Definition Elements
What is a canvas? 🤔
A canvas is a strategic and comparative marketing tool that connects the target audience—their needs, their usage patterns, and their financial means—with the editorial product being offered and its value proposition.
Concretely, the canvas is a modeling of your media's editorial and economic model. It's these different elements and the various connections woven between them, this overall view that will subsequently enable you to adapt your editorial project, value proposition, and formats and channels more closely to your targets and your media's ecosystem. You could see the canvas as a tool for testing and aligning your project with its targets.
Why build a canvas?
The canvas is the strategic counterpart to the persona and allows you to address your media project's target audience from both a strategic and practical angle. The idea is to build on the persona established previously, but by focusing more on identifying the needs and problems your target audience faces and that your project aims to solve.
This focal length allows you to adjust, if needed:
- Your editorial proposal ‒ to make it more relevant to the needs and challenges facing your target audience ;
- Your formats, media and distribution channels ‒ to adapt them to your audience's habits and preferences ;
- Your distribution strategies from both a marketing and technical standpoint ‒ to integrate your target audience's usage patterns as well as their acquisition and conversion levers.
Furthermore, the framework allows you to put your editorial and value proposition into perspective by observing the media ecosystem and repositioning your project within it. This involves notably observing media that use the same formats or address the same themes. This makes it possible to identify potential competitors and partners, to draw inspiration, but also and above all to develop a project and concept that is original and stands out from the others, offering a unique response and solution to very specific audiences.
How to build your canvas?
Make sure to clarify the foundation of your project 📐
This is a testing and adjustment phase for your project. You therefore need to have worked beforehand on:
- Your media's vision, the problem you're addressing, and what makes your project essential;
- Your project targets, your personas ;
- Your editorial proposal, its direction, its format.
Focus on your target audience's needs to define tailored editorial products 🔍
Think about what your target audience will search for and what you can offer them (in terms of substance and presentation) and how you will offer it to them (a newsletter, a short podcast, long-form articles online or in print, YouTube videos, free content, paid subscriptions, etc.)
In short: what relevant form and content will you offer her to nourish her intellectually, meet her desires, and address her personal or professional information needs?
- Which editorial product meets your target audience's needs?
- What medium/format is best suited to your audience's needs and usage?
- Why is this medium/format the best suited?
Link the solutions provided by your project with the problems encountered by your audiences 🔗
To put your ideas in perspective and stay grounded, ask yourself three questions that will help you connect your project to your audience's needs.
- What editorial product are you offering (target audience, content, format)?
- What concrete solution does it provide to your audiences?
- What benefit will your audiences gain?
Think about the ways you can acquire and retain these audiences 🤖
Defining your customer acquisition and retention methods will help you establish the foundation of your marketing strategy. How will your personas discover your project? How will you reach them in their user journey? Are these levers organic or sponsored actions? List all your ideas. One way to identify them is also to observe your competition (see the next point).
You might also ask:
- What methods will you use to reach your target audience (distribution channels, ways to engage the public)?
- Where is this target currently spending their time? Whether online or offline.
Analyze the competitive landscape, direct and indirect 👥
Conduct market research and find out about other media/services that focus on the same topics, the same platforms, and use the same strategies as you do.
Is there really no one else working on this topic in this format? Either a project is about to launch, there’s no market for it, or you’ve truly got the project of the century on your hands. In any case, your project will exist in a competitive landscape. The time people spend on Netflix, Spotify, or other media covering different topics already defines your competitive landscape.
Ask yourself:
- Who is currently offering a service similar to the one you want to provide to your target audience?
- Which media outlets, public figures, or products cover the same topics as you?
Lay the groundwork for your business model 💰
Assess the direct and indirect costs and revenue streams of your project. The business model must be consistent with your editorial vision and your target audience. Indeed, the cost of your media outlet must align with the financial resources and values of your target audience.
Take some time to think about:
- Your revenue: What revenue does this project generate? Whether the monetization is direct or indirect. How do you plan to monetize this project?
- Your costs: What costs does this project generate? Whether they are fixed or variable costs.
Assess the consistency of your project 🪢
Assess the relevance of your editorial proposal to your core target audience. Adjust it if necessary.
Our advice: Consistency is key. Be as precise and thorough as possible when creating this framework. The more thorough you are, the more valuable the strategic and marketing insights you’ll gain from aligning your targets with your editorial project.
I define my templates
✏️ The Médianes team has put together a handy guide to help you apply what you’ve learned from this sheet to your own project. To access it, please click the button below and follow the instructions.
To go further
💡Find inspiration
- Our book, “Creating a Media Outlet,” is a practical guide for anyone who wants to launch an independent and socially conscious media outlet.
- All our how-to guides are here.
Before leaving
🛠 Finished reading and filling out this form? We'd love your feedback! Have a question or comment? Send us a message at [email protected]. Thank you for your help, the Médianes team.
