Digital Asset Strategy

A digital asset is an online property with value that can be measured, grown and eventually transferred: a website with an audience, a revenue model and a defensible position. Ferguson Media Group works across the whole path from domain to asset — acquisition, research, development, search visibility, audience and monetisation — because the decisions at each stage constrain everything that follows.

The model

Ferguson Media Group's work follows one path, applied selectively rather than mechanically.

Where projects legitimately stop

The diagram above implies that every domain travels the whole route. Most do not, and pretending otherwise is how portfolios end up full of half-built sites.

A domain with an obvious corporate buyer and nothing to publish should be sold. A domain in a category already served properly by someone better resourced should be held or dropped. A site that reaches an audience but never finds a commercial relationship worth having is a good thing that is not a business, and should be recognised as such rather than degraded with advertising nobody wants.

Stopping at the right point is a decision, and it is usually a better one than continuing.

Monetisation is a decision about the audience

The revenue model should follow from what the audience is doing when they arrive, not from what the owner would prefer to be paid.

Affiliate commissions

Suits audiences in the middle of a purchase decision, in categories with programmes worth participating in. See affiliate marketing.

Advertising

Suits large general audiences. Needs substantial volume to matter, and degrades the reading experience it depends on.

Lead generation

Suits categories where a single enquiry is worth a great deal to a provider — services, trades, professional advice.

Ecommerce

Where the site sells directly. A different business entirely, with stock, fulfilment and support attached.

Subscriptions

Suits audiences returning for something they cannot obtain elsewhere. Requires genuine exclusivity, which is rarer than it sounds.

Enquiries for the owner's own business

The most underrated model: a resource that earns trust and produces work for the business behind it.

Sponsorship

Suits defined, valuable audiences where an advertiser wants association rather than clicks.

Eventual sale

A site with revenue and a defensible position is a saleable business. That option exists whether or not it is ever taken.

What makes an asset defensible

Anything easy to replicate will be replicated, and increasingly at scale and at speed. The question worth asking early is what this site will have that a competitor cannot assemble in a fortnight.

• Original data — gathered rather than repeated, and kept current.
• Genuine expertise — knowledge that comes from doing the thing, not from reading about it.
• A tool that works — something people use rather than read.
• Accumulated coverage — a subject covered so thoroughly that partial coverage is no substitute.
• Trust — a track record of being right, visible in how the site publishes and sources.
• The domain itself — a name that is the obvious address for its category is not replicable at any price the competitor would pay.