Soccer laduma newspaper has been sticking strongly to the principle of ‘making the customer the boss’ since its start in 1997. As the fastest growing and most widely read football newspaper in the world, it prides itself on being a brand that places its customers – the readers – first in all their decision-making.
CEO and Founder, Peter du Toit, was losing money along with most print businesses, so he decided to start doing things differently. He stopped listening to ‘industry experts’ and instead took the advice of the readers themselves. He built a strong relationship with the thousands of readers around the country, via letters, emails and even phone calls. Taking this relationship further, Peter hired the most talented and passionate readers as the newspaper’s journalists. This is how real-time customer engagement was born at Soccer Laduma.
The newspaper’s most recent milestone provides proof of this commitment to letting the paper’s readers run its business. Vuyani Joni has recently been appointed as editor of Soccer Laduma, the realisation of a dream and an example of the results from the relationship the newspaper has with its readers. In 2005, Vuyani was unemployed and living in Paterson, a small rural community 70km outside of Port Elizabeth. He was passionate about soccer, and read a copy of Soccer Laduma every week. Through persistent and passionate letters to the newspaper, Vuyani eventually managed to secure a meeting and travelled to Cape Town to meet with Peter and the team. Soon after, Vuyani was working as an intern for his favourite newspaper.
Effective customer engagement has become a necessity for any successful business, especially as digital communication tools are providing more effective ways for businesses to reach customers, and vice versa. There are fewer excuses to be disconnected from what your target market is experiencing, and what they need. Customers demand a product that is created directly for them.
One of the ways that the newspaper communicates with its readers is through the Soccer Laduma Supporters Club sponsored by AVBOB, which has branches around South Africa. The Supporters Clubs provide a soccer community for readers, whose feedback is channelled to the newspaper, helping inform content.
For Soccer Laduma, engaging with readers is crucial, as print sales around the world continue a rapid decline. For newspapers to sell, they need to show that they care what their readers want to know about, and make sure to deliver on that.
Soccer Laduma has done just that, and it shows. Their website has 1 312 504 unique browses, 368 000 followers on Twitter and over 2 million likes on Facebook. The newspaper has a readership of over 3 million, and the Supporters Club now has 86 968 members around the country.
“Our commitment to the readers is apparent in every move we make as a business. My career at Soccer Laduma is proof of that. The paper has always valued the opinions of its readers, and having real fans working for us has only helped improve our relationship with readers around the country,” says Vuyani.
