Tom Curley, the chief executive of the Associated Press has been quoted as saying: “The value of content has to rise.” This was a comment on the plans of newspaper publishers to put the content of their websites behind “paywalls”. Now that print advertising is tumbling publishers are hoping to get online users to chip in as well.
Content already has a value and a price. The cover price of my newspaper is one pound and I pay 65p through my subscription. I then pay for a newspaper delivery at £2 a week (plus a Christmas box, but let’s pretend I’m not a generous person for argument’s sake). The value of my newspaper is £1 when it’s delivered to my doorstep six days a week. If I have to go out of my way to buy it that value sinks to probably 30p and absolutely nothing if it means I have to leave the house on a weekend morning. I read about a quarter of the newspaper – I skip the sports section, the comments, the letters and quite often everything but the first hundred words of anything related to politics. I read a lot of articles that don’t turn out to be interesting. There is no way that I would pay much for them individually. I’m paying because newspapers are not targeted exactly to me. If I had to choose to buy each article individually at 10p through a website I would probably save 50p a day. I currently pay for the experience of reading the newspaper, not just for the value of the content.
If Mr Curley wants us to value content more he first needs to find a way to increase the value of what the press is writingto us. Newspapers are about economies of scale. The Internet is about micro-level personalisation.
Your products should have value but if they aren’t being added into shopping baskets then the customer doesn’t value what you are offering as much as you think they should. Don’t curse your customers for having poor taste. Instead change the way you communicate. Rewrite copy, put up better pictures, update your website layout. Change what you communicate to reflect the things that have more value to your customers – swap cheap delivery options for fast delivery options. And if that doesn’t work it’s time to source new products.