The secret sauce to high-end B2B subscription sales

AP Now publishes a newsletter that covers everything related to accounts payables for at corporate employees and CPAs.   Subscribers total 700, with the best-selling premium subscriptions priced at $1377 a year. 

It is also the only publisher in the Niche Revenue Snapshot Report from NichePublisher.biz  to achieve more than 90% of revenues from a subscription model. 

This case study shows how small niche media can:

* Add educational content to support premium subscriptions

* Create significant subscription-only revenues with an estimated $150,000 + revenue/employee  ratio

* Produce free marketing videos and social media marketing to create a funnel for subscription sales

How it works

The tiered subscription pricing runs from $227 annually for a four-page PDF newsletter to $1377 for a Platinum membership that includes access to 24 live educational webinars, included in the price.

Mary Schaeffer, the publisher, hosts the live webinars herself, that as well as promotional vodcasts that fuel subscription leads for the company, and an an email list that totals 12,000. 

Pricing is set at $227 for the monthly newsletter. $877  obtains a webinar pass that gives all access to 24 webinars,  and $1377 is the price for both. 

All members also can access a portal to find archived newsletters. Non-members can attend any individual webinar for about $225.

The pricing is sustainable because companies, rather than employees, pay the bill, and the company size is typically 200 to 500 employees.

However, employees are typically the ones who find the site and then ask their companies to pay. One element of the audience are CPAs incentivized by continuing education requirements.

How they did it

AP Now started in 2006  as a 14-page print newsletter.  Eventually, however, email seemed like an easier distribution channel.  They also began to run one webinar a month. 

There was little interest when the company first tried selling a web pass that gave access to all webinars.

 “I could not sell that thing for love or money,’ Schaeffer said. ‘I tried  – I’m going to be honest – and I literally could not get anybody to buy it. So we left it in the store for some reason and never took it out.” 

Then, one day, “out of nowhere,” someone bought the pass. “It was like oh my God! They bought it! And so  we went back and started pushing it again.”

Webinars eventually expanded to 24 per year – one every two weeks, and Schaeffer added a third pricing tier, the Platinum Memberships,  the web pass combined with the newsletters. 

 “I thought at the higher level membership people wouldn’t be willing to pay, that we would not get very many,” she said. But she was wrong.

Today the most expensive membership is the one that sells the most, followed by the WebPass.

“The educational market has shifted,” Schaeffer said. “People don’t want to read. They want webinars and video conferences much more than printed material.

“I like to read better than to listen, but it’s not about me. It’s about the audience and they want.”

Members also preferred live webinars to on-demand ones.

“90% attend live. You can ask a question, but if they work on demand, you can’t, ” she explained.

To create the webinars today, Schaeffer outlines 24 topics at the beginning of each year. Topics include perennials such as accounts payable best practices, internal controls, and fraud protection “which can be updated depending upon what has changed in the marketplace.”

“We take very little money from the service providers,” Schaeffer said. “If you are a service provider and you want to be involved with us, we’ll talk about the (free) YouTube channel.

“I have turned down some serious money because I think that it benefits the brand overall.’

YouTube and Linked in for promotions

Scheaffer takes a three-prong approach to promoting membership sales:

• A free marketing email separate from the PDF
• A podcast channel on YouTube 
• Linkedin posts

The free marketing email goes to everyone on the list, promoting each individual webinar. 

“Sometimes people get the email for a year or two and suddenly sign up for a webinar or a platinum membership.” 

However, the best promotional initiative in the past few years has been YouTube podcasts promoted on LinkedIn.

Unlike the more advanced webinar content, YouTube podcasts cover ‘the basics,” aimed at people who don’t want to ask their bosses to pay for information for whatever reason.

“There are a lot of topics that people are interested in but will not pay to hear,” she said.  “Let me tell you a little story…”

Her “aha” moment came when someone gave her an instant pot that she could not get to heat up the water needed for a recipe.  She turned to Google and found YouTube in the results.

“There were a dozen videos on how to boil water, all with major traffic.”

After hiring someone to create podcasts on payroll basics,  and then employing a relative, she learned to produce the videos herself, recording on Streamyard and editing on Davinci Resolve or CapCut, which is an easier but simpler method. 

LinkedIn attracts more people to watch YouTube podcasts and subsequently sign up for memberships, and it has been a strong source of view based on YouTube analytics.

“Americans watch at least one YouTube video weekly but are not looking for accounts payable.  So, I thought, how can I get in front of them?” 

Schaeffer posts a short clip from the beginning of each podcast on LinkedIn,  typically an introduction saying what it is about and a hook to “watch here.” She has accumulated a group of about 12 hashtags related to payables accounting.

Sometimes, she also comments on other people’s podcasts or other posts, and about five to 10 times a year, she also does a webinar for a service provider on their platform that they can promote to their audience. 

Finally, she has one relationship with a similar business in the UK, and they help each other cross-promote.  “I’ll go on his. He comes on mine.” 

Since she has 5,000 personal followers, she posts in her own name and also the company name. The YouTube channel is under the company brand. 

Recommendations 

• “To get people to buy from you, they must first know you, then like and trust you.” It’s a higher bar and takes longer than other models.
• “It takes time. I remember when I first started out, I had some goals and thought it would take three months.  My accountant said to me, don’t cut yourself so short. Give yourself some time. You have to build trust. So take a little time. At least for most of us, in my opinion. it won’t happen overnight. You have to build a bank of content. I think that for people who want to build an audience fast, subscriptions are not the easiest way to do this. “
• “You either need a company or a high net worth individual to pay for the memberships” in order for a higher-priced membership model to work. “At lower pricing levels you need a much larger number of members for a sustainable model.”

Many thanks to Mary Schaeffer for sharing years of expertise in developing this model with NPB Members.