Success in The Table Scraps
Why this may be our most successful marketing partnership yet
When we were introduced to Barna, a company whose mission I’ve admired from afar, I was ecstatic. For 30 years Barna has produced top-notch research, revealing the trends that affect everyday life. Along with asking a hundred other questions, the team (myself and two other strategists/ marketers) jumped in to see the state of the union for ourselves.
What we found was a marketer’s goldmine. An email list with consistent sends and an open rate above industry average. On the site, high traffic in the last 12 months, with a conversion rate that’s on the better half (room to improve, sure) and already showing potential. 20k followers on Twitter, half that on Facebook, both with regular engagement as a result of quality content.
All sounds great…so what’s the problem? It’s been said that sometimes what we fear is actually not failure, but our own success. A unicorn situation like this begs the question,
“Is it really possible to provide value? Can we meet the goal of growing revenue 10X over? Surely, we’re screwed — and at some point this will cap out.”
But here’s why it won’t.
- Barna’s audience is all in.
Our efforts are supplemental to regular communication already happening at a high level. Trust and rapport? Flowing like honey. We’re talking with an audience that understands Barna’s value proposition, craves the content they’re putting out, and believes intently in their mission.
As with any marketing, we are not creating substance. We’re finding unique ways to share the substance that Barna has been fostering for the last 30 years.
Through this substance, Barna’s audience has remained the hero. At any point across Barna’s web and marketing, you’ll find markers to indicate this. Take the research releases for example. Each concludes with a section on What This Research Means, guiding audiences through how the research applies to them and what to do with it.
2. Everything, I repeat, everything is driven by data.
From email to web to social, no decision has happened in a vacuum, and not one person on our team or Barna’s has started a sentence with, “Well I just really feel like….X would be effective.” Before bringing Whiteboard into the mix, Barna had several team members in place to audit social engagement, analytics, and email performance.
It’s difficult to argue a different direction when the numbers are on your side.
From here, we’re working through a priority list based on top-trafficked pages, plus gaps in the site pathways that are likely leading to a lower conversion rate.
We’ve found drop off points using Hotjar, and are testing incremental changes to landing pages for products and research releases. Not an ounce of energy wasted, and every stage has revealed a natural next step. It’s difficult to argue a different direction when the numbers are on your side.
3. Freedom to try anything once.
Barna’s team has been savvy and perceptive; eager to try anything once. This freedom is something we strive to find in clients no matter the industry — a willingness to adapt, to do something unexpected, to hold all ideas loosely. To realize that How we reach the Goal (this design, that design) is far smaller than the Goal itself — to connect with your audience.
With immense trust, comes immense results.
Past the wins working in our favor, we’ve noticed specific opportunities to continue growing Barna’s audience and presence. Adjustments that from the eyes of someone else, might be “too small”, or “not worth it”, or “not the kind of impact we’re looking for.”
But for me, a strategist and marketer, these micro tweaks are the gold. They’re what prevent the cap out. Make you money 10x over. Keep your audience engaged for years. Remind you that, if you are giving the world a product or service, you are never done.
If you are giving the world a product or service, your work is never done.
When the creep settles in, and you feel like you’ve won…when you no longer care about the details. When your employees don’t care about the details. When you’re not iterating. When you’re not learning. When you think you’re ahead of the curve. When you don’t ask your audience what they think. When you’re too successful…
The enemy, your competition, is lurking just outside the door. And they’ll have no problem devouring the details you left behind. Anyone fighting for their life knows a scrap of protein is everything.
Table “scraps” that we hope will make Barna (a lot) of money:
- Detailed audience segmentation within email
- Distraction-free reading for core content
- Clearer language around core offerings
- Shifting to mobile-first experience
