Segmentation and Targeting
Browse and familiarize yourself with the following websites:
Forbes.com (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Forbes.com/magazines (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Forbesmedia.com (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Next, watch the Forbes video Lewis D’Vorkin (Forbes) – How to Tell Stories (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. It is a great talk presented by Forbes’ chief product officer, Lewis D’Vorkin, at the festival of Media Global 2014.
Based on what you have learned, explain the marketing segmentation and targeting strategies for Forbes® Inc.
In the category of business magazines, the Fortune® magazine is one of Forbes’ primary competitors. Compare segmentation and targeting strategies of these two companies. Support your comparison with theoretical concepts and relevant examples.
How does Forbes® differentiate itself from competitors in the similar market segment(s)?
Your paper must be four- to five-pages in length and must include an introduction, a well-developed body, and a proper conclusion. It should also reflect proper APA format and style, and integrate sources and course concepts.
Be sure to include a properly formatted reference page, using APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Be sure to use the attachments as a required resource.
The Digitizing Business Magazines
Forbes® Inc.
Forbes Inc. has been popular for compiling annual lists of the world’s richest business personalities. B.C Forbes founded the company with his business partner Walter Drey in 1917. The Forbes family continued to manage the print version of the magazine before selling a majority of its shareholding capacity to a Hong-Kong based investor in 2014 (Feng & Ots, 2018). The company has consequently been reinventing itself into a global media house by digitizing the magazine content. The company has incorporated several content publishing tools to enhance the print version of the 100-year-old Forbes magazine segment. This includes incorporating into a heavy web presence, wide social media following and a mobile strategy in its content distribution model.
Leadership, governance, values, and culture
The Forbes brand mission is to deliver meaningful information to business owners and influential decision makers. The magazine brand achieves this company mission using its extensive network of powerful leaders, game changers and technology disruptors. The company utilizes data-driven marketing to generate innovative content to a global audience. Consequently, Forbes has changed the way business news content is distributes using a combination of digital, print and mobile platforms. A credible and responsive organizational culture has also helped the organization during the implementation process of new content publishing and distribution platforms. This environment of credible news sources is managed using over 1,200 editorial experts on each topic area. Data analytics has, therefore, becomes a crucial skill in developing a successful digital marketing team (Alfieri, 2015). Data analytics, therefore, goes beyond analyzing quantitative marketing results such as sales revenues to complex customer behavior metrics such as page views, browsing patterns or social media comments.
Forbes has been able to achieve this brand status by investing heavily on editorial resources such as editorial writers, brand storytellers, journalists, graphic designers, and social media experts. The in-house journalists and freelance writers have to engage in journalistic reporting such as creating an editorial calendar, interviewing news sources and performing fact checks. Self-promotional content is edited heavily through a series of line editing, copy editors or fact checkers. Content distribution, therefore, becomes a core activity of the Forbes brand. Instead of using anonymous publishers Forbes uses bylines to identify each author by name and a small biography at the end of the article. This form of transparent labeling in news reporting makes it easy for consumers to assess the source of information.
Technology plays a huge role in integrating the advertising and journalism aspects of content creation. To become successful in digital marketing, Forbes has incorporated digital innovations such as social and mobile data analytics tools to its content distribution model. Digital consumers interact with these digital innovations in a variety of ways including browsing through catalogs, responding to emails or commenting on a social media post. The marketing analytics tools make it easy for advertisers to pinpoint the content that generates the highest engagement with the audience. This includes implementing an efficient content publishing engine that can manage multiple contributors in a large scale manner. Forbes employs over 1,300 content contributors who publish under their names, areas of expertise area and to a specific audience. Forbes Inc. utilizes the native advertising model that allows content creators to market their content to specific target markets.
The platform includes a content management system (CMS) and analytical tools on the website dashboard. The server that manages all advertisements uses a geo-location targeting system to send tailor-made content to the consumers. Consequently, the analytics data generated from these analytical tools make it easy for advertisers to reach potential target markets. Some of the paid organic analytics includes website traffic, social media engagement, audience structure, time spent on a page and sources of backlinks. Consequently, the company borrows from the unique credibility of each of its content generators to generate unique visitors and following. This data-driven publishing approach has therefore created new data management structures, content creation processes, and a digitized marketing strategy.
Market analysis
Target Markets
The Forbes.com website targets world leaders, global entrepreneurs, investors, business owners, and corporate managers. The Forbes news segments include business news, investment analysis, technological innovations, leadership, affluent lifestyles and entrepreneurship among others. The Forbes Inc. business model has also been a key driver of the digital uptake through digital content distribution, content marketing, and content publishing into one platform. This includes producing cover stories that celebrate influential leaders such as Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos to Warren Buffet. The Forbes 2015 overall audience profile was reported to have hit 36 million unique monthly visitors with the average demographics of 58% male and 42% female (Forbes Media Kit, 2015). The brand audiences are executives averaging the ages of 45 years. Forbes has developed numerous new products that can be easily accessed through mobile applications, smartphones, and tablets.
However, the print news publications are facing complex challenges ranging from a dwindling print circulation to inadequate editorial staff and the emergence of new digital platforms. As a result, a majority of news consumers are moving away from subscribing for monthly magazines to consuming news items published on the internet. The digital version of the Forbes business model raked in 70% of the total company advertisement revenues in 2016. According to ComScore, the web version of Forbes magazine generated over 60 million unique views in 2017 alone. Therefore Forbes has consequently shifted its content generation model from a pure print media or magazine publishing company to a digital marketing company.
The Forbes BrandVoice platform supports over 190 advertising partners supported by 25 sales support teams. These advertising partners specialize in the creation of strategic brand content that can be integrated easily into the social media platforms for easy distribution. For example, companies such as Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Bank of America have their PR (Public Relations) media companies who develop their advertising content. However, the advertising window for digital content is often very short, therefore leaving advertisement generating companies and PR agencies with the advantage of generating quick content that can be promoted within the short timelines (Granados, 2018). Therefore digital marketing partners and PR agencies are beginning to leverage on their content marketing to generate maximum value for their clients. Praytell film is an example of a PR firm that has ventured into video content production by teaming up with brands. The PR firm was able to develop a documentary for Mac cosmetics at a subsidized cost. Praytell consequently won a show time distribution deal with Mac cosmetics.
General business magazines such as Fortune Global have also become the biggest threat to the Forbes business model. The Global fortune companies have been able to attract a community of over 3 million business executives and influential entrepreneurs. The magazine is popularly known for producing the list of the Fortune 500 companies in terms of revenue and global sizes since 1962. The magazine has also focused on highlighting the 50 most powerful women in business since 1998. Most of the women featured in this issue come from female corporate executives who manage the fortune 500 companies such as Oprah Winfrey and Jessica Alba (The 50 Most Powerful Latinas in Business). The magazine has positioned itself as a glamour magazine for corporate women to demystify workplace issues such as sexual harassment, breaking the glass ceiling and sexual discrimination (Shuler, 2003). The Fortune magazine has a well-established print circulation in countries such as Fortune China, Fortune Asia, Fortune India, and Fortune Latin Americas. The Fortune regional marketing strategy is aimed at creating localized content to attract regional advertisers (Thussu, 2006). This has seen Fortune magazine partnering with local media houses such as India Today in 2006 to reach over 1.4 million subscribers.
The Forbes differentiation strategy
The Forbes Inc. business model includes the newsroom platform and online platform models. The online platform model, on the other hand, provides an advertising platform for the third party sponsored content or partners also called the BrandVoice. These advertising agencies do not engage in the direct distribution of content. Therefore this work is delegated to the Forbes media house. The newsroom model helps with the content creation and distribution based on a native advertising model. Native marketing aims at creating advertisements that integrate seamlessly into the editorial or feature content such as land issues in the United States. This strategy erodes some of the defensive buying habits of customers by providing information they can apply in their daily lives (Feng & Ots, 2018). The content producers are often composed of experts or thought leaders in certain areas of specialization. Therefore they can provide useful information that can draw a large following for the brand. This native advertisement model works around news cycles and popular editorial content to create shareable information. The news model also ensures that consumers are knowledgeable about specific topic areas rather than just providing viral or general information. The newsroom model is based upon an editorial approach to content creation. This includes textual information, video stories, case studies or social experiments. These new genres of digital content provide new platforms for engagement with the audience. Therefore being a trusted source of information on certain topical issues has made Forbes a trusted brand within the business news world.
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