A successful customer media strategy hinges on what advertisers have long called “frequency” — the number of times a customer must be exposed to a message for it to be effective.

“One-and-done” customer media will disappoint your customers, as sure as “one-and-done” disappoints fans who see their team lose in the first round of the playoffs.

Recurring media is king. So recurring (and subscribable) media like magazines, newsletters, frequent blog posts and podcasts have been the early and effective tools of digital content marketers.

We’ve learned in our work for clients that recurring ebooks can also be an effective customer media strategy — and for some marketers, a source for potential brand-extension opportunities. For most business-to-business marketers, recurring ebooks can add value to products while establishing the company as a leader in its industry or market niche.

The subscription book business model has been around centuries. While the Internet has hurt the traditional business model of companies like Book of the Month Club, online subscription ebook services have started to appear and succeed. The tech industry was a logical marketplace to demonstrate how a concept like Safari Books, an early subscription ebook service, could catch on. And for the general consumer, companies ranging from venture-backed startups to Amazon.com are pursuing the holy grail of becoming the “Netflix for Books” – a mass-market, all-you-can-read-for-a-monthly-fee approach.

However, we believe the idea of subscription ebooks is even better suited to narrowly focused consumer and business niche marketers: how-to manuals, cookbooks, biographies, backgrounders, quarterly or monthly “best-of-blogs” anthologies. Whether you provide the ebooks for free or charge for them, a recurring ebook series can keep customers coming back for more.

You could be the one to write the book on the market you serve. Or, better, lots of books.

Also on Hammock.com: 5 Tips for Creating a Successful Subscription Ebook Series

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