By: Elizabeth Coffey, Marketing G2 Digital Marketing Specialist

A lot of publishers struggle in coming up with a strategic marketing plan to sell subscriptions. Some try to create a plan that includes all aspects of their mission statement and vision as a news organization. Others try to lead with messages and offers around their biggest money makers. Still other publishers struggle to find a message or an idea to rally around.

Pipeline marketing is useful in these cases and is the process of using a combination of lead nurturing and marketing tactics to drive one's leads (readers) through one's sales funnel. The focus is on consumers and their needs, not on your news brand(s) and what you’re trying to sell (subscriptions). Next, pipeline marketing looks at the stage of the sales cycle consumers are currently in to help an organization align marketing and sales messages, tactics, and channels to speed up or support the buying cycle.

When coming up with a pipeline marketing strategy, here’s a few things to consider:

1. When to create a pipeline marketing plan – You should begin planning your pipeline marketing strategy soon after you’ve finished your yearly revenue planning. Once your news organization determines where its sales will be coming from that year, you should begin focusing your marketing efforts on specific opportunities within the market.


2. How often should your news organization revisit its pipeline marketing plan? – Marketing and audience development leaders should revisit the plan every time they clean up their pipeline data.


3. Marketing pipeline KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) – You’ll be able to tell if your pipeline marketing strategy is working if readers are advancing through the stages of your subscription sales funnel and if they’re ultimately converting. It’s important to A/B test your pipeline marketing strategies so you can determine if the opportunities you’re pursuing are proving fruitful.

Do you have a pipeline marketing strategy in place to get more subscriptions?