A Lean Marketing Strategy for (de)regulation nation’s Next 100 Days
The business education we’ve received during the Entrepreneurial Journalism Fellowship has taught me that editorial vision is the seed of a news venture, but growth happens by testing our assumptions, analyzing the results, deciding on next steps, and then actually taking them.
Over the past two weeks I conducted two such tests—one planned, the other unforeseen—on my own assumptions for how best to increase the audience for my venture, the weekly newsletter (de)regulation nation. (Sign up at deregnation.com.) Fast and steady reader growth are important to my editorial goals (amplifying environmental news and increasing its audience), and crucial to eventually generating enough revenue to be self-sustaining and then profitable.
Here’s what happened, and what it’s taught me.
I noted in a prior Journalism Innovation post that my first Twitter promoted tweet (advertising) campaign, during April, did not result in many new subscribers to (de)regulation nation.
So for a second campaign during May:
- I increased the budget by third, from roughly $60 to $90.
- I also added an additional “creative” (a tweet from my feed) with a very different image from the first, setting out consciously to learn which would attract more saves, retweets and clicks: a dark-humor cartoon or a screen-grab from the newsletter’s DIY-aesthetic signup page.
This campaign is still running, but I’m already seeing actionable results:
- Tweet One is attracting notably more saves and shares than Tweet Two. This is exactly the opposite of what I expected.
- More useful still: Even with a one-third-larger budget, which means thousands more eyeballs encountering thousands more sponsored tweets, there’s been no Twitter-ad-driven uptick in subscriptions.
Why is Tweet One doing better? It may be that a) the screen-grab reduces uncertainty by providing a view of what users are clicking into to ; and b) the satirical cartoon underscores the realities of the Trump deregulatory agenda, which could be generating a hopeless feeling that undercuts wanting to know more.
I won’t know for sure unless I ask actual users about their reactions to the ads, but in this case the “which” without the “why” is still useful information.
This campaign has so far validated my suspicion that at this time, advertising is not the best use of my tight funds for increasing subscriptions to (de)regulation nation.
Still, the venture has seen two spikes in signups during early May, each large enough to push the subscriber growth rate towards 10 percent. They didn’t come from my paid advertising, but from the earned media of “influencers” advocating the newsletter’s value:
- Spike One came after I emailed the members-only listserv of the Society of Environmental Journalists (where I’ve been a member since 2006) to ask colleagues to subscribe. That spurred some unsolicited accolades from SEJ leaders and other members for the newsletter, as well as the work I’m doing as an Entrepreneurial Journalism fellow. My request plus those plaudits drove a spiky uptick in signups.
- Spike Two followed a positive review of the newsletter in Greenpeace Germany’s environmental newsletter, another unexpected but welcome boost for (de)regulation nation’s reputation and reach. How do I know? Because many new “.de” email addresses appeared on the list in the two days following the GP-Germany mailing.
Lean Times Call for Creative Marketing Tactics.
Fortunately, They’re More Fun & Work Better.
What all this tells me is that while my social media advertising experiments have been educational, actual growth will come from a combination of:
- Continuing to put out the best possible news product.
- Connecting personally with “influencers” in environmental news and views, and also introducing myself to new communities of environmentally-concerned users, online and off.
Happily, these are also among the most inexpensive, and for me most enjoyable, ways to continue developing (de)regulation nation as a news venture in the coming months.
The First 100 Days Are Done. On to the Next 100.
Over the past semester, it’s been remarkable to learn firsthand how much experimentation and change can/should be part of a startup business. That may be especially true of the startups we’ve been working on during the Tow-Knight Entrepreneurial Journalism Fellowship, which combine passion for news, trustworthy information, and positive community impacts with developing the revenue streams that will bring those passions alive and underwrite their success.
Thank you to the CUNY J-school faculty, staff, and graduate students, and to the entrepreneurs, innovators, and others who’ve shared their time with us inside and outside these classrooms on West 40th Street, for getting us this far.
And to my my brilliant fellow 2018 @tkcuny fellows: I can’t wait to see what we accomplish in the next few months.
