The Sales-Audience-Edit Teams Relationship

At one point in time, how a media company made money was completely foreign to reporters. The separation between church and state was so intense that the edit team didn’t pay attention at all. They created their content and the business side figured out how to monetize. In some respects, the two sides might never even meet, existing on two different floors or parts of the building.

Those days need to be done. Reporters—and all content creators, to be honest—need to understand how the business works. If, for no other reason, it’ll help them to anticipate when things might not be going so well at their jobs. But even if we remove that from the equation, by understanding how the business works, they can better articulate how what they’re doing fits into the success of the publication.

If we look at the three critical teams at a media company—sales, audience, and edit—there is a relationship that must exist to ensure there is commercial success. Trying to keep these teams separate results in suboptimal outcomes.

But let me caveat right up top because the above statement can be triggering to reporters. Nowhere am I suggesting that reporters and content creators should lose their editorial independence. On the contrary, the reason most publications are successful is because this independence exists.

I’ve long argued that the content teams are the most important asset at a media company because they are responsible for serving the audience. There is no business without an audience. And so, editorial teams need to do whatever is in the best interest of the audience. Most of the time, that runs in parallel with the business trying to do what is in the best interest of the advertiser. Both the audience and the advertiser win.

Sometimes they don’t run in parallel, though, and there’s an inherent tension between the two sides. It’s important to lead with what’s best for the audience, even if it makes the business side a little harder. If you start pulling your punches and delivering a suboptimal product to the audience, they’ll find the information elsewhere. And once the audience is disengaged, the advertisers will leave too. Product has to win.

This is why editorial independence matters. It ensures that the audience is being served with the most important information without worry of it being manipulated. This is subtle, but important. Editorial independence is not to make editorial happy; it’s to make the audience happy.

But that doesn’t mean that there can’t be a relationship between sales, audience, and edit and people who argue otherwise are dogmatic. It just needs to be done correctly.

At the core of all media companies is the audience. But an audience is amorphous. Each publication, even competitive ones, will answer the “what is our audience” question differently. Take, for example, Digiday. There are three audience buckets: publishers, agencies, and brands. My primary audience, though, is publishers. I don’t much care about agencies and brands.

And so, before this sales, audience, and edit relationship can flourish, there needs to be a clear understanding of who the audience is. While this is a conversation amongst the three teams, if we look at a RACI matrix—responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed—the audience team is, ultimately, accountable to the question of “who is our audience?”

The best audience teams are experts at their audience. They live and breathe that audience. They are regularly tracking what’s going on with the audience and how it’s growing and evolving. It rests with this team to define the segments within an audience. That doesn’t mean they do not consult with the other teams who both have perspectives and take their feedback into consideration.

Once that’s done, we start to see the three teams working in concert. Here’s what that looks like with an example.

The audience team determines that the three audience segments are brands, publishers, and agencies. Editorial has to then develop a strategy that serves those three segments and only those segments and deliver the necessary content that will both acquire and retain people within those buckets. At the same time, sales is going off to find sufficient advertisers to serve this demand.

The above example is status quo at a media company. But here’s where it starts to get interesting.

Sales comes to the edit and audience teams and lets them know that there is growing demand for a new type of reader. Maybe it’s a subset of one of the broader segments. For example, b2b media companies would be a part of the Publishers segment. According to sales, that’s where the money is and if the media company wants those ad budgets, it needs to develop that segment. And so, the audience team has to start doing targeted growth while edit needs to execute a strategy to get b2b media companies reading.

Nowhere is sales saying what the editorial team should write about; that’s not their business nor expertise. What they are saying is that to accomplish company revenue goals, they need the other teams to help acquire this new segment.

In the old days, that conversation might not ever happen with the edit team. But in this era, it absolutely must. Let’s look at it through a different lens with the same b2b example.

The edit team has started writing more about b2b media because so many of their sources are talking about. Its resulting in growth in a new segment of audience, so the audience team starts to focus on developing this new readership. The audience and editorial teams can then go to sales and present them with this new, ready to sell audience segment. And in fact, these teams should be encouraged and incentivized to make this a reality.

Again, editorial is not creating content for sales; it’s creating content for the audience. When the readership reaches a certain level of scale, it is presented as a new opportunity for monetization.

This accomplishes a few of things. First, when teams are working together, things happen faster. As I wrote last week, it’s important that we break down silos. Second, this will absolutely result in a growth in revenue. With the three partners rowing in the same direction, the business will be more successful. At the most successful media companies, senior editorial heads even work with sales on client calls. Third, and most importantly, the audience wins. A winning audience sticks around, which makes everything easier.

The only way this works, though, is if there is clear communication between the three teams and everyone is thinking about the health of the business. Editorial shouldn’t be creating whatever content they want; they should be creating whatever content is most important to the audience. At the same time, sales should recognize that without a healthy audience, there is no business. Porous walls can exist if there’s clear understanding about this.

Thanks for reading today’s AMO. If you have thoughts, hit reply or join the AMO Slack. Have a great weekend!