Results Driven Design

What gets measured gets done.
— William Deming

90% of experiments in the field confirm that productivity is enhanced by well-defined, challenging goals.
— The Economist, 2015

Ricochet360

One of the playgrounds I love to play in is content marketing. In particular, I love building website traffic, a process that requires the right tools (e.g., Moz.com, Google Analytics), the right methodology (e.g., experiments, content development), and regular analysis. Organic website traffic is particularly rewarding because it typically has a long-term benefit and a low overall cost. It’s not a silver bullet, but an integral part of creating a solid online marketing strategy. At Speed to Contact, I used tools that clearly show an impact in organic traffic, and that traffic lead to greater conversion as well. I used a few cornerstone blog posts, a bit of PPC, and SEO analysis to stimulate the growth.

CaptureApps

As proof of the long-term value of content marketing, I love the story of CaptureApps. This mobile app had zero organic traffic when I started working on the website at the beginning of 2015. I mean ZERO — it was simply a support site for those who bought the app on the App Store, so all the traffic was basically direct. We decided to try content marketing, and I built out an annual campaign to write productivity articles for the two target markets, students and business users. Alternating between the two, I posted 48 articles in 52 weeks, and that grew traffic month over month. And despite discontinuing the program after a yeaer, traffic continues today because those articles were evergreen. Productivity tips are valid long after they’re posted…

Smart Classroom Management

Sometimes one little change of tactics can generate serious results. At SCM, a weekly newsletter shared valuable blog content with the audience of teachers. I suggested changing from including the entire article in the newsletter to simply including a teaser, which DOUBLED website traffic the next week. And why did that matter? Because more traffic increased sales of the books that SCM offered. Having more eyeballs (ATTENTION) is critical to growth of revenue – not only because those visitors represent potential buyers, but they also enable better experimentation (sample size!).