It’s a tough market for content licensers—the near limitless number of resources online, an increasing willingness of some users to “borrow” content without compensation and a changing client base where the role of corporate librarians who know markets and sources is changing. On the bright side, advertisers are emerging as a new customer base for licensed content but that also means publishers have to learn how to sell differently.  

 
That said, there are some basics that any company can follow to position their content more favorably. At Connectiv’s 2016 Buying & Selling Content conference on Wednesday, Jan. 27 in New York, Paul Gerbino (pictured left), partner at Triumvirate Content Consultants, will offer a 30-minute session on Go-To Market Strategies: How To Price, How to Deal. (The full agenda is here. There's still time to register!)

Below, Gerbino offers some tips for taking content to market, including:

1. Know your content’s value—that comes from your brand’s place in the market. One thing that’s forgotten is your writer’s brand. If your writers are unknown in the marketplace, you often don’t have that demand from a licensee to get content. Gerbino tells publishers to make sure you are helping your writer’s build a brand—don’t be afraid that they’ll leave you once they have a brand. Take that risk because the more they are well-known, the more well-known your content will be and the better you can leverage it from a licensing standpoint.  

2. At the page level, do you have a place where you show the value of that content? Are you doing something with iCopyright or showing readers how they can easily work with reprint companies if they want to re-use that content? 

3. Do you know who’s a customer for your content? What about internationally? Your content can have value in other marketplaces outside than your present marketplace. Companies like NewsCred and CFE Media’s ContentStream enable publishers to license their content to advertisers—are you enabling your content to be leveraged for content marketing purposes? 

4. From a pricing standpoint, there is no easy formula. You need to ask the right questions of licensee such as how they’re going to use it, and you’ll have to look at the type of model that makes sense, such as annual licensing fee, revenue share,

The 2106 Buying & Selling Content conference features speakers from brands such as The New York Times, Gannett, Hearst, Bloomberg, Wolters Kluwer, LinkedIn and The American Press Institute sharing actionable best practices on selling content today, as well as a precon designed to get publishers up to speed on licensing. Again, the full agenda is here. Time is running out; register today.  

Matt Kinsman is vice president of content + programming at Connectiv, the only association focused on the integrated b-to-b model—including publications, events, digital media, marketing services and business information. Prior to joining Connectiv's predecessor American Business Media in 2011, Kinsman was executive editor of Folio:, the leading information provider for the magazine industry.