Today’s consumer is changing their behaviour. They are no longer purchasing products and services in the same way they used to and this could be very stressful for you and your business.

However, there is an opportunity available, one that could be more beneficial to you than trying to change the purchasing behaviours of customers: the online subscription business model.

What Is The Subscription Business Model?

The subscription model is very simple. The consumer pays you a regular fixed amount for access to certain products or services. In the last five years, the use of this business model has expanded significantly and now there are a number of products on the market being offered through a subscription.

One of the most commonly accepted subscription models is for online resources. This is often where a subscription offers access to software, articles, online tools or forums. A good example of this would be Adobe, who have now changed their Adobe Photoshop and other products from pay once, use forever to now being on a subscription model.

Another good example would be the magazine NZ Fishing News, where you can subscribe to a digital copy of the magazine.

Ecommerce is a major growth area for subscription businesses. Amazon have their Amazon Prime subscription service where consumers get access to free next day delivery as well as the latest TV and films through their service.

Food via a subscription service is now very common in the United States and Europe. Yet there are also subscription companies like this elsewhere; like New Zealand’s My Food Bag. Even men’s grooming (dollar shaving club) and clothes shopping (Le Tote) have taken to the subscription business model.

What Are The Benefits Of A Subscription Business?

So, what are the advantages of a subscription service? On the UK’s acclaimed Dragon’s Den, a show where entrepreneurs pitch business ideas for a cash injection from five high profile investors, subscription services were very prominent business ideas on the recent series. Yet the ‘dragons’ often asked simple questions that demonstrated a lack of understanding for the business’ core attributes.

For instance, when they were pitched a clothing line, they asked:

• How would they make money if someone didn’t like any of the clothes they were sent?
• And how do they determine what clothes the customer would like?

Both of these factors are fairly simple to answer. Firstly, most subscription services that operate under the ‘surprise and delight’ subscription niche, charge a flat fee for sourcing and delivering the clothes. The second question was simply about noting customer behaviours and recognising trends (i.e. customer likes dark clothes).

It is by answering the first of these questions that you can determine the biggest advantage of a subscription business – a regular, fixed income.

By knowing exactly what your customer is going to be paying each period, you can have a fairly accurate income projection. This is highly useful in your business planning. You can then set budgets accurately, determine what resources you can afford and distribute them to where you need them at exactly the right time. This makes the subscription business model more cost effective and many have much less waste than other businesses with other models (especially when selling consumable goods like food).

In addition, subscription businesses have a higher level of loyalty. This means that you are more likely to retain your customers and have a higher level of Customer Lifetime Value. The improvement in the customer lifetime value can also be supported by having a price that would be higher over the average customer lifespan than if the customer just bought the product outright.

Subscription businesses can also gain customers that competitors would not be able to. This is because subscription businesses have a lower initial investment cost than a pay-once, use forever option. This lower initial investment removes barriers from customers who might not be able to afford otherwise.

For example, Adobe used to charge $200 or more for some of their software packages. This was rather expensive and did limit the number of people who could afford the package. Now their charges are approximately $8-$10 per month which is much more affordable for the majority of potential users.

All these benefits make subscription businesses look very attractive.

Top Tips For Running A Successful Subscription Business

Subscription businesses may have many advantages; however, they are not perfect. The same problems of customer acquisition exist, especially when marketing and growing awareness for your brand.

By having a strong product and good subscription model, you can build the best foundation for growing your business. Here are some tips on how to make your subscription business a success:

1. Offer an introductory month – many businesses offer new customers a cheaper or free first month.
2. Keep your subscription price to roughly your full product cost divided by customer lifespan – this is to ensure you aren’t undercharging. Ideally you want to be above this level.
3. Have a couple of subscription levels – customers love choice and offering a few subscription levels can improve signups.
4. When running a content based subscription service don’t worry about the amount of content – you can always start early and charge less and improve the price as you establish your presence and gain more content.
5. Communicate often with customers – subscription services are all about the customer. Therefore, you need to keep communicating to retain them.
6. Be efficient – one of the advantages of a subscription business is the waste of resources that can be prevented. However, this can only happen if you are efficient and know how to supply your business properly.

Conclusion

Customer behaviours are changing. They are demanding products of a higher quality but they don’t want to pay a fortune. They are also leading busy lives, making it difficult to find time for some of the luxuries in life. This allows forward-thinking business people the chance to create subscription services that provide for these needs.

Subscription businesses have numerous and significant advantages over their competitors. Over the long term, with the right marketing and operational strategy – subscription businesses find they can increase revenue and customer lifetime value while decreasing waste, costs and the amount of energy needed to run and maintain the business.

Blogging is an art form that allows you to reach your audience and convince them of your industry authority. 81% of individuals will trust information that is included within blog posts and 61% of readers are influenced by content in articles published online.

However, there are many different aspects of blogging which are required for it to be successful. For instance, you will need to publish blog posts that offer high quality information the reader can use, for example; a guide to solve a particular problem or a report on a niche within your industry. This content is very important because online readers don’t want to be sold to, they want to be informed.

A high quality image should be used to demonstrate what your blog post is about. The human mind can process an image quicker than text and in fact, some of your readers may judge whether or not they wish to read your blog post based on your image.

You’ll also need a way to sign visitors up to your email subscription list. 70% of your audience will not return to your website unless you subscribe them to something. This is important because if you want to sell your business further down the line, having a high returning visitor rate can raise the value of your business.

One of the most important aspects of blogging is consistency. If you are going to start blogging you need to blog at the same time every week. This means you need to think of subjects, complete research, write the article, edit the content and then publish the post on a consistent basis. This will improve the results of your blogging.

Why Is A Schedule Important (And Why Should You Stick To It)?

Blogging is a hard task that people often underestimate. There is a significant amount of work that needs to take place in order to develop content and get it looking just right. Unless you are a professional writer, it can take several hours just to write a 500 word piece.

The danger is that when you have a significant amount of work to do, your blogging is the first action that will disappear. This is very common and can often escalate into several posts being missed in a row or inconsistency in publishing.

By creating a publishing schedule you can avoid problems such as missing posts on your blog or published posts being full of grammatical errors. The more professionalism you can convey, the better the results of your content marketing campaigns and the higher returns you will achieve.

You’ll also notice that your impressions on Google and other search engines will improve. This can be really important because one third of all small businesses report that the majority of their traffic comes from organic searches.

Organic searches are one of the major contributors to online sales and this has been confirmed by Google, who state their ranking algorithms take into account how often content on a site is being changed and how often content is being published.

Research has demonstrated that businesses that publish more than 15 posts per month are able to achieve more traffic, leads and sales than businesses that don’t blog at all.

How Do You Design A Schedule?

Beginning a blogging schedule is not difficult, as long as you start in the right place. Many people believe that you should start with how and when you are going to create the content – but this is a big mistake. There are several reasons for this:

• Without creating a publishing schedule you don’t have a fixed time to publish your first blog post.
• Without a publishing schedule you have no regular deadlines to work towards.
• Generally speaking, when creating schedules, it is easier to start at the finish point and work backwards so you can better arrange other activities around your goal.

When creating your publishing schedule, first of all think about when your target audience are going to be online. General research has shown that Mondays are the best time to publish a post as this is when they are more likely to be read, however, they are shared more on a Thursday but every audience is different.

If your audience are night owls who are partying at the weekends and reading during the week, Monday to Thursday evenings might be the best time for them. If they are professional businessmen, then research has shown they are more likely to consume content just before or after work Tuesday to Thursday.

Once you have decided when to publish your posts, you can start to work backwards to determine when you are going to create the articles. Start with the editing of your article. Ensure that you give yourself at least one full day to edit the article, although you don’t want to spend any more than 30 minutes on the work.

On the previous day you should have researched and written the article. The timing for this can be unique but try to save about two hours for this task. Research is very important as readers like to have highly informative content that can be verified by a third party. Also, referencing quotes and statistics from third party sites can help your SEO, as Google includes outbound links in their ranking algorithm.

Once you have done this you need a time every week or month where you sit down with your marketing team and decide on subjects and blog titles. This is best done on a monthly basis as it can stop repetition and allow you to create topics at a strategic level.

Conclusion

Creating a blogging schedule is an important task if you want your business’ online marketing to be a success. To get it right, start with deciding when you will publish your content and then work backwards so you know your articles will always be completed on time.

By sticking to your schedule you will produce professional, consistent blog posts that will drive traffic to your business and in turn improve growth.