Thought Leadership Archives - Publish Interactive

7 March 20239 March 2023

Going Global: why market analysis firms are leveraging translation services to scale global reach

Translation tools have evolved to such an extent that they are unrecognisable compared to early iterations – they pose a huge opportunity for analyst firms looking to scale and grow their international reach.

The evolution of translation tools

Early iterations of digital translation tools were notoriously unreliable. Overly literal interpretations, an inability to contextualise phrases, and inaccurate representations of complicated tenses and sentences were the norm.

Today, the huge strides made in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) fields have transformed the quality of translation tools. Tech giants, including Meta, Google and Amazon to name just a few are pouring huge R&D budgets into developing comprehensive, reliable translation tools. They are highly accurate, can quickly generate translations, and easily integrate into content delivery systems.

These tools are now far better at identifying:

Context – the relationship between words, not just the individual terms.
Tone/style – these tools can distinguish between different styles i.e. formal or informal and translate text accordingly.
Cultural signposts – NLP systems have a greater understanding of the cultural and societal relevance of words and adjust translation to fit with these considerations.

The nature of NLP/AI development means that these tools will become ever more authentic, culturally aware, and accurate with time. As these systems are exposed to more data, the better they become.

This new generation of translation services presents an opportunity for market analysis firms looking to scale their global reach and strengthen client relationships.

Distributed Teams, Global Audience

Digital audiences today are truly global. Enterprise teams are no longer confined to narrow geographic regions and analyst teams must accommodate this new reality. While one enterprise account may be headquartered in an English-speaking city, such as New York or London, they likely have teams distributed in other major non-English-speaking cities, such as Tokyo, Paris, or Rome.

These teams may know the language spoken at company HQ but likely feel more comfortable reading a complex, nuanced report in their first language. Providing translation as part of your content delivery service increases the value of your offering to the whole account, not just those based in your linguistic area.

As workplaces become increasingly distributed, positioning your organisation as a global analyst firm keeps your organisation up to speed and opens your research up to a broader market. Greater linguistic inclusivity strengthens relationships with existing subscribers and attracts new users to access and consume your content.

Translation in a Report — An excerpt from a translated report in the Publish Interactive platform

Internationally renowned analyst team

Machine learning translation tools allow your analysts to be truly international in their reach. No longer restricted by linguistic boundaries, their analysis can reach beyond the confines of their first language and be read by information consumers around the world.

In the era of flat PDF delivery, international reach was not easily possible. Now, digital publishing platforms are enabling this change with their dynamic format compatibility and interactive functionality.

Not only does it render content more accessible, but your analysts can communicate and answer questions from customers around the world. Interactions with a broader audience open up the possibility of consulting projects, sales of new products and other revenue-generating opportunities that, in turn, grow per-account value.

Growing per-account value is essential for analyst firms looking to scale. After all, it costs up to 5x more to acquire a customer than retain an existing one. Offering additional membership services not only increases the value of your content, but also the perceived value of your company as an entity among your subscribers. Once customers realise the unique value you provide, you will see increased ROI, less subscriber churn, and fewer commercial overheads.

Translation tools already bringing success to global analyst firms

Content Catalyst clients are already utilising translation tools to improve content engagement and scale global reach.

Oxford Economics, a leading economic forecast provider, has a global audience and workforce. One of the unique selling points of their service is their international economist presence: their analysts are stationed around the world and provide hyper-specific economic coverage on over 8,000 cities and regions.

“For the first time, at the click of a button, clients can see a report in their chosen language – that was a big step forward”, comments Oxford Economics’ Chief Information Officer, Ben Nicaudie, on the impact translation tools have had on their international subscriber base who access the firm’s Publish Interactive-powered My Oxford subscriber portal. Improving linguistic accessibility was crucial for an organisation as global as Oxford Economics and planned development work will enhance the feature further, including the generation of email notifications in a client’s chosen language.

In-platform translation tools have transformed the My Oxford end-user experience and provide the framework for Oxford Economics to grow and scale its global reach.

Scale your analyst business with translation tools

Translation tools are now too easy to incorporate into your content delivery platform and too accurate to ignore.

Implementing AI or NLP-generated translation tools provides the foundation to scale your international reach, grow per-account value (PAV), and generate additional revenues.

Today’s information consumers are truly global and distributed. Remove linguistic barriers, which prevent a massive segment of your potential audience from reading your content in their first language and watch your market analysis business grow.

For more ideas on how to scale your market analysis business with publishing technology, download ‘The Future Market Analyst’ here.

22 November 202230 November 2022

Retention trumps acquisition: how (and why) you should focus internal resources on increasing per account value, not account numbers

While many market analysis firms pursue a growth strategy centred around customer acquisition, firms that focus on the retention of existing customers will reap the most rewards…

A Change of Mindset

When asked, “what is the best way to grow your market analysis business?”, most leaders’ default answer is: “by acquiring more customers, obviously.”

Despite this, acquiring customers is a resource drain. It costs up to 5x more to acquire a customer than retain an existing one.

Many market analysis publishers still believe that the path to sustained growth lies in increasing customer numbers. Growth is integral to any subscription business, but retention is frequently neglected as firms allocate disproportionate resources to prospecting and attracting new customers.

The best way to ensure retention? Increase the value of not just your content but also the perceived value of your company as an entity. To do this, analyst firms must start growing per-account value (PAV) by offering membership services outside their business-as-usual sales of reports and subscription plans.

Once you realise the value of your customers, you will see increased ROI, less subscriber churn, and fewer commercial overheads.

We explore what tactics you can employ to increase PAV:

Sell Analyst Time

Selling analyst time is a commonly under-utilised asset. Consider your customer journey: a subscriber purchases a report or subscription plan and then consumes the relevant information. After that, they may use key findings in their research or presentation. But that’s it – the account’s value creation ends there.

Offering analyst time alongside the sales of reports opens a new revenue stream. It may be a half-hour call to discuss the intricacies of the analyst’s conclusions or to get more insight into a particular chart or dataset. Either way, this time is billable.

Billable analyst time not only increases revenue, it also enhances the authority of your analyst team and, consequently, your company in the eyes of your subscribers. In today’s complex world, consumers crave validation that their digital information is genuine and trustworthy. In fact, 58% worry about misinformation. Assuage these fears by putting a face to the analyst’s name (and the information) and increase chances of retention.

Offer Consulting Deliverables

A consequence of selling analyst time is increased commissions for bespoke consulting projects. Informative discussions with expert analysts improve the chances of new advisory opportunities arising. For example, a Publish Interactive customer once secured a $300,000 consulting project following an ‘Ask the Analyst’ enquiry through the platform.

Consultancy projects are a hugely effective way of increasing PAV. Due to their bespoke nature, high prices are considered the norm. Of course, compared to offering short analyst sessions over the phone, it is more labour-intensive as your team must conduct research and compile an accompanying document or presentation. However, the increase in PAV makes it well worthwhile.

Again, offering bespoke, personal deliverables enhances content authority. Demonstrating your ability to understand your subscriber’s world naturally increases the value they see in your services and helps you transition from content seller to trusted knowledge-sharing partner.

Specialist Data Provisions

Data visualisation tools offer huge potential to grow PAV. The global market is predicted to double by 2027; eventually reaching $19.2 billion in total value. Its projected growth highlights strong appetite for this content format amongst information consumers.

Data visualisation products can be sold as additional modules outside of subscribers’ standard subscription packages, making it an easy upsell opportunity that increases PAV.

In addition, this data format creates a more compelling value proposition. Risk Leadership Network has incorporated Power BI into their instance of the Publish Interactive platform, which, their Head of Product Tom Byford explains, has overcome the challenge of selling networking as a core concept of their membership proposition: “As a concept, it’s not very tangible, which can make it challenging for people to justify funding.”

“If you can present to your superiors that as part of this package you get access to tools that will save time and money, it’s a far more tangible benefit. Although it’s a relatively small part of what we do, in terms of the pitch, it adds an element that makes it easier for people to justify membership.”

Information providers that offer a more varied, multifaceted service strengthen their value proposition. By providing consumers with high-value, easily understandable data alongside other services, you will see increased retention rates, revenue, and PAV.

Workshops + Training

While your events strategy may already include webinars, a great way of further strengthening your value proposition and increasing PAV is by offering interactive, ‘in-house’ events. By only inviting customers, these aim to foster a sense of community within your membership rather than increasing new business opportunities and lead gen.

Offering paid workshops or training days that focus on a specific issue or niche is a great way to engage and introduce like-minded customers to one another. These could be held virtually or in person depending on client geographical bases. If, for example, your clients bond over the workshop you have run and this develops into a strong business or personal relationship, they will attribute this connection to the activity of your company.

PAV growth strategies boost revenues and improve the perception of your company’s value among your subscribers – not just because of your informative content but also due to the wide range of valuable membership services you provide.

Increase PAV, Increase Value Prop

As we have seen, PAV is a powerful metric. It denotes the value you extract from your existing customer base and demonstrates growth is not only achieved via costly acquisition strategies.

Another consequence of growing PAV is not as simple as growing revenues: it also increases the value subscribers see in the service you provide. This, in turn, ensures continued retention.

Shifting mindset from simply selling reports and subscriptions to offering a human element to your analysis with personalised deliverables, 1-on-1 conversations, and, most importantly, creating a sense of community among your subscribers and analysts transforms your value proposition.

Think of this concept within the context of sports clubs: people join to play their favourite sport but stay because of the people they meet there.

If subscribers feel a personal attachment or involvement with your company and its membership, they will be certain to continue choosing your services over other ‘traditional’ content providers.

20 September 202231 October 2022

Video content: 5 actionable use cases for modern market analysis providers

With more people than ever consuming video online, B2B market research publishers can no longer afford to ignore this valuable content and subscriber engagement tool.

Online video consumption has doubled

It’s estimated that consumption of online video has almost doubled since 2018. The pandemic fuelled rapid growth in all digital trends, with 96 per cent of consumers saying it increased the amount of video they consumed online.

People watch an average of 19 hours of online video per week and are twice as likely to share video content. 96 per cent of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.

There’s no doubt that video is a medium that publishers of market research and analysis can no longer ignore. Video is an interactive and immersive way of sharing information, and researchers believe it also improves our ability to retain and recall information.

Vimeo Report — An embedded video exhibit in the Publish Interactive platform

Here are five ways market research publishers can use video to deliver content and engage subscribers:

1. Report Summaries

A report summary is your chance to sell the unique benefits of a new report or series of reports. It’s also an opportunity to reinforce the relationship between subscribers and analysts.

Video increases subscribers’ engagement with content and showcases your team’s personality and expertise. Research shows that a massive 88 per cent of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video, highlighting the opportunity market analysis publishers have to follow suit and see significant commercial rewards.

2. Live and Pre-Recorded Webinars

Support the launch of your new report or explore a hot topic via live or pre-recorded webinars. Make time after your webinar for a Q&A session, as this is the most attractive part of a live webinar, according to 92 per cent of webinar attendees.

Use Q&As to address questions and inform participants of related products and services. Then, follow up with a recording of your session to attendees and offer the chance to book time with an analyst.

The ideal length for a webinar is between 30 and 45 minutes. Embed live and pre-recorded webinars directly into reports or on a separate webinar marketing page.

3. Break up Text-Heavy Reports

Breaking up your reports with short videos could increase engagement with your content. Use video to support essential points, explain data exhibits, or provide supporting analysis.

In 2022, 82 per cent of marketers said video helped them to increase dwell time – a metric that indicates how long someone spends on a webpage before heading back to search results. Combined with time on page, it can demonstrate how engaged a visitor is with your content.

4. Bitesize Emailable Updates

Short-form content up to two minutes long can help to engage subscribers between report releases. Provide topic updates, analysis, opinion, or new data points that direct subscribers to your website or encourages them to book time with an analyst.

Short-form video is well-suited for distribution via social media or email. Sales teams that use videos in their emails get a 16% higher open rate and a 26% increase in replies.

5. Personalised Videos

Personalised videos are 35% more likely to retain viewers than non-personalised videos. By tailoring videos to the interests of subscribers based on usage data, you could increase readership and subscriber retention.

Publishing technology such as Publish Interactive provides usage stats based on individual subscribers and accounts. Analyse the most popular topics, keywords, and reports for personalised video inspiration.

Unlock the full value of content with video

Video provides a more interactive and immersive learning experience and can therefore increase subscriber engagement. Video also showcases the expertise of your analysts and can deepen their relationship with subscribers, which smooths the path to renewals.

Publish Interactive customers can directly embed summary videos, webinars, and analyst commentary into research reports using the recently released Vimeo integration.

Use video to unlock the full value of your market analysis content today.

19 May 202226 May 2022

5 ways Life Science market analysis providers can strengthen subscriber trust and content authority

Rapid advances in the treatment of Covid-19, medical supply chain constrictions, revolutionary MedTech developments… there’s a mountain of life science market information to stay updated on. Your subscribers need information on these developments and industry-defining events – and they need it from a technologically reliable and trustworthy source.

While many industries have undergone rapid change in recent years, there are arguably none that have seen such a defining and multifaceted shift as the life science industry. As we pass the two-year anniversary of the Covid pandemic, the world has witnessed the power the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and biotechnology sectors have had on every facet of human society. The pandemic placed immense pressure and reliance on all life science markets as the industry naturally took the lead in developing Covid treatments, research, and advising government bodies on public health policy.

During times of crisis and transition, markets, particularly those on the front line of a crisis, undergo rapid innovation and change. And, with change, comes increased demand for information.

To sate this demand, your life science research business needs publishing, distribution, and content creation technology that delivers highly engaging, timely insights when your subscribers need them which require minimal effort for your production and analyst teams to create.

Your life science research business can enlist the help of an experienced, market-leading research delivery platform to transform your relationship with subscribers.

Here are five ways that Publish Interactive can secure your position as the trusted authority in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, or biotechnology sectors and help your research firm develop long-standing relationships with readers by cementing your position as the leading source of industry information.

1. Extensive industry experience

Publish Interactive has extensive experience partnering with leading life science intelligence firms, including TGaS Advisors, The Science & Medicine Group (SMG), and FirstWord.

When we spoke with SMG’s Director of Business Development, Devin Holland, he described how the platform allows his team to ‘fine-tune our offering, build trust and reliability, and further reinforce our position as one of the leading research resources in the life science industry.”

Devin Holland, Director of Business Development, The Science & Medicine Group

For SMG, the Publish Interactive system drives customer growth and creates cross-selling opportunities. The platform enables the sales team to glean invaluable client insight through user analytics, allowing them to quickly transform their customer engagements into further revenue.

Devin, commenting on the impact Publish Interactive has had on SMG’s sales efforts said: “Having the usage stats to show clients the value they receive from Science and Medicine Group’s content – which is usually between four and five-fold their spend – as a resource for their work is incredibly valuable and often makes a potentially tricky sales conversation pretty easy. We are able to make data-driven arguments that buying our content is a necessary part of our clients’ budgets”.

You can watch Devin explain how his sales team at SMG used content usage data drawn from the Publish Interactive platform to grow subscription renewals, in this webinar.

2. Build trust and account-wide buy-in

If there’s one quality readers look for in life science market analysis content above all else, it’s trust. In a space as complex and specialised as the Life Science arena, positioning yourself as a trusted source of information is essential.

When you first sign a new client or account and trust is still being fostered across the organisation, content usage may initially be focused among a small set of ‘power users’, who may be members of the same department, or all have specific content requirements. Once these users become reliant on your content they will act as advocates and evangelists to help you win greater trust and promote wider usage within their business.

This is where the quality of publishing and subscription software really tells and ensures your content achieves company-wide trust and buy-in. If new users can easily access, find information, and buy new products quickly and seamlessly, usage – and dependence – will naturally increase.

3. Deliver personalised content

Specialist technology gives publishers the flexibility to serve various customer groups, each with different requirements – for instance, some of your subscribers may require analysis on the increasing digitisation of the healthcare sector, while others may need live data on pharmaceutical product supply chains. They do not want access to whole swathes of information and products that are not relevant to them or their business. In a sector as broad but also specialised as the life sciences, the need for user-specific experiences is particularly pressing.

Your subscribers need personalised, tailored content packages.

Personalisation is underpinned by flexible licensing technology, enabling publishers to manage subscriptions on a granular level and grant access to individual sections of reports or datasets. The specificity now available is transforming how publishers sell their content, revolutionising subscriber interactions with market analysis, and facilitating automated, personalised user journeys.

“Having the usage stats to show clients the value they receive from our content is incredibly valuable and makes a potentially tricky sales conversation pretty easy”

Devin Holland

Director of Business Development, The Science & Medicine Group

4. Deliver timely insights

In a market that covers the most advanced human developments, information is complex and new data is constantly on offer. Pharmaceutical markets in particular shift and evolve continually – with Publish Interactive’s Instant Insights technology, you can deliver the content your subscribers need, when they need it. Instant Insights are short-form content pieces that, when combined with Instant Access Links, allow your subscribers to frictionlessly access research content on the go.

With Instant Access Links, content can be accessed by your subscribers without the need to log in – meaning you can unlock your research library to subscribers, without compromising security.

Read how one of our life science analyst partners used this feature to transform engagement: Instant Access, Instant Results – how TGaS transformed engagement across their industry reports

5. Understand your subscribers

The most valuable aspect of adopting a powerful subscription platform is its ability to provide analysis providers with a powerful new understanding of subscriber behaviour. Understanding and clearly determining individual users’ subjects of interest is vital for future commissioning and upselling. For example, if you can see one user is only accessing data on government spending on healthcare, your account management teams can use this data to offer similar reports and perhaps suggest reports covering related, but distinct fields.

Usage analytics underpin every aspect of an intelligent publishing platform. It enables a subscription model to exist, but more importantly, it adds value to that subscription or alerts the sales team to declining renewals.

In a market as competitive and specialised as the life sciences, these insights keep you ahead of the competition.

If you would like to learn more about how the Publish Interactive platform can transform your life science research business, please get in touch today.

22 April 202228 April 2022

How market analysis firms can prevent insider content leaks in the hybrid working era

We take a look at the growing issue of insider content leaks, the workplace trends causing their growth, and what features you should include in your content delivery system to reduce the severity and regularity of leaks once they occur.

The two phrases most synonymous with the post-pandemic workplace zeitgeist – hybrid working and ‘The Great Resignation’ – which have come to symbolise increasing worker autonomy to decide how, when, and where we work, are simultaneously raising concerns among many businesses for a different reason: the loss of intellectual property.

This concern is felt acutely amongst providers of high-value market analysis. With content selling for thousands of dollars, any sharing of information with competitors from former employees or those working outside of the controlled office environment is costly.

As employees working from home need access to more information with conventional information-sharing networks eroded outside an office setting, the democratisation of corporate information has become a necessity. This newly granted openness, combined with high staff turnover is understandably causing concern.

If left unchecked, the combination of high employee churn and hybrid working can create a perfect storm of accidental leaks of high-value data and content as well as more nefarious dissemination caused by ‘insider attacks’, where employees purposely share reports and data with new employers, friends at other analyst firms, or rivals.

What is the information industry saying?

Various research reports should read as warning signs for business information firms. A report from the Ponemon Institute documenting data breaches found that 75% of employees say they have access to data they shouldn’t and 25% of employees are willing to sell data to a competitor for less than $8,000. Ponemon also found that insider incidents have grown 47% in just two years.

In its 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, Verizon found that a massive 44% of all breaches in organisations of less than 1,000 employees were insider jobs. They also discovered that 93% of breaches were driven by profit, while ‘pure fun’ was another top motivation.

In our recent article, Securing high-value content: How to ensure the right content doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, we looked at the three types of external intellectual property thieves analyst firms are vulnerable to, but the same behaviour can be committed in a similar fashion by internal employees.

Three personas of ‘insider’ information sharers:

The internal sharer – occurs (often accidentally) when an employee distributes high-value information into an unauthorised area of the internal knowledge centre or sends it to colleagues who don’t have permission to view the content. This results in a higher likelihood of valuable information leaks.

The external distributor – this offence arises (often maliciously) when a user shares content with friends outside of their organisation or with members of their new organisation. Commonly caused by corporate accounts not being fully closed once employees have left the company.

The home driver saver – involves fewer people and is a less immediate threat but still takes the content out of the publisher’s possession and could evolve into the other two distributors in the future.

75% of employees say they have access to data they shouldn’t and 25% of employees are willing to sell data to a competitor for less than $8,000. Insider incidents have grown 47% in just two years.

Research from the Ponemon Institute

Reducing the likelihood of insider content leaks

The question for analysis providers operating in the hybrid working age therefore is: how can ‘insider attacks’ and accidental leaks be stopped in practice without disrupting analysts’ ability to produce reports or find critical information?

Here are four features you should ensure are present in your content repository to reduce the regularity and impact of these leaks on your valuable intellectual property:

1. Prevent full download

This is a helpful preventative measure that limits the amount of data internal users can take offline and disseminate among friends and colleagues at other organisations. This measure, combined with workflow tools that allow for the creation of custom deliverables, means that users – both internal and customer accounts – will not need to download whole reports and will only export the sections they need. Accidental shares of full-length reports will become less common and purposeful dissemination more difficult and time-consuming to commit.

2. View online only

In a similar vein to preventing full downloads (although this method prevents even partial downloads!), setting your content in ‘View Only’ mode means your information and data are safely secured in your content repository and can’t be moved into an unmonitored offline space. A workable middle ground is to set certain content as ‘View Only’ and others as downloadable, depending on the user and what level of access they need to certain information.

3. Licensing

The ability to set different access management rights depending on individual user requirements is underpinned by a flexible licensing system and is critical to the wider issue of protecting internal assets. Licensing systems are now highly flexible and allow administrators to set tailored licenses based on the user’s exact needs and requirements. Administrators can regularly audit and review usage and set personalised access rights depending on seniority, department, or individual need.

4. Content Usage analytics

This can be a difficult concept to convey to employees as you don’t want to create an atmosphere of surveillance and suspicion. However, the ability to track user behaviour and analyse what content has been downloaded from your content library is invaluable when identifying a breach’s origin if you do suspect a data leak.

Finding the balance in the hybrid working era

Publishers of market analysis must be particularly aware of the risks associated with our increasingly hybrid, fluid working world due to the high value and sensitivity of their digital content.

Analyst firms can, of course, completely lockdown their internal content repositories and only allow a select number of system administrators or lead analysts to access resources. But what purpose would this serve? It would plague your employees with inefficiencies, leading to frustration with the lack of information at their disposal.

Instead, investment in a full-stack content repository and delivery system that possesses the threat-mitigating features listed above, when combined with regular reviews and audits of access permissions will reduce the severity and frequency of accidental content leaks and purposeful insider attacks.

4 April 202219 April 2022

5 ways tech market analysis providers can strengthen subscriber trust and content authority

Ever more sophisticated cybersecurity threats, seismic pandemic-driven swings in tech consumption, revolutionary AI developments, the metaverse…there’s a mountain of tech market information to stay updated on. Your subscribers need information on these developments and industry-defining events – and they need it from a technologically reliable and trustworthy source.

Data Centre While many industries have undergone rapid change in recent years, there are arguably none that have seen such a defining and multifaceted shift as the tech industry. As we pass the two-year anniversary of the covid pandemic, the world has witnessed the integral and ubiquitous role tech plays in our private and professional lives. While the pandemic forced everyone to live increasingly digital lives, technological developments kept pace with our increased reliance on personal devices, cloud services, and virtual experiences.

During times of crisis and transition, markets, particularly those on the front line of a crisis undergo rapid innovation and change. And, with change, comes increased demand for information.

To sate this demand, your technology research business needs publishing, distribution, and content creation technology that delivers highly engaging, timely insights when your subscribers need them which require minimal effort for your production and analyst teams to create.

Your tech research business can enlist the help of an experienced, market-leading research delivery platform to transform your relationship with subscribers.

Here are five ways that Publish Interactive can secure your position as the trusted authority in the tech sector and help your research firm develop long-standing relationships with readers by cementing your position as the leading source of industry information.