Cobus Heyl

As the subscription economy continues to evolve across industries, companies are exploring different approaches to building sustainable customer relationships. News publishers are no different, but arguably face even bigger challenges than DTC brands in several other sectors (as the media landscape continues to splinter and AI’s building impact test business models). There are lessons to be learned from their experience.

Paid communities work when they trade in status, identity and access, not just discounts. Get those right and you lift retention, lifetime value (LTV) and word-of-mouth. Botch them and you’ve built an expensive forum. At their core, subscriptions start as transactions. Building beyond that takes you towards membership, a deeper, two-way bond that makes people stay. Community is the richest, most visible expression of that relationship. And the psychology behind it explains why it works.

What happens if we think of content as a service, not a product? And how can you employ different types of content to do different jobs in your subscription businesses? While the difference in content-as-a-service versus content-as-a-product might sound subtle, it emphasises different approaches to the content model. Treat content as a product and it behaves like one: you create it, package it, and deliver it. Once consumed, the transaction ends.