How the Financial Times has continually surpassed its strategic goals

In 2019, the Financial Times hit its goal of 1 million total subscribers - a year before their ambitious target set in 2015. It was a landmark achievement for the news industry, highlighting the viability of digital subscriptions as a successful revenue model. That viability stands truer than ever, the Financial Times now sees the majority of its revenue from digital content, a striking difference from 2012 when digital content revenue only made up a fifth of the Financial Times’ total revenue.

Shift in the FT’s revenue breakdown
Source: Financial Times

This change, however, did not happen overnight. It has been a long journey with many milestones from launching the paywall in 2002, shifting towards digital in 2009, finally seeing digital revenue surpass that of print in 2015, and reaching a million subscribers in 2019. Bold strategic planning and tangible milestones have always underpinned successful execution at the FT.

As the Financial Times has grown and expanded its operations, it became clear that an updated ‘FT Subscriber’ North Star isn’t suitable because it doesn’t fully represent the performance or efforts of the Financial Times Group. A new metric was required to track the paying audience for content and services used across all FT Group platforms such as FT Specialist subscribers and FT Live paying delegates. 

Prior to Global Paying Audience, only 60% of FT’s audiences are measured
Source: Financial Times

To this end, the Financial Times has introduced a new North Star metric called Global Paying Audiences (GPA), which includes paying users across the entire FT Group. Alongside this new metric the Financial Times now also has a new North Star goal which is:

“To increase our GPA from 2.5mn to 3mn users by 2028”

By utilising Global Paying Audiences, the Financial Times is still geared toward its overall financial and editorial goals. The GPA metric is also singular, inclusive, and measurable - complementing and reinforcing departmental targets. Furthermore the metric is future-proof due to the framework being generally adaptable (i.e. the definition can be updated to encompass other types of paying audience). It is also much clearer to report, investigate and explain.

The Financial Times’ Journey
Source: Financial Times

What is a North star?

A North star goal is a single, shared and ambitious goal for an organisation to bring a unanimous focus towards driving the organisation towards their desired destination. It enables organisations to align resources, prioritise initiatives and foster organisational alignment according to their goal as well as providing a guiding force in strategy development by providing structured idea generation.

The Financial Times follows a checklist to create an effective North Star goal. An effective North Star Goal should be:

• Time bound (3-5 years): A 3-5 year plan creates urgency without being so distant as to feel unimportant and recognise that times change.
• Aspirational and aligned to a purpose: To inspire the whole organisation to contribute to the journey.
• A single, specific target: To act as a vehicle for ambition, this is what sets it apart from a business plan.
• Bold enough to be challenging: It is based on ambition, not just a calculated projection, with a cost for not meeting it. 
• Memorable: To keep everyone focused on the goal.
• Measurable: To ensure progress can be calculated accurately and barriers identified.
• Achievable: To avoid setting yourself up for failure.

An example North Star Goal which embodies this checklist would be “Demonstrate the self-sustainability of our digital business by reaching €20M in audience revenue in 2027” Which provides a clear North Star goal while keeping key elements of the checklist.

North Star Goals are also utilised in developing ideas and initiatives for your organisation to enact. Part of the Financial Times’ process is to define outcomes, hypotheses and experiments to conduct as part of their North Star to provide a clear image and strategy for their goal. Outcomes are the opportunity to further define your North Star goal through defining what are key milestones and targets necessary to achieve your North Star, they are the points which you have identified as your most important drivers for success as such they require specific and measurable data points. It is important to keep in mind that outcomes should be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, we generally recommend having around 3-5 outcomes with limited sub outcomes to prevent the framework from being overwhelming and direct at which factors must be focused on to create change.

How a complete North Star framework should look like
Source: Financial Times Strategies

How FT Strategies can help

FT Strategies has helped hundreds of organisations to create and execute their own North Star goals. We recently worked with a leading Spanish Publisher, EL PAÍS, to help them go from 120,000 subscribers in 2021 (when we started working together) to over 350,000 digital subscribers today.

To find out how Financial Times Strategies can help your organisation adopt a North Star, you may contact us here.