Janette Phillips (Marketing) Limited used grant funding from the takeITon programme to launch digital versions of its magazines and develop new services for advertisers.
The Ipswich-based company publishes two annual lifestyle magazines, Best of Suffolk and Best of Norfolk, as well as the quarterly Institute of Directors’ (IoD) Suffolk magazine. It also provides marketing services – advertising campaigns, designing leaflets and publishing brochures, for example – for some of the businesses advertising in its magazines.
Until this year, the company’s operations were purely offline: the magazines were hard copies distributed around the region or posted to the IoD and non- members in the case of IoD Suffolk magazine. “We never had a website,” says Tony Michael, a director at Janette Phillips Marketing. “I’ve always felt that if you’re going to have a website, you’ve got to be offering something of value.”
Seeking advice
Earlier this year though, Tony began to consider how the web could help the company ramp up its services for advertisers. “A lot of publishing companies now publish their magazines or newspapers as digital versions online. And I started to think this is the way we need to move forward to offer extra value to our advertisers,” he explains.
Tony began researching the technology that powers digital magazines, the type of website the company would need to host the magazines and, of course, how the company would fund this new venture. It was at this time that Tony heard about the takeITon funding programme. “I receive emails from EEDA about the various initiatives going on in the region and heard about the takeITon programme through one of these,” he recalls. “Then I read about the takeITon programme again in an article from Business Link in the IoD Suffolk magazine when I was proofreading the copy.”
This led to a meeting with takeITon adviser, Tony Franklin, to put forward the company’s case for funding, before submitting an application. The grant was for three areas of IT development: “We wanted to develop and design a website, as well as purchase the page turning software used by digital magazines,” says Tony. “We also wanted to use some of the funding to develop an e-marketing service for our advertisers.”
Expanding the business
The digital magazines are now up and running on the company’s brand new website (http://www.janettephillipsmarketing.co.uk/) This is attracting new readers to the magazines and the company is considering whether to invest in a search engine marketing campaign to promote its two lifestyle magazines, Best of Suffolk and Best o
f Norfolk, to a wider audience.
But even more importantly, the funding from the takeITon programme has enabled Janette Phillips Marketing to diversify into new revenue streams. For instance, the company can now offer its advertisers the opportunity to promote forthcoming events and special offers through the digital version of its magazines, even though its two flagship magazines are only printed annually. Before, it wouldn’t have been possible to offer such a service.
“The other area where it’s going quite well is in offering advertisers a direct link from their advert in the digital magazine to their website,” says Tony. “There has been quite a lot of take-up from advertisers for this service, so things are moving along nicely.”
The company is also in the process of rolling out new e-marketing services (branded ‘adtxt’) that will enable advertisers to incorporate a unique code in any adverts that they place not only in the company’s magazines but also across all advertising media where they place adverts. A customer reading the advert who wants to find out more, can then send an email or text message featuring the unique code to the address in the advert to receive information on the product or service being advertised.
The process is automated and the advertiser also benefits from collecting a database of customer information. Try it for yourself by sending an email to jpm@jpm-brochure.co.uk with the subject ‘X56B’ or text ‘jpm X56B and your email address’ to 86688.
Like the other digital services Janette Phillips Marketing offers advertisers, none of this would have been possible without the company making an investment in its web operations. “The crux of the matter is we have to find new revenue streams and the digital side of our business assists us in doing that,” says Tony.
“We could have launched the website without funding but we’d never have been able to include the digital magazines or e-marketing services in the package without assistance from the takeITon programme,” he continues. “It has enabled us to move the business ahead a lot quicker and start to see the benefits much earlier. If you want to improve your IT, the takeITon programme is the quickest way to get your business up and running.”
