on the day they were born or some significant historical day. Thus the website offers newspapers that are up to 100 years old. Conclusion The various dimensions of a marketing strategy combine together to give a desired effect and the conglomeration of these factors only can lead to an organization achieving its marketing objectives. The case is no different for Financial Times which has various different policies that together have made it possible to increase the number of publication to what it is at present. Moreover, there is nothing as fixed one needs to keeping trying out new things and experimenting and improving otherwise it cannot stay at its present position in the fast changing world of today. Thus in conclusion we can say that the Financial Times has the right combination that it needs to maintain its position and differentiate itself from its competitors. The future of newspapers in the 21st century is pretty safe as the people understand its true value. It is pretty much correct to state that the same will be the case in the coming times (Chorafas 2000). The electronic copies would always remain secondary while the actual newspapers will reign supreme no matter whatever technology tries to supersede it, in the nick of time. All said and done, success is there for the taking as far as newspapers are concerned, in the 21st century. Bibliography AMES, Steven. (1989). Elements of Newspaper Design. Praeger Publishers CAMERON, Glen. (2001). Diversity Advances Both Journalism, Business. Newspaper Research Journal, Vol. 22 CHORAFAS, Dimitris. (2000). New Regulation of the Financial Industry. Macmillan GOWERS, Andrew. (2005). Diary; I Cannot Pretend Leaving the Financial Times Is Not a Wrench, but You Swiftly Rediscover Who Your Friends Are. Dont Worry, They Say: Ive Been There, Can I Buy You Lunch? New Statesman, Vol. 134, November 14 HALDANE, Andrew. (2004). Fixing Financial Crises in the 21st Century. Routledge LEAB, Daniel. (1970). A Union of Individuals: The Formation of the American Newspaper Guild, 1933-1936. Columbia University Press MIKDASHI, Zuhayr. (2001). Financial Intermediation in the 21st Century. Palgrave MULFORD, Charles. (2000). Guide to Financial Reporting and Analysis. John Wiley & Sons RANKIN, W. (1986). The Practice of Newspaper Management. Praeger Publishers ZELDES, Geri. (2002). How Ownership, Competition Affect Papers Financial Performance. Newspaper Research Journal, Vol. 23 Word Count: 2,532 Read More