Today’s Media Companies: Why You Can’t Build a Platform
This is Part 3 of a three part series with Mia Mabanta, Director of Marketing and Revenue Products at Quartz. We chatted with Mia to learn more about the topics that she knows best?—?product marketing, and building a media company. You can listen to the entire conversation on the What I Know Best podcast, be sure to subscribe to learn from other experts across the Quibb network in coming weeks.
If you were starting a media or news company today, where would you start? Quartz was in this exact position when the company first launched in the Fall of 2012. Their approach to building a ‘digital-first’ and even ‘mobile-first’ media company has been marked with innovation products, and a Silicon Valley informed approach to marketing and user needs. After chatting with Mia Mabanta, Director of Marketing and Revenue Products at Quartz, we came away with some clear insights on how she thinks about Media, and how new Media companies might find themselves space to succeed.
Blue Ocean FTW
When you look at most of the big, traditional news and media companies, they all have an app. But Mia notes?—?“There’s so many news apps that are put out by amazing brands that have just gone totally dormant”. It’s a difficult category to play in. Mia recognized this from early on, and it was part of the reason she was so excited to bring her marketing experience and perspective from Silicon Valley to a NYC-based media company. Looking outside the traditional box that media companies were putting themselves into when building their products, Mia wanted to look for other, user-focused solutions where Quartz would fit.
“…they knew that they wanted to play outside the existing media sandbox, and they had a core understanding of shifts happening in the broader environment for how people consume content that they gave it a shot.”…”I think where so many media companies struggle or kind of get held up a little bit and forget to look sort of outside their walls is they think too much in terms of how things have always been done. Right? Or they think too much in terms of how people are consuming other news, or what other magazines they like to read, or what other news apps they like to use.”
Giving creative people the time, space, and resources to really think about and understand the users of your product is an approach that’s worked well for Quartz. It’s allowed them to look beyond the hyper competitive landscape that most of their peers find themselves trapped in. At the same time, Mia believes that we’re still fairly early in the online content and media, with lots of room to grow?—?perhaps we’re just nearing the end of one S-curve, about to climb up the next.
Recognizing that there is massive potential, and acting upon it, was a bold move for Mia and her colleagues at Quartz, but it’s paid off. Mia gave the example of the new video team at Quartz. It started as an experiment, to see what type of content might work alongside their traditional text-based format.
“…I think also so much of media right now is in a fairly nascent stage in its growth. For example, video. No one really understands how to best monetize video on the internet right now.”… “We started hiring a video team back in May of 2015. Now we have six people, but for the first six months we told them, “You know what? You guys just experiment for six months. Don’t worry about monetizing this product. Don’t worry about the future of it. Let’s just figure it out, because no one really knows how to get it.”
Exploring Old Platforms Too
In seeking the next blue ocean, Mia believes that the more traditional text-based content that Quartz team of reporters crafts everyday is still invaluable. Her job as a marketer has led her deeper into how people experience that content, and getting that content into their hands where it’s maybe not expected?—?even if that means an older, less trendy platform. In the case of Quartz, email has been a bit winner.
“I still really believe in the power of email. There’s been, of course, this sort of renaissance, I guess last year or the year before, where all of a sudden everyone had an email newsletter. I think that like anything else, right, if you do a piece of content well, if you offer a high-quality service that’s right for that particular format and that particular user, then it’s going to work really well for you. That’s why our morning newsletter has continued to scale and do really well, is that it remains this really high-touch product that people have really come to enjoy and find valuable.”
It leads to challenging new paradoxes as well. In traditional media companies, people are accustomed to having readers either pick up a physical paper, or read an article on their website. Quartz has questioned this, keeping their focus tightly trained on the needs of their readers, and being platform agnostic as much as possible. But throwing aside those traditional practices and understandings of how you measure success of your content and who ‘counts’ as a reader can be difficult to grasp.
“In fact, no one really has time for you.”…”That time has to be earned. Don’t overdo the notifications. Don’t overdo the email. Don’t overdo the tweets. Then pay attention. Use data to understand what you’re doing right on each platform. For us, we do have this email. We put a lot of resources into our web product as well. Then now this new app and a splattering of other things, Apple News and so forth. For us, obviously it’s great if you as a Quartz reader are reading Quartz the website, the daily brief email, and now our app, and all of our other iterations, but quite frankly if someone comes up … If I meet someone and they’re like, “I love the Quartz daily brief. It’s so great.” I was like, “Oh, that’s so good to hear. Thanks for saying that. Do you ever go to our website?” They’re like, “You have a website?” “…”It used to be a little bit like, “Oh, my God. That’s really disturbing.” No one even knows we have a website. If you reorient yourself around this paradigm that no one has time for you, you’re lucky to get them. You have to honor that experience. If someone prefers to get our content through email, then that’s great.”
Mia’s focus has been understanding her users’ needs, and how to make sure that whatever her and her team are working on is valued in such a way that it’s worth their time. And not all time is created equal?—?meeting their readers when they want, how they want, where they want, is challenging. Understanding the value of various platforms and interactions has been key to Quartz’s success. Mia and her team have taken it to extremes, even sending their email readers to non-Quartz content.
“I think it’s really hard for marketers in this way, right? Because every single user’s going to have a different set of preferences in terms of how they get whatever that message is, whether it’s news or whatever, Facebook notifications, or whatever it might be. Each user’s going to have their own set of preferences. Then your brand and whatever that specific piece of content is is also going to have sort of a set of optimal channels through which to disseminate. I think it’s tricky. I think the way you do it is to test things out and really kind of have a certain sense of humility that not everyone has time for you.”…”With that email, we link out to, I think … Say there’s 25 links in any given morning email. Probably 24 out of those 25 links are not to qz.com.”
Growth vs. Quality?—?Not a Zero-Sum Game
So how does all of this fit together, and allow Quartz to become a leading business news source for the world’s professionals? The small details count?—?drawing from the tech world again, a team of ‘Growth Editors’ spend time getting stories as much social traffic as possible, applying lessons on virality and headline testing. There’s also the important balance that many large publications struggle with over time, the question of how to maintain high-quality content while reaching larger and larger audiences.
It’s especially challenging for a company like Quartz, where their audience is high-value professionals. Mia is aware of this, and keeps it top-of-mind as she experiments on new revenue models.
“To focus on growth alongside growing quality as well. I think that’s important for us and for our revenue model, especially because basically right now, so much of our revenue is driven by premium advertising, which demands a high-quality model.”
For someone who spent the early part of their career working at tech companies, the challenge of hitting that balance is clear. It’s also a challenge to stay true to the differences that exist between a Media company and a pure Consumer Tech company?—?while taking advantage of the features and strategies that work. The Consumer Tech platform approach is one where you have millions of users, all consuming lower quality or user-generated content. That’s not the game that Quartz is playing, as they seek out the perfect combination of content quality and revenue models that will create the best experience for their users.
”The way that Quartz works is obviously we want to get to some scale, but we’re really kind of pursuing quality play. This, too, is another distinction of media versus tech, where it’s not all about just growth, growth, growth, scale, scale, scale. Because of the nature of content, it’s a creative product.”