Digital first means mobile first in Göteborg Posten

Martin Holmberg, Director of Digital Development, Göteborg Posten, Sweden is another speaker who gave a very interesting presentation during the INMA 2012 conference in Hague. He spoke bout how important is mobile strategy to him and his company.
Göteborgs-Posten characteristics:

• local morning paper
• second largest in Sweden
• owned by Stampen Group
• Located in Gothenburg
• 220.000 circulation
• 500.000 unique users each week

They had been working on the mobile for a long time. Started with SMS news, then the first mobile site was born in 2005. Also in 2005 a sport app appeared but it was too early and reached 5 subscribers only. In 2008 they updated the mobile site. 2010 was the year when they started working on mobile in the real way. The tablet was a hype in Sweden, and Goteborgs Posten chose the mobile way, against all tablet trends. They simply didn’t have the resources to do both.

They now have:

• iPhone app: 160.000 downloads
• Android app: 45.000 downloads
• Windows app: 2.000 downloads

Those numbers prove they were right. Not only that – this yeart mobile won the summer Olympics, with 60% of visits on news sites came from mobile devices. This proves a new behavior is born also in Sweden – mobile first.

Why an iPhone app? To:

• strengthen the brand
• have automatic publication
• use the possibilities an app gives
• have unique content
• start to get new useful experiences

They did it in 2 steps:

• build reach successfully
• capitalize on the traffic

Result:
Primary goal was to reach 3.500 downloads in the first 2 months. They reached 35.000 people instead. Mobile explosion was there.

The business model of Goteborgs Posten: the core is free. They started to experiment and to invent some paid content – they are thinking about delivering paid content within the app. The paid content in GP is:
GP+:

• unique digital content
• available both online and mobile
• 23 000 members, majority print subscribers
• 600 unique subscribers
• It was the first attempt

Daily iPhone tip (GP found a blogger who would be doing that as short tips for iPhone users):

• 1,5 Euro pay 3 months
• No extra cost for the newsroom
• 1000 subscribers

Done so far:

• built reach successfully for a local paper
• alternative for all platforms
• launched bigger ads formats
• established in-app purchases

But the big question remains: how to increase mobile revenues without loosing higher revenues from print?

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