Cutting Costs and Improving Content Workflows with Digital Publishing

The publishing landscape is rapidly evolving. Print publications are challenging to organize, manage, and run profitably – largely because hardcopies are expensive to produce, store, and distribute.

Fortunately, digital publishing solutions exist as a cost-effective and efficient alternative. Digital publications can be distributed freely and quickly with just a click. And, better yet, there's no need for physical storage space as digital content is stored in the cloud and accessible from anywhere, anytime.

As with every advancement, transitioning to a new process may feel intimidating, but the change is well worth the effort. From reduced printing and distribution costs to streamlined workflows, this article covers a handful of the key benefits that digital publishing offers. Let's take a look!

Cost-saving Benefits of Digital Publishing

Digital publishing involves the creation and distribution of many different kinds of content, like magazines, portfolios, brochures, catalogs, and books, in a digital format. This process reduces costs for companies in three main ways.

1) Production Expenses

Digital publishing eliminates the need for physical printing, allowing businesses to cut down on production expenses. By digitizing their content, companies can significantly reduce printing, storage, distribution, and shipping costs.

These savings can be applied to both internal and external communications, including:

• Employee handbooks

• Customer newsletters

• Product or service catalogs

• Training manuals and programs

• Marketing collateral

• And more

2) Shorter Sales Cycle

Digital publishing also helps businesses move leads through the funnel faster. By creating engaging digital content, companies can distribute, share, and promote their products or services to potential customers more easily. They can also track the engagement of each publication, providing insights into what works and what doesn't.

This, in turn, empowers marketing teams to make data-driven decisions about content production, distribution, and strategy. Over time, this enables businesses to more readily address customer concerns and more efficiently turn leads into customers.

The shorter sales cycle can result in significant cost savings for businesses in the following ways:

• Less time spent in calls, demos, and meetings with prospects

• Fewer sales representatives needed to close a deal

• Faster revenue generation

3) Higher Conversion Rates

Another benefit of digital publishing is that it can increase conversion rates. In other words, it helps companies get better at turning people who are interested in their products or services into paying customers.

With digital publishing, companies get instant feedback in the form of engagement data, which aids in refining content and marketing strategies. For example, you can analyze what types of content are most successful in motivating customer actions such as signups, downloads, and purchases.

This data allows companies to determine what messaging, images, and design elements resonate with their target audience. They can then make micro-adjustments to their content to ensure maximum impact and optimize conversion rates. And, all else equal, higher conversion rates lead to larger profit margins. 

Ultimately, digital publishing can help businesses save money by reducing production costs, shortening the sales cycle, and increasing conversion rates. This means that businesses can squeeze more out of their content and reach a bigger audience while spending less money.

Improving Workflows with Digital Publishing Tools

Digital publishing not only reduces costs but also improves content creation-to-distribution workflows for businesses. Issuu, for example, offers a Teams feature that enables cross-functional and distributed teams to work together seamlessly when publishing and distributing their digital content.

Here are three ways in which businesses can use digital publishing tools like Issuu to streamline their workflows and accelerate productivity:

1) Collaborative Workflow

Issuu for Teams empowers businesses of all sizes to work together in real time, even remotely. For example, a designer can create visual content in InDesign and export it to Issuu. Then, a copywriter can proof the drafted publication and pass it along to a content marketer. That team member can add Links, embed Videos, and infuse the Flipbook with other interactive elements before hitting publish and creating shareable assets like mobile Articles and GIFs. Finally, a salesperson can share the finished product with prospects while the marketer promotes it across channels.

With all of this functionality, Issuu allows companies to save time and eliminate bottlenecks in the content publishing and distribution process. Even as business complexity grows, Issuu for Teams keeps everyone on the same page and moving toward a common goal with access controls and dedicated workspaces.

2) Repurpose Content

Issuu also simplifies the process of repurposing content for social media and other channels. Businesses can easily generate social media assets from any publication they uploaded on Issuu (or from scratch) using Social Posts.  This feature makes it easy to drive traffic to content from social media by converting digital documents into attention-grabbing visuals that are customized for each platform.

And, for even greater efficiency, Social Posts boasts templates and a drag-and-drop builder that helps marketers spin up, customize, and download fresh content in a matter of minutes. By expediting this process, businesses can drive more engagement than ever without complicating their workflow or increasing effort.

3) Analytics and Insights

Issuu provides analytics and insights into how content is performing with built-in Statistics. This dashboard enables businesses to see how readers consume and interact with various Flipbook publications on a page-by-page level. With insights into important metrics like read-time, impressions, clicks, and more, marketers and salespersons can quickly see what is working and where to devote further resources.

Although the Statistics feature delivers practical insights, Issuu also allows users to create and export graphs for reporting to stakeholders at a glance. These graphs summarize key performance indicators and highlight how to upgrade future content campaigns.

With digital publishing solutions like Issuu at the center of their workflow, burned-out teams of all sizes can do more with less. By enabling cross-functional collaboration, instant document transformation, content recycling and repurposing, and data analysis, businesses can streamline their creation, publishing, and distribution processes with ease. This, in turn, will result in greater efficiencies and improved results without increasing costs.

Industry-specific Use Cases for Digital Publishing

Digital publishing is a versatile tool that can benefit businesses across various verticals. Here are a few examples of how specific industries could take advantage of this technology:

Real Estate

Real estate agents and brokers can use digital publishing to showcase their property listings, build their brands, and connect with potential buyers. For example, a group of realtors can create and publish on-brand real estate content together, such as neighborhood guides, market reports, and property brochures.

This allows real estate professionals to reach a wider audience and provide valuable information to clients and prospects. And those interested in real estate investing can flip through digital magazines to find their next opportunity without ever leaving their home.

Issuu supports real estate professionals with Fullscreen Sharing, which turns flat brochures into flippable publications that captivate viewers. That means potential buyers can engage with content from their chosen device and enjoy distraction-free viewing of listings in fullscreen glory.

Travel and Tourism

Digital publishing is especially useful in the travel and tourism industry. Travel companies can use digital publications to showcase their destinations, provide travel guides and itineraries, and promote their services to eager travelers on a global scale. This type of highly visual content is particularly effective at inspiring travelers and driving bookings.

Issuu enables travel companies to embed this interactive content directly onto their websites. As a result, visitors can browse through digital travel experiences to find the perfect destination in one place. This feature prevents engaged readers from leaving the page and helps travel companies increase conversions, capture more leads, and put their destination at the top of everyone’s bucket list.

Marketing and PR

Marketing and PR agencies can use digital publishing to create and distribute engaging content on behalf of their clients. From press releases and case studies to brand books and client presentations, digital publishing platforms like Issuu make it simple to create professional content that captures attention.

With Issuu for Teams, agencies can also work with their clients to create and edit content in one place. This process enables teams to build strong relationships with their customer base, accelerate productivity, and simplify content management. Plus, agencies and their clients can measure and report their performance to ensure campaign effectiveness and success.

Across Departments

Digital publishing also supports intra-business efforts across departments. Companies can use digital publishing platforms to create internal newsletters, training materials, and other company-wide communications that keep employees informed and engaged.

For example, a company can create a digital magazine that highlights employee achievements, shares important updates and news, and promotes its culture. This type of content can foster a sense of community among employees and keep them connected to the company's mission and values.

In addition, digital publishing can be used to share handbooks and training materials that are accessible and engaging for employees. Companies can create interactive manuals, how-to guides, and instructional videos that help employees learn new skills and improve their performance.

Final Thoughts on Digital Publishing

Overall, digital publishing is a powerful tool that can be used in many different industries and departments. By creating professional, interactive content, businesses can expand their reach, engage their audience on multiple channels, and drive conversions, all while reducing costs.

But digital publishing doesn't only eliminate printing costs — it also saves valuable time and resources by streamlining workflows. Teams can work remotely and in real-time on content production and distribution by seamlessly integrating their existing processes and platforms into a single solution.

If you are ready to take advantage of these many benefits, Issuu can help you get started on your digital publishing journey. Give the platform and its suite of creative tools a try today!

Daniel Anderson is a marketing expert who writes about building, buying, and scaling businesses. Learn how to turn ideas into income and plan for financial freedom with the step-by-step guides at TheMoneyManiac.com.