Quick Overview
Founded in 2004, Defense Industry Daily faced long odds as an upstart against decades-old, entrenched competitors like Jane’s. But the team picked a niche within the defense sector — defense procurement and RFPs — and created a purely digital, continually updated content model nothing like their print competitors’. They’ve become one of the top defense news sites on the Web, and are converting individual and group subscriptions with their in-depth reports on military RFPs.
Target Market
The site targets defense procurement managers and contractors interested weapons systems RFPs and other defense projects.
Typical subscribers are professionals in their 40s who have worked for more than a decade in government or industry.
Content Model
The site provides a unique, online alternative to the incumbent, print trade media. The team aggregates industry news about current and upcoming defense procurement projects, and puts that news into context through extensive hyperlinking to past news or additional online resources related to the project.
For example, if the U.S. government announces a new round of support contracts related to a large weapons system, the team will report that development on its homepage with a short article that contains staff analysis of the news, highlights from the program’s major milestones, insight into related programs, and the like — all supported with in-text links to past DID articles, other media and blogger coverage, photos, and other assets.
“We don’t break the news, typically. We think there’s a huge amount of content out there, floating in an unstructured morass on the Web,” says Olivier Travers, CEO. “It’s our mission to organize that content and keep it fresh and updated for the intended audience.”
A small editorial team monitors industry news, finds online resources, and writes and updates articles. Travers says those writers are more like analysts than traditional journalists, and they have experience and good connections in the defense industry.
Over time, the team uses this daily coverage to compile in-depth reports on major defense programs. They currently have reports on more than 250 programs, which feature:
- An overview of the program
- A chronology of technical developments
- Major industry participants
- A record of contracts, orders and expected expenditures
- Photos, illustrations and other resources
Daily news updates and short articles on smaller programs are free to all visitors, but only subscribers have access to these in-depth reports on major programs. The site also offers a free daily email newsletter that highlights a mix of free and paid content.
Revenue Streams
The site launched as a free, ad-supported publication, but added subscriptions in 2008. Advertising still generates the majority of revenues, but subscriptions provide a more stable, predictable revenue stream to balance out seasonality in the sector’s advertising market, says Travers.
Susbcriptions are offered at three price levels: $49.95 a month, $145 a quarter, or $550 annually.
They chose those prices and terms so that most industry professionals could charge a subscription to their credit card without needing pre-authorization. To date, individuals make up the majority of subscribers, although the company does offer site licenses and group memberships.
Group sales have grown slowly, due in part to the conservative nature of the target market. “They need to see you around for a while to know you’re legitimate,” Travers says. But he sees significant upside in group sales as they make more contacts with individual subscribers inside large defense conglomerates.
Marketing Tactics
SEO
Natural search drives the majority of site traffic (about 250,000 unique monthly visitors). Referrals from external links also are a significant source of visitors. Those results are driven by a comprehensive search engine optimization strategy that’s helped DID achieve top rankings for broad key phrases (they’re the #1 Google result for “defense industry news”) as well as long-tail, project-specific terms.
Extensive linking within articles contributes to the site’s high search rankings. Many linked sources offer reciprocal back links. The anchor text chosen for those links always features important keywords, such as specific military program names (“MH-60R multi-mission helicopters”) or contacting terms (“full rate production decision”).
Likewise, the team uses those target keywords diligently in article headlines (“Sikorsky’s $7.4-11.6B “Multi-Year VII” H-60 Helicopter Contract”).
Management and editorial collaborate to continually analyze their content against search trends. They look for gaps in their own coverage, as well as gaps in competitors’ coverage, to find topics they could dominate with the right amount of keyword-rich content.
They also pay attention to their archives: Writers constantly update past articles, even when there is no new information or recent news about the topic. They look for outdated or broken links to replace, or they add links to any new, fresh content they’ve created that wasn’t available when the article originally was written.
“You may be surprised when Google indexes your article from four years ago that’s not that great. We want that article to work for us, and work for the reader, so they don’t have to look elsewhere for the latest update,” says Travers. “For us it’s really content marketing because it maintains the average quality of the editorial content.”
Free email newsletter
The team uses its newsletter (13,000 subscribers) as a funnel from free site visitors and paying subscribers. Site visitors who are not ready to buy a subscription — either after hitting the paywall from a premium article on the homepage or from visiting the subscription section of the site — can instead opt for the daily newsletter.
Each issue includes a mix of free and paid articles. Visitors who click on a premium article from an email newsletter hit the paywall, but are offered a 7-day free trial. By contrast, visitors who reach the paywall from a homepage article are not offered a free trial.
“Our rationale was, [with an email subscriber] it’s not someone coming to the site right away with hot-button issue who is likely to convert.”
Technology and Vendors Used
Authorize.net: Payment gateway
http://www.authorize.net
Bronto: Email service provider
http://www.bronto.com/
Google Analytics: Web analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Salesforce.com: CRM software for the advertising sales department
http://www.salesforce.com/
SharePoint: Internal file sharing and calendar platform
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/default.aspx
Unfuddle: Internal software development project management platform
http://unfuddle.com/
WordPress: Content management system (but highly customized/modified)
http://wordpress.org/
Yammer: Internal IM/social networking platform
https://www.yammer.com/
About Olivier Travers
Travers came to Web publishing after a career in PCs, software, and consulting. He started a group blog, and then developed a media company — Watershed Publishing — that targets high-value B2B audiences such as marketers (through MediaVox.com) and media buyers (through MediaBuyerPlanner.com).
Travers believes online publishers have an amazing opportunity to find, aggregate, analyze and contextualize the staggering amount of information on the Web — and in turn create something valuable. “For me, it’s about how much time you can save for people, and time is money,” he says.
Subscription Site Insider’s Analysis
Defense Industry Daily has a terrific approach for a publication challenging entrenched competitors: You can’t just be a “me too” publication — you have to create something completely different. Their continually updated, extensively linked content is both immediate and comprehensive, providing a resource subscribers can’t get from a print article. It also gives the site an SEO boost over competitors. Routinely going into the archives to fix broken links and add new ones is something other publishers can emulate.
We think they could generate even more subscription revenue with a few tweaks to the way they present their paywall and membership options. The small icon that designates premium articles and the main subscription offer on the homepage are understated and easy to miss. And a few tests on the subscription information page — such as replacing the drop-down menu of subscription terms with a graphic comparison grid — could further improve revenues from the traffic they get to the page.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com
