Marcus Timson

Unless you have been hibernating for the past decade or so, you will come to accept that much of our learning, news, analysis and self-expression has shifted online. My view is that this is an unstoppable shift and is accelerating in B2B media.

This shift has left the traditional B2B magazine model very exposed. Trade magazines are struggling to survive. I don’t know how they do it. It is difficult to see a future at all, except for a few across the world. Do we even have time to read them? While writing, printing and then posting them to readers is one thing, how many people pick up a magazine? And for many, are they even a decent read?

I ‘cut my teeth’ in the world of magazines. So I take no personal pleasure in their demise. It is a trend impacting consumer titles too, in the UK alone there is now just one printer that produces the best-selling consumer magazines.

The fact is, the writing, printing and then distribution of B2B magazines is horrendously expensive!

The process, even though faster these days with the use of digital tech, is also painfully slow when compared to digital media, and while the impact of a good piece of printed marketing is known to be powerful, the decline in B2B magazine format in my view is inevitable.

But it is not just publishing that is suffering. Trade show organising is not as easy as it once was. In economically volatile times, exhibiting companies, after learning during COVID that their sales pipeline did not fracture when there were no trade shows, are being more selective with their budget. They are not exhibiting at every available trade show just because ‘we have to be there otherwise people will wonder what has happened to us’ or investing huge amounts of budget in a large booth mostly because their arch competitor is.

Trade shows were once so powerful that the cycle of innovation was set to a Drupa cycle of every four years. Drupa would get all the big launches while IPEX (UK) would get their year, PRINT (USA) theirs, and IGAS (Japan) too. It was nice and neat and every show stayed on this course.

Fast forward to 2024 and the predictability and stability, while I am sure was not even appreciated back then, has been replaced by consistent volatility (is that an oxymoron?). But this change had begun years before COVID - due to market forces. Online media disrupted traditional print! No news there, but this visibly hit the IPEX Show in the UK in a big way. IPEX suffered the ignominy of being relegated to the history books about a decade ago. In the US, the show market consolidated as SGIA & PRINT are now an entirely different show called Printing United, in Japan, IGAS, I confess to not knowing much about and have never visited, but I suspect it too has been relegated somewhat in international importance with the rise of giant Chinese shows. Also no longer with us is the Ifra Show (Newspaper printing) and let’s be honest while retaining a strong presence in Europe, even FESPA is a smaller show than it used to be with some big players frequently missing from the show floor.

While the trade show format may be in a stronger place than trade publishing, digitalisation has resulted in faster innovation cycles, and businesses have learned they can launch products independently of trade shows through in-house events and many other digital methods that better align with changing buying behaviour and better suit the individual businesses R&D roadmap. And using these channels - you just don't have to battle through the noise and hype that can be typical of a trade show!

I have already written a post about how B2B buying behaviour is changing. Here is a link to the story

But if you don't want to read the entire article, in brief, B2B buying behaviour now aligns more with B2C. It is far less sales-led, and far more buyer-driven than it once was.

Despite this, most of the print industry is still led by a sales strategy, and not aligned enough with buyers. In essence, the current standard OEM marketing strategy seems to be more akin to the 1980’s than the 2020’s. The point is we need to shift to align with changing buying behaviour. Surprisingly, many of the biggest OEMs have gone all in for the Drupa show despite this - I guess this may be a temporary aberration. I am not sure that Drupa will deliver what they hope - this is not a judgement on the quality of the event nor the people running it, but a reality of the market. It is however a judgement on how the print industry is a true laggard in terms of marketing.

Enter the Digital Platform & Community

With Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, TikTok and the plethora of digital and social platforms available to us, I guess it should not be surprising to see a growth of digital platforms for B2B marketplaces.

LinkedIn has democratised thought leadership by giving us all a platform to share stories, and opinions and create networks on a huge scale. LinkedIn also gives us an instant snapshot for all of us into our specific community with up-to-the-minute news, insight and analysis.

For the print industry on LinkedIn, an impressive 4,130,000 people are currently either involved or associated with the print sector across the world - while this is an amazing number - getting to the right ones for each of us is key - and our belief is the best way to do this is to create momentum through content creation and sharing. This simply proves that a serious professional committed to their industry has a digital persona. Some are more active than others for sure (this is no different in real life is it?) but access is available for anyone with an internet connection. It is wonderfully easy to express an opinion, share some news, broadcast results or whatever. Quite simply it has never been so easy, and so cheap to get a message out there.

The only problem with LinkedIn is that it is a giant Universe. It is therefore general. Contained within are a myriad of galaxies, solar systems and planets, each with its language, jargon, idiosyncrasies, trends, challenges, developments and issues. I think this is where B2B digital platforms and communities come in and this is why there is growth in popularity for platforms such as FuturePrint.

Why FuturePrint?

FuturePrint, initially started around 4 years ago, not long before COVID-19 and the principle was to share mostly written content via an online platform from innovative tech businesses that were leading the way in terms of performance and enabling new opportunities in new markets. Frazer and I have a background in publishing and trade shows but always developed content alongside, and since our time at FESPA and then with FM Brooks created strategies and a digital presence that complemented and helped drive value while we were not hosting events. However, at the early point, digital played a supporting role and was not the core focus.

Fast forward to now, it has (almost) spun the other way. Our digital audience is vast, global and very engaged. While our in-person events tend to attract mostly the tech leaders, and early adopter converters/printers - digitally we reach a broader spectrum including some of the biggest and best brands and retailers. We know this as they subscribe, open emails, click on story links, register to webinars, listen to podcasts and take part in our research, and email us to tell us they love our content!!

Readership is going up! Link to story

FuturePrint has developed into a fully integrated content platform, a media channel and a community. This accelerated during lockdown with virtual events to help connect the industry, but also by creating content deploying lots of different platforms that we have become accustomed to using. Every month, over 10,000 people from over 100 countries open our content, listen to our podcasts, view our TV features, read articles and download reports. We also host events, and these attract a core of dedicated people who value networking, live content and experience. It's not perfect, and we are continually looking for ways to improve and enhance.

But what is clear to us is that in these increasingly volatile times, people need quality content, news and insight. And this has to be easily accessible and rapidly updateable. Added to that, innovators need platforms that align with their vision and their R&D roadmaps, and waiting for either publication or live event dates just does not chime with the speed and unpredictability that has come to define our world.

So the digitalisation of B2B media is unstoppable and irreversible in my view and is not a temporary aberration.

The question is, how will your marketing strategy and actions change to align with this?

If you're reading this and interested in anything FuturePrint, contact Marcus Timson