Consultancy

The Wessenden consultancy covers three broad areas:

Marketing Health Checks.
Quick assessments of management structures, information flows, and company processes.

Market Mapping.
Assessing the size and shape of markets prior to launch or acquisition activity.

Project Management.
Creating and implementing detailed action plans for launches, promotions and re-engineering projects.

CASE STUDY
A specialist, hobby magazine publisher wanted to review its circulation marketing activity. Was it splitting its budget between retail and subscription marketing wisely? Was it spending too little on retail multiple promotions? Had it set its cover price at the right level? Was it over-discounting its subscriptions? How could it boost renewals?

CASE STUDY
A major publisher wanted to launch into the very competitive women’s weekly market. What was the track record of past launches into this sector? Where should it be positioned? Who would read it? What would the likely settledown circulation be? Where would the ads comes from?

CASE STUDY
A medium-sized publisher wanted to pull out of its newstrade distributor and set up an in-house circulation department. What would be required in terms of systems hardware & software and personnel? How would wholesale terms be negotiated? Would it all make financial sense?

The Wessenden three day “Circulation Health Check” came up with the answers, a checklist for future activity and a structured programme of research and sales tests.

The detailed report fed into the publisher’s own business plan and launch proposal.

Wessenden laid out the options, created a business plan, recruited and trained a Circulation Manager and oversaw the migration to the new set-up, then reported in for a day’s consultancy a month to check on progress.