Building a subscription based B2B business and the value ... · Why you need to shift your B2B business from asset transfer mindset to long term relationship mindset. Why you should

Building a subscription based B2B business and the value infinity loop

Lauren MoloneyLOVER OF SUBS

● General Manager of SMB Growth and Customer Commercialisation at News Corp Australia.

● Founding member of News Corp’s digital marketing division, News Xtend.

● News Xtend is a subscription business experiencing up to 80% growth each year.

● Have spent time in New York, San Fran and Tel Aviv studying successful subscription businesses.

Why you need to shift your B2B business from asset transfer mindset to long term relationship mindset.

Why you should move the finish line: move your goals from customer acquisition to number of customers who are still with you in month 6, 12, 36 and so on.

How?Hot Tip #1: Provide value that will make users pay and stayHot Tip #2: Make it stickyHot Tip #3: Surprise and delight in moments of truthHot Tip #4: Turn the churn

Building a subscription business overview

Old School New School

Old Business Model

Customers

Channels

New Business Model

Services

Subscriber

Experience

Channels

This model involves exchanging money for a product or service at a given point in time.

How you grow your business with asset transfer mindset:

● Sell more, more frequently● Increase price● Decrease cost to serve

Old SchoolASSET TRANSFER MINDSET

New SchoolLONG TERM RELATIONSHIP MINDSET

The customer and the business have an ongoing relationship where money is continually exchanged for ongoing value.

How you grow your business with long term relationship mindset:

● Acquire more customers● Increase the value of those customers● Hold onto those customers longer

Subscriber

Quote Collect

Invoice Provision

OrderRecognise

Subscribe

Suspend

Upgrade

Downgrade

Renew

Resume

Challenges:

● What customers deemed to be valuable was unclear due to lack of data.

● Why businesses bought from us was unclear.

● Asset transfer mindset = No recurring revenue =short term business model

How we used to think about customers

B2B : Advertising was

sold as a campaign

B2C : Readers would

buy a daily edition of the newspaper

Challenges

B2CConsumers have a relationship with the brand

Channel agnostic in their consumptionEditorial & advertising subscriptions

B2BMarketing solutions based subscriptions

Owned and paid assets, goal/results orientated, channel agnostic, long term relationship to help build their business

New School

What does a subscription mean for customers?

Solutions to meet more of their needs more of

the time.

Grow and change over timePersonalised value

What does a subscription mean for a business?

Subscription sales are like snowballs, they grow with momentum

Period 1 Period 2 Period 3 Period 4 Period 5 Period 6 Period 7

New customer/revenue

Lost customer/revenue

Customer base/recurring revenue

Maybe No way

MaybeYES, PLEASE

It’s all about Effort vs Impact

HighEffort

LowEffort

High Impact

LowImpact

Ok we know why...

Now how?

Hot tip #1:

Provide value that will make users pay and stay

The value infinity loop

BuyMarket & Sell

OwnSupport & Service

Purchase Receive

Use

Recommend MaintainNeed

Research

Select

4 5

6

781

2

3

“Be relevant”

“Engage me”

“Be transparent”

“Make it easy”

“Minimise my risk”

“Earn my trust”

“Know my history”

“Give me more value”

“Be consistent”

“Reward me”

“Deliver on my needs”

Meet more customer needs

more of the time.

Data is…

CRUCIAL IN KNOWING YOUR CUSTOMERS

Data will enable you to know about your customers and therefore what problem you can solve for them. This is beneficial

to the consumer and the business.

Technology…

MAKES EXECUTING EASY

Make it easy to reach customers in any location.Enable auto renewal and billing.

Means easier personalisation and value add.Showcase the results or value to customers

at any point in time.

A B2C example

Subscribers

Video Content

Membership fees

30 day free trial

Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4

Netflix makes no money

until month 2

How does netflix ensure that customers don’t cancel after their free trial? Once netflix has data on what content you like they are pretty good at keeping you subscribed.

But how do they ensure you stay subscribed after the 30 day free trial period?

Netflix implemented first time user discovery questionnaire in order to get an idea really quickly the type of content the new subscriber likes.

Personalisation = value & stickiness

What can you do today to create more value for your customers?

Map out your customer touchpoints

How can you use that to provide value at every touch point?

What data do you have? Where can you learn about what they want?

Hot tip #2:

Make it sticky

Marketing

Business Management

High

Low

Business Integration

Frequency Of ROI

Evaluation

Marketing/Advertising solutions Like Search, Programmatic, Live Chat,

remarketing & Social

Operational marketing solutions Like quoting/booking tools, lead

management & marketing automation

Integrated business solutions Like POS, loyalty, stock management

and cash flow systems

End Customer Business

AwarenessResearch

AcquisitionService Request

RetentionService Delivery

Put your hand up if...

What makes a business offering sticky?

Make it frictionless to buy and use

Ensure your product and service set is part of your customers everyday life

Make it easy to stay (and harder to leave)

What apple is really saying...

Hot tip #3:

Surprise & delight in the moments of truth

Subscription customer & brand journey

ResearchDiscovery

Customer Engagement

Moments of Truth

Need

Customer Journey

Customer Touch-points

Data/Customer Feedback

Brand Value-adds

What we do

Surprise gifting

1

Who is working on your campaign

document

LIVE 32 4

LIVE results dashboard

Exclusive content through customer

portalNPS check-in Surprise gifting

Loyalty and rewards program initiated

Purpose built resources and template provided that will

help them with other areas of their business

5

Monthly results & review and strategy session

Excellent customer service (NPS of +58)Award winning campaigns & results

Actually… just surprise and delight them all the time

1LIVE 32 4 5

Hot tip #4:

Turn the churn

Churn: The point at which consumers decide the amount they're paying exceeds the value of the service and opt out.

Cancellations by TenureDuration Period (Months)

How do you intercept and re-engage your customer in those moments

before they churn?

Engaging to retain is our strategy to reduce churn.

Hot Tip #1: Provide value that will make users pay and stay

Hot Tip #2: Make it sticky

Hot Tip #3: Surprise and delight in moments of truth

Hot Tip #4: Turn the churn

Thank you.

linkedin.com/in/laurenmoloney/

lauren.moloney@news.com.au

newsxtend.com.au

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