SINCE 2000, MUCH has been said about the end of print media in the digital age. Much less is understood about the drivers.
Sadly for all print publishers, not just media but books included, the real cost is in the IP not the physical print and postage. The cost of journalists, editors, sub-editors, designers, photographers, office space and flying around the country, or world, to create great content is the same cost whether you deliver online or in print.
Investment Magazine will cease publishing a print magazine with the May edition this year, which will be 13 years after it began as Investment & Technology magazine and then morphed into Investment Magazine in 2011.
Investment Magazine print advertising has become increasingly thin on the ground this past decade and truthfully we have been cross-subsidising for some years.
Our Investment Magazine print revenues represent about 3 per cent of Conexus Financial’s revenues. However, while the print version was cross-promoting our substantial domestic institutional conference business, we kept it alive.
We have just re-launched our digital offering across www.investmentmagazine.com.au and the twice-weekly newsletter. The enhanced user experience makes this the perfect time for us to focus solely on digital.
Our new digital online editor is Elizabeth Fry, who joined us last year after four years editing Australian Banking & Finance’s EDM, and three years writing for the FT before that.
Importantly, digital-only allows editors and salespeople to know ‘exactly’ what a reader’s behaviour looks like, meaning future content can be further moulded to your needs. Critically, especially as the domestic and world economy tightens, having more information for targeted advertising provides more certainty and investment return to those firms using our media to reach you.
If you are not an online subscriber, then you only need to log on at investmentmagazine.com.au and register.
Meanwhile, what is our relevance going forward? In a post royal commission world, all players in the B2B environment should be rethinking their value proposition. Why? Well, for starters, superannuation, advice and insurance is now ‘very’ mainstream. One of the many silver linings of 2018 and both the Productivity Commission Review and the Royal Commission, is that the average mum and dad knows a lot more about each of these, even if sadly for the wrong reasons.
Our job going forward is to provide you with as much guidance as possible. Traditional coverage of the past is more available and less useful than ever. We will provide analysis and opinion, and ideas and creative solutions to problems which may enlighten the future. We need to campaign for improvements in adequacy, the super gap with women in retirement, the number of Australians gaining access to quality advice over time and so on.
We realise you don’t have the time or interest to be distracted by anything not forwarding your members’ interests and dealing better with an overwhelming workload. As such, the media across our group and the educational events we stage will absolutely be respectful of your time and will provide insights that enhance your decision-making process. You can continue to rely on us being the only media in this market committed to high-quality journalism that is focused on the asset owner, not the product provider, and investing in quality digital content, not press release-driven content that doesn’t support or forward your members’ futures.
Thank you for being a reader and/or advertiser, conference delegate or sponsor with the Conexus business.
