Are you doing everything necessary to ensure the future growth of your business? It starts with taking a 360-degree view of every single product in your line-up, and then evaluating how those products will fit within your future plans.
Dan Oswald, CEO of Simplify Compliance, knows plenty about launching successful, sustainable products. He has orchestrated a number of mergers and acquisitions that have propelled his company’s growth and entrance into new markets. Here are some of his audit tips from his recent presentation at Super Niche 2019 in Nashville.
Three steps for auditing your current publishing products:
1. The first step is a product audit. Often what you do and what you work on becomes a routine. Why do you publish a certain product? Is it “your baby”? Or is it because you’ve always done it that way? Here are some other questions to ask when doing a product audit:
- Why do customers read our content?
- Is our product the best in the marketplace? The worst?
- What are the long-term prospects for the product? Is it viable?
2. The second step is to examine strategic positioning in regard to market positioning, key selling proposition relevance, circulation vs competition, title and feature relevance and strength.
3. The third step is to audit the financial performance of the product. Evaluate revenue trends and retention, the cost structure and mix, the overall profitability and ROI, plus the long-term financial viability.
The days of publishing a product and then leaving it alone no longer exist.
You need constant development, experimentation and…evolution.
We know about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, but are your familiar with Dan Oswald’s Theory of Embracing Evolution?
“All niche information providers must continually adapt to a changing environment by adopting new ideas, processes, and technologies, to increase the organization’s ability to compete and survive.”
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More about Dan: Dan Oswald is CEO of Simplify Compliance, a diversified training and information company that offers innovative solutions, authoritative content, and practical, easy-to-use software tools to meet regulatory compliance obligations and adopt best practices in financial services, human capital management, telecommunications, and healthcare markets. Previously, he was the CEO of M. Lee Smith Publishers prior to its merger with BLR in 2011. BLR is a brand under Simplify Compliance.
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