Hear from execs at The New York Times, Thomson Reuters, Trusted Media Brands and many others
The Business Journals is launching services to diversify its revenue
The Business Journals — owned by American City Business Journals — wants to expand beyond advertising, subscriptions and events, so it’s developing services for its readers. At the beginning of the year, the chain of 43 publications launched SelecTalent, a tool to assess job applicants. Evaluations cost $169 apiece, though price breaks kick in for customers that purchase more than one at a time. Another product aimed at helping businesses identify and retain clients is set to be rolled out in the fourth quarter.
SelecTalent is the first step in a shift that The Business Journals began two years ago to diversify its revenue. The Business Journals — an arm of Advance Publications, which also owns Condé Nast — wants services to contribute one-third of annual revenue by 2023. The private company wouldn’t give its revenue breakdown.
“We feel like we have an advantage here,” said Jennifer McGuigan, CMO of The Business Journals. “A lot of [small- to medium-sized businesses] don’t even know that this type of assessment exists in hiring. We’re doing a lot of educating.”
SelecTalent has been in the works for about 18 months. Instead of focusing purely on content and subscriptions — it has 433,000 print and digital subscribers — the service is supposed to help its audience grow their businesses, advance their careers and save time at work.
To diversify its revenue sources, The Business Journals has turned over 40 percent of its 40-person product staff to emphasize products outside its core publications. It’s also trying to get more direct connections with its audience.
To keep abreast of what its audience wants, The Business Journals hired a new head of research and established a 30,000-person panel, the Business Journals Business Advisors Program, which it polls monthly, on topics like how they educate themselves in their fields and how they hire and retain talent.
Deciding to think of itself less as a media company and more as a business that helps serve its existing audience’s needs “opened a door,” said Jonathan Shaw, The Business Journals’ head of product. “The focus is trying to serve the customer, rather than: ‘We need to redo the article pages because everybody else is doing that,’” Shaw said.
More in Media
Ahead of GTA 6, Rockstar Games is staffing up its creator platform division with an eye toward UGC creators
Grand Theft Auto’s creator platform continues to evolve, with the company making key hires ahead of the release of “Grand Theft Auto 6.”
The coalition of the willing (and unable): publishers rally to wall off AI’s free ride
That coalition is taking shape in the form of a technical framework designed to let publishers control who can access their content, and under what terms.
Creators are standing up IRL events to soak up more of brands’ marketing dollars
For brands, the ability to measure performance is a key motivator to lean into creators’ IRL events. Across the board, brands are more closely scrutinizing the performance of their creator marketing spend, pushing to experiment with channels that have more easily measurable performance metrics in the form of conversions or foot traffic.