SEVEN BIG INNOVATIONS

FinPub industry "kings" make the majority of their profit with mobile and/or email alert services (up)sold to their existing database. This usually increases their annual average revenue-per-subscriber by up to about 500% (yes, that's FIVE HUNDRED PERCENT) or more. Compared to newsletter publishing, this kind of service is typically far easier to manage, yet commands lucrative revenue... often about 5-50 times what you charge for your flagship product.

Since the target market is primarily the list you already have- these products are typically upsold to your own database instead of aimed at outside prospects- margins are sky high. But here's the best part:

Growing your subscriber acquisition volume expands the upselling opportunity for premium services, which then fuels even more acquisition potential. This circular or "two-piston model" is how the "kings" create the robust cash flows to rapidly buy their way to industry domination.

A premium model can yield a lot of profit when properly applied to even the smaller publisher's business. This profit is probably well beyond what you've ever experienced running without a premium service model. With BI's deep expertise in premium product business models- including long stints running some of the most successful premium subscription business models in the industry- we can help you develop a "WOW!" premium service on what you already know, build your own best-in-class model and rapidly harvest substantial profit in the short-term. As a general guideline...

What if you already have a premium model? BI can bring enhancements to grow yield by helping you integrate well-proven solutions missing from your own implementation. We've worked with most of the highest-performing premium service models in the space. There's almost certainly a number of key growth-driving innovations missing from your version. Sure, you might guess your way into some of them over a lot of time and at a lot of expense. Or you could engage us and shortcut your way to those added impact innovations this year. Added profit rapidly follows.

Some of the most profitable players in the space have a crucial secret of success. They know that using a cost-efficient telemarketing team to support their marketing acquisition, upsell, cross-selling & renewal campaigns dramatically increases ROI by three to six times. That's...

• 3 to 6 TIMES MORE sales conversions.
• 3 to 6 TIMES MORE renewal orders.
• 3 to 6 TIMES MORE upsells & cross-sales.

If your business is depending on marketing alone- like many industry competitors- imagine your own results multiplied by 3 to 6 times! Adding a quality telemarketing model is a great way to explode your revenue.

BI has a long history of helping companies harvest the profit-multiplying power of telesales. We can help you cost-efficiently test your way into a telemarketing solution so that you can sample the dramatic impact before making much of a commitment to this new powerful asset. Whether you would want to install your own team or use a proven outsource solution, BI can help you every step of the way. What would 3X-6X better results mean to your business this year?

If you already have phone sales/service agents, BI can draw upon multi-company experience to help you increase revenue-per-salesperson. Even small improvements in this metric can add up to substantial gains over the course of the year.

Do your products look outdated? There was a time when making a newsletter look like it was created on a typewriter was perceived to be a benefit. That time- like that typewriter- is long gone. Today children use modern software to produce very polished documents for school reports. Are you still asking people to pay you $100-$500+ per year for a letter that looks like it was designed in the 1980s or 90s? A sharp, modernized design makes a much better, "WOW!" first impression... a major key to building up your product's perceived value. Blending into a very dated (looking) crowd is NOT the way to grow your business.

You may also need killer function to go along with that new eye-grabbing form. If you allow BI to help you modernize your product, we can:

• draw upon well over TWO decades of FinPub industry market research to enhance your product with customer-desired features that are not there now,
• help you engage your existing subscribers so that you incorporate their cumulative desires,

• help you weave in direct competitor features so that prospective buyers see little reason to buy elsewhere,
• work with you to blend in any exclusive mobile, print or Internet innovations you’ve always wanted to add,
• open new revenue channels such as the Apple iOS, and Android, etc mobile markets which include hundreds of millions of prospective subscribers, some of which are longing for exactly what you can provide... delivered on their iPads, iPhones, iPods, Android & Windows-based devices.

• do up to all of this without making the actual production of the letter any more complicated than it is now. In fact, we can probably make it easier to publish each letter.

Great marketing always involves striving to win in ALL of these dimensions. Let our talented team help you make your product(s) much more appealing to buyers. A product enhanced with the best customer & competitor-driven features and long-term industry research, blended with any new ideas you have and packaged in a modern, standout design can win you major points with your existing base (measured in record renewal revenue)... while attracting new customers much more effectively than showing that same old, tired design that was last updated how many years ago??? One of our original designs had a cameo in a major motion picture. Ask BI how we can help you rise above the crowd.

Many FinPubs put up their websites long ago. And it shows! A tired design doesn’t maximize lead and customer conversions; it tends to immediately undercut perceived value in everything you offer... and drive potential buyers away. After all, if you as seller don't put much into showcasing your company and products to the fullest, why should a prospective buyer believe there is much value in your company and products? There’s a profit-oriented reason why retail stores regularly renovate their storefronts. Does your website cast a modern image that motivates visitors...

• to stay?
• to share their contact information?
• to buy your products?

From a design perspective, does your website make you look like a cutting-edge alternative for individual investors or a company that might not even still be in business? When you review competitor websites, do you wish that your site was as polished? We can help you leap ahead of the competitive landscape with a cost-efficient website modernization project.

Even if you don't care that much about your website, consider this...

You put so much effort into trying to woo as many new subscribers as possible. Why not put a slice of that kind of effort into making one-time upgrades to your site so that it can actually help you convert more prospects into buyers instead of working against your marketing objectives? A poor website makes EVERY marketing campaign yield less than its best.

When BI builds or renovates a website, function follows form. That means we draw upon all that we’ve learned from working with some of the most successful players in the space. We also utilize exclusive and cumulative market research to design customer-centered sites that wow prospective buyers. We analyze direct competitor sites to insure that any “best of” features can make it into our client’s new site, mitigating reasons for prospective subscribers to shop elsewhere. Consider these questions...

• Is your website loaded with the crucial marketing & sales hooks to maximize lead capture and customer conversions, new acquisitions, upsells & renewals, organic search discovery (SEO), etc?
• Does your site imagery link with your product design to showcase a professional, unified brand? Or do your products & website look (up to) completely disconnected?
• Does your website offer all 3 of the crucial product types to compete against the most successful companies in the FinPub industry?
• Is your Ecommerce flow smooth & intuitive or do you notice you are losing too many prospects before they finalize their order?
• Are your subscribers given channels through your site to help you evolve it to continuously delight them? Does the site help them realize enhanced value in the products they buy from you motivating them to give you profitable renewal dollars year after year?
• Is the site warm & welcoming for those crucial first-time visitors, enticing them to give your product a try... or at least share their contact information so that you can exploit this no-cost source of quality, relevant leads through subsequent low-cost tactics like digital marketing?

Website & mobile web technologies evolve very quickly. If you are not close to cutting-edge, opportunities to grow are DECAYING right out from under you. BI has mastered the art & customer-centered "best of" functionality of website design or modernization for financial publishers. Use our proven solutions to jump ahead of the pack.

Few things can fire up revenue better than a hot new product that everyone wants to buy. As little as one killer new product can help a FinPub blow by their revenue targets and set themselves up for lucrative renewals for many years to come.

The biggest key to success is hitting a demand bulls eye, which is achieved by adopting a customer-driven product development approach. A customer-centered, new product is designed by tapping into the collective brilliance of those who do the buying. It also draws upon the "best of" elements from direct competition, as well as internal innovations uniquely your own. This 3-dimensional approach maximizes the chances of hitting a home run.

The financial publishing industry typically builds a new product to internal taste(s) and then goes in search of a market. BI can help you flip this around so that the market of hungry buyers actually helps you build the product they want to buy. The very few FinPubs that do it this way tend to be the ones that are growing faster than everyone else. Could your product development model benefit by layering in demand-driven creative brilliance?

that was rhetorical: OF COURSE IT CAN!

The typical FinPub started out with one or two people who wore all of the hats in the business. They controlled everything because they did everything. The businesses that grow into huge successes do so because a special few of these entrepreneurs recognize that they eventually have to get out of their own way. Unfortunately, significant FinPub growth is often hard capped at the maximum productivity of the leader(s) who just can't let go. They want to personally control everything to such a degree that they become their own company's biggest bottleneck. How can they retain this absolute desire for control while delegating away many of the responsibilities key to growing beyond their maximum personal productivity?

Developing a strategic plan is the optimal way for a leader to guide growth without having to be personally involved in the nitty-gritty. By laying out a written plan for growth, the leader meets their own need to control while empowering their team to take on the responsibilities that desperately need to be delegated. A good plan also unifies the whole team toward common, measurable objectives in a way that "flying by the seat of your pants" chaos culture can never approximate. Try it. Planning works!

If your business is constrained by productivity bottlenecks, a strategic plan is a very powerful growth solution. It is THE very best way to maximize the productivity, creativity and ROI of your human resources.

A very polished strategic plan is also important when you want to start this kind of business, take on partners, seek capital from investors or bankers or sell the business. This use of a plan aims at motivating strangers to find great value in putting money into your business... often for little more than the potential in some future return.

A FinPub entrepreneur interested in selling out entirely or taking on some partners in the next few years is very well served to immediately adopt a planning culture in which they can demonstrate an ability to perform against written goals & tactics. This results in tangible proof that the business can grow... with and without them- something very important to ANY buyer. It helps amp up the valuation of the business when you are pitching it to a buyer or investor, by showing them a plan that illustrates additional growth potential.

Benjamin Franklin, genius founding father and face of the U.S. $100 bill offers this...

Don't plan to fail. Leap out in front of your competitors with 'BIG Innovations' in your new plan. Yes, there IS a hint in that sentence.

Long copy email & mail promotions that look like 1980’s & 90's Direct Mail promotions are wearing out their welcome. The vast majority of them look so much like every other email promotion from your competitors they are immediately flowed into your prospect’s trash can... long before they get a chance to even pitch your product. As Apple marketing would say: "Think different!" There are MANY OTHER WAYS to sell on the Internet rather than sending another six-to-twelve thousand words and a few static images in one (very) long email.

For example, over 80% of the FinPub target market uses a broadband Internet connection. Knowing this, are you exploiting the much more powerful messaging capabilities of video, audio, webinars, vodcasts, podcasts, infomercials or other multimedia tools to sell your products? Or are you still clinging to print marketing concepts popular in the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries?

Our team can create turnkey, multimedia presentations that will sell for you 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. Instead of the one dimensional impact of copywriting alone, a narrated presentation can blend in inflection, audible emotion, etc.- all the powers of the human voice- to more thoroughly grab your prospects and help them bond with you in ways that can never be matched by even the best copy.

Instead of hoping that all prospects will not bail out of the (always) linear flow of long-copy direct mail or email, you can sell through a BI-designed multimedia presentation that offers interactive features... so that your prospect can see WHAT they want to see WHEN they want to see it... and "buy now" at ANY moment rather than having to work all the way to page 23.

BI can create original multimedia presentations for you in ANY format (8K, 4K, HD, SD, H.264, H.265 HEVC, Quicktime, Ogg Theora, WebM, VP9, HTML5, etc) for ANY purpose (email marketing, website, CD-ROM, DVD, Blu Ray, mobile, social network, direct mailers, trade show promotions, television, tangible bonuses for your hard offers, etc). A terrific test is to base the creation on your current control package, pitting old school long copy against this medium in a head-to-head showdown.