As 2MM beds in its second city venture, Liverpool, and casts its eye east to Leeds,  How-Do talks to Gordo about existing success and how to replicate it.

Mark Garner characterises Manchester Confidential as a “genuine Web 2.0 play” but the popular website and its 42,000 daily outgoing emails are underpinned by some solid old-fashioned values.

He’s built a large online community of people who want to eat, drink, live or be pampered in the city but to make money from it he relies on traditional sales expertise.

Bon viveur Garner has spent long enough in publishing to know that his advertisers in the catering, property, and health and beauty may well be impressed by Manchester Confidential’s Web 2.0 credentials but they’re not going to pay up at the click of a mouse.

Instead, his sales team are out and about, visiting clients and selling to them in a time-honoured fashion.

“They will not buy online,” says Garner, who began to learn his sales skills at his father’s knee when he was 14 years old. “You still need good old-fashioned salesmen and a good old-fashioned salesman needs to know the structured way to sell.

“I had these skills drilled into me but they are sadly lacking today. Although we’re a very trendy Web 2.0 play my sales people know how to ask for a cheque.

“It works because of the old-fashioned stuff. There’s nothing new in the world.”

Gesturing at a computer screen he adds: “That’s just a piece of paper to me.”

Irresistible

The website itself, launched in 2004, looks anything but trendy, with a low-tech design and a mix of news, reviews and advertisers’ special offers. But the stats  - 104,000 readers in February – suggest the mix is appealing. And love him or loathe him, Gordo – Garner’s alter ego whose presence bestrides the site – is irresistible to many.

Consequently Garner can claim 90 advertisers, 70 on a monthly retainer “throwing money at us”. Through their offers on the website and in email bulletins they have customers clicking through to their landing pages – or brochures, in old publishing speak.

Garner says this gives them a chance to build a conversation with their customers that mere banner ads could never achieve.

Revenue wasn’t the first thing on Garner’s mind when he launched Manchester Confidential. It grew out of a desire to showcase the content management technology he was trying to sell without much success.

From 1993, Garner’s web authoring house had been trying to sell the software, IWindow, to companies and local authorities but although it offered an easy way to manage the content of websites he met with little response.

Supply chain

Vertical business portals, linking a business sector such as boat building up and down the supply chain, didn’t work, not least because the sales force couldn’t manage to get around the country to attend to widely dispersed clients.

Garner sold the technology in 2000 to one-time stock market darlings Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) with a clause stipulating its return if he wasn’t paid. When KMS crashed, IWindow was back in Garner’s lap.

In 2002, Garner’s company, 2M Media, reopened, reasoning that if “vertical won’t work, horizontal probably will”. It set up Manchester Confidential to showcase the technology rather than make money from the site.

As a B2B company, 2M Media had a 2,000-strong database of individuals with disposable income to contact. Manchester’s bar and restaurant scene was booming, and “everybody today has an opinion on food and booze”,” says Garner. “In a way, we hit the ground running.” The intention was to build readership. “We didn’t know where the revenue was going to come from. But one thing I do know from being in publishing for the last 20-odd years is that if I get readers, I’ll find advertisers in some way, shape or form.”

Mark Garner aka sexist bastard

Readable advertorial

A month later he sends in another reviewer and if all isn’t fixed he publishes the review and accepts he might lose the advertiser’s business. Garner says this has happened three times in the last three months – two got the message, one got an awful review. “It’s responsible, readable advertorial,” he says. “If you’re going to do what we do you’ve got to write authoritatively.”

Nevertheless, he enjoyed weighing Manchester Confidential into the row over the city council’s plans to extend car parking charges into the evenings, its readers flooding the town hall with emails of protest in an ultimately successful campaign. “Having said we’re advertorial we’ve almost got to the position where we can do some serious stuff – ish.”

Garner believes he’s got the Manchester Evening News rattled – he’s had a spat with MEN editor Paul Horrocks and calls its owner, Guardian Media Group, a “big bully” - and dismisses the city’s minor rash of lifestyle magazines as “vanity publishing”. He says Manchester Confidential delivers more leads per advertising pound than the city’s flagship paper.

A further coup is Manchester Confidential’s recruitment of Jonathan Schofield to replace Jayne Robinson as editor. Schofield was a regular MEN food writer.

Property now brings in more revenue than restaurants, followed by the health and beauty business, but Garner says all three need to work in equilibrium to gain and maintain readership. “People don’t come on to Manchester Confidential in the first instance to find out about property.”

Conservative

With the dead tree industry dying, Manchester Confidential is “publishing as it should be done”. The figures to prove it are difficult, acknowledges Garner, but as he once lost a multi-million pound deal because a joint venture partner overstated figures he’s inclined to be conservative.

“It’s difficult to measure statistics but you can soon see if the log stats are out. We always say that within reason log files are available to journalists or advertisers.”

Whether the model extends to other cities - and particularly without Garner and Gordo - is being tested out across the M62 where journalist Angie Sammons has been running Liverpool Confidential since the beginning of the year. Sammons believes Liverpool Confidential can be “a refreshing alternative for the people of Liverpool”.

Manchester Confidential's turnover is forecast to reach £580,000 for the year to May '07 and ptp of £80k (he is forecasting £900k and £150k respectively for y/e 5/08) . Garner says Liverpool can be an experiment while still leaving his shareholders “a bloody good pension”. No revenue is envisaged for the first nine months while readership and content are built.

“The purpose of it is to prove we can run a Manchester Confidential in another city. We’ll then open Leeds. Once we’ve opened those two cities and proved our formula works we’ve then got a mega-play – possibly.”
 

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Comments (11)

1  By Gordo , on 01-04-2007 13:13 That's Sexist Fat Bastard to you lads ;-) Report

2  By Gordo , on 31-03-2007 18:13 and yer formatting doesn't work.... Report

5  By AL Mack , on 03-04-2007 18:39 Web 2.0? I'd check the definition before putting yourself up their with YouTube, Facebook et al. Report

8  By AL Mack , on 03-04-2007 19:38 Agree that it's my round, disagree on the Web2.0 (and we've both lived through the same ups and downs in the Internet world).    I have a feeling TBL would disagree with you as well, but that's the difference between salesmen and techies. Report

10  By nell , on 30-05-2007 22:31 any plans for an expansion test model for say... New York City? - would be happy to lend a hand and lead the effort. Report

11  By mark garner , on 31-05-2007 10:46 Oh, sweet Nell, how good it is to see that name! Report