How the FT quadrupled B2B revenue in 20 years

The success story of FT Professional (B2B)

In July 2023, 20 years after the Financial Times began serving businesses, it rebranded its B2B subscriptions offering for organisations to FT Professional. The rebrand marked the evolution of the rapidly growing proposition that now provides news and business intelligence content to over 1.3 million subscribers. FT Professional now serves nearly 8,000 corporate, government and academic institutions around the world with tools and features that make FT journalism more personalised and actionable.



The FT identified early on that B2B would be a key monetisation strategy within the business. Since 2003, B2B has grown to become the FT’s largest value driver, now accounting for over 75% of the FT’s paying readership. Through this journey, the FT has been able to garner deep expertise and a unique view around developing, refining and scaling B2B offerings meaning FT Strategies is well placed to offer this accrued knowledge and best practices to other organisations.

The four core principles that have helped the FT’s B2B success are:

• Direct, managed relationships with corporate customers
• Individual direct relationships with registered end users
• Pricing based on user usage rather than availability
• Transparency and evidence of engagement for pricing
  

An introduction to how FT Strategies works with B2B clients

By leveraging the FT’s experience and success, FT Strategies has helped many clients to launch and grow B2B businesses - including helping a leading European financial publication double its B2B subscriptions. 

Working together with clients, FT Strategies leverages a robust methodology and tried and tested tactics, including:

1. Acquiring high value accounts using data including on-and-off platform behaviour

• Leverage audience insights; e.g., registration of end users to identify and target high value accounts
• Pay attention to decision-maker and end-user needs
• Add off-platform insights to build an understanding of interests and needs of target accounts to develop a single view of customers and prospects

2. Creating differentiated propositions to acquire users based on clear understanding of their needs

• Develop a data-driven user-needs approach to segment publications and develop associated communities that go beyond subscription, e.g. access to experts and membership-based activities
• Investigate premium sub-verticals and bolt-ons to provide differentiated needs-based information

3. Exploring different business models and engagement tactics

• Alternative subscription models such as usage-based pricing can be powerful sales tools, combined with analysis of content and proactive outreach
• Customer success and account teams are critical - focus on activation and encouraging registration using personalised invites

4. Leveraging a ‘test and learn’ approach to grow your business

• Leveraging core users to test demand for a new proposition is valued by them
• Use qualitative and quantitative feedback loops as well as A/B testing to co-create propositions

This article is part one of a multi-part B2B series; future issues will deep dive into some of the core principles behind the FT’s success, as well as common challenges B2B publishers face and some case studies of how FT Strategies has worked with clients to address them.