Growth Marketing: Deep Dive Into The LA Times Marketing Efforts

Take a look above and you will notice two things. First, the number of google searches for the Los Angeles Times has diminished consistently for the past 16 years. Second, the rate of which the searches are diminishing has practically doubled over the past 8 years.

The question we must ask ourselves is, why is this the case and what can we do about it?  Stick with me while we run a quick analysis on the Los Angeles Times current marketing efforts, conversions, and growth tips.

Below you will see tried, true, tested, and proven marketing tips that will uncover the following:

-How the Los Angeles Times can increase their opt in rates by 95% with one simple tweak to their opt-in form.

-How four small additions to the Los Angeles Times order page can increase sales by up to 17%.

-How the Los Angeles Times can increase conversions from their paid advertising efforts.

-How the Los Angeles Times can consistently produce ROI positive ads by tapping into an unknown internal database.

-How the Los Angeles Times can increase total sales by up to 50% by having one sales amplifier on their checkout page and how the Wall Street Journal uses this to bring in up to an additional $115,000,000 in revenue.

-Plus much more that you can use for your business to produce profitable advertising campaigns and increase visitors, conversions, leads, and overall sales.

HOMEPAGE: OPT-INS | POP-UPS | CONVERSIONS 

First things first. I love the design of the home page, The design is slick, modern, and feels like a Newspaper that is easy to digest, and captivating to say the least.

From a marketing perspective, there's a few key points on the home page and current advertising being deployed that I would dive deeper into in order to optimize the readership, email list, and subscribers.

If my gut is correct, then sponsored advertisements, google adsense, and subscriptions drive much of the revenue for the Los Angeles Times. If that's the case, then I would want to optimize the advertising CTR & subscription rate as much as possible.

Let's take a look at the opt-in trial on home page you see above:

From a fresh, first timers, perspective on visiting the home page, I see a major call out to subscribe for a trial of $1 a week. The offer is enticing, considering that I see it's a trial, and $1 is something practically anyone can afford.

So I have to ask myself, why don't I feel compelled to take the offer, and could it be that others feel the same way?

My first impression is this, I don't exactly know what I'm getting for $1 a week. I'm sure the brand does a lot of heavy lifting for frequent readers, however what about the readers that catch an interesting article every 2 or 3 weeks and don't know the ins and outs of what the Los Angeles Times has to offer inside of it's exclusive paid subscription?

I understand a trial offer with a general headline on the homepage, because at this point, we don't really know what the reader is most interested in. However something more descriptive than "The story begins in California" would at least give me some insight into what I have to gain as a subscriber.

As I've mentioned, I don't know yet what is inside the trial subscription, however I'm sure there's some content inside that can highlight a compelling headline to get the readers to consider it's offer.  

Here's a few off-the-cuff ideas that would get me to dig deeper into this offer:

-"(insider, exclusive, early released) stories that (educate or entertain) begin in California)

-"Subscribers stand out in social settings"

-"Subscribers make the best first impression"

-"Subscribers are twice as likely to make a great first impression with their peers"

I have a hunch that there is a good majority who make it to the website from a compelling headline and wait for the next one to come around. And if those headlines are being advertised to bring them back to the website, then that's money that could be used towards new readers instead of just frequent visitors.

The next opportunity to increase subscription rate on the $1 trial is to customize the headline on each category.

For instance, here is the "Food" home page.

If someone browses to this page, then there's a good chance they would be interested in additional content that revolved around food. So why not tailor the trial subscription towards food enthusiasts.

I would find the top 3 questions visitors have on food and tailor the headline towards it. For instance, if we took a poll and visitors said they're daily questions on food are:

- "What am I going to have for dinner today!?"

- "Should I find and cook a new recipe?"

- "Should I go out to eat? And if so, where?"

Then, for example, you could test:

-"Subscribers never ask what they're having for dinner tonight."

-"Subscribers find the hottest restaurants in town."

-"Subscribers spend 30 minutes less deciding where & what to eat every day."

The best part about this, is that with the resources available today we can actually create a poll on the banner with each question so that visitors can select their biggest questions and we can provide them with the exact solution that would benefit them the most by being a subscriber.

From my experience, the more targeted the offer is to your frequent visitor, the higher the conversion. It's worth testing, right?

The Exit Pop-up

Every chance to gain an email is better than no chance, right? I would say so, a simple exit popup can increase leads generated by up to 20%. Of course not everyone reaches that mark, some get 5% conversions on their exit popup while others can sometimes surpass 20%.

Regardless, when you have thousands of visitors to your website, that 5% can be a major increase in the leads generated. For instance, a quick search history from similarweb.com shows that the Los Angeles Times website received 42 million views in the past 6 months.

Woah, right? What's even crazier is roughly 30% of these were direct visitors, meaning people went to their search bar and typed "www.latimes.com" or they came directly from a link in an email. And 53.9% of them were from searches, meaning visitors likely went to google searching a topic and the Los Angeles Times was one of the recommendations.

That means 22.6 million visitors are stumbling on the platform and, to be extremely conservative, let's say 21 million of them are already opted in as a lead.

That gives the Los Angeles Times 1.6 million visitors to convert, and if the exit popup is performing at even 3% conversions then they are getting an additional 48,000 leads every 6 months.

If you optimize the exit popup and increase conversions by just 1%, that's an additional 16,000 leads. Take it to 15% and they're at an additional 240,000 leads every 6 months. That's powerful.

Note: The numbers above aren't exact, however it's a rough estimate of the volume of traffic coming from around the web.

What would I do to increase the opt-in rate by up to 95%.

I would test multiple variations of the exit pop-up as possible. As I mentioned above, the power of the resources today let's us customize everything. Even the pop-up and the message in the pop-up on every page that a visitor is exiting from.  

The best part about this scenario is that the message in the popup can be tested for free, since the traffic is organic!

The next thing I would test is having a questionnaire. For instance:

What would you like to see more of:

A) Community

B) Entertainment & Arts

C) Politics

D) Business

This simple addition to a popup takes consumers into a state of micro commitments and leads them to customizing their content. Having a questionnaire has proven to increase opt-in rates by up to 95% for information products.

Lastly, I would test different offers. Opting in to a newsletter is one thing, however if you poll 1.6 million people and you get 100 different responses on what they want then you have a lot of newletters to release to satisfy that promise.  

Instead, you could try giving a one time offer such as a guide, ebook, whitepaper, case study, etc. that covers the wants of the prospects and add the newsletter an added bonus! Or vice-versa.

Regardless, adding bonus's, specials, and custom offers to an opt-in can lead to a measurable increase in conversions. This simple act of adding an additional offer has proven to increase conversions by up to 50% for information products.

Consistently produce paid advertising "home runs"

The next best thing about hyper targeting offers to organic traffic is that it can help guide your paid advertising spend to increase the number of visitors, readers, and subscribers to the website.  

For instance, if you know one offer promoting a guide to the best organic restaurants in LA is outperforming any other tested offer in the exit pop-up, then there's a good chance it will receive a favorable conversion on your advertisement itself. This way you hit the ground running with your ads and your not testing on your own dime.

Speaking of advertising, let's take a look into LA Times current ads!

ADVERTISING

Above you can see 3 different ads running, however, in total it looks like the LA Times is running roughly 26 ad campaigns, with some having an average of 3 variations of each one. The variations could be testing different audiences, images, videos, and objectives.

However since the first few variations all have the same image, video, and objective, it seems that each of the 26 campaigns are being tested against 3 different audiences or placements at a time.

Since I'm an outsider looking in it's good to note that the above claims on the variables being tested might be slightly off. Regardless, it's a good first start to dive into an analysis on what's running and what could be done to attract new visitors.

Subscribe Ads

In the image above, you will notice each ad is a video, if clicked on, it cycles through a specific theme. The first theme is sports, second is community, and third is celebrity news/entertainment.

What caught my eye on this is that these ads are video, likely because video performs and can reach a larger audience than image/text based ads, especially if you're running a traffic objective on facebook and instagram.

Video ads also give you a gauge of how interested a prospect is in your promotion. Someone that watches a video for 5 seconds isn't nearly as likely to be a good prospect as someone that watches a video for 5 minutes. This matters because you can then filter these audiences by least likely to most likely to convert into a customer and tailor ads specifically to each customer.

None the less, let's get back to these ads. From a first impression, I was intrigued by the image and "next" overlay as the video thumbnail, so as a typical facebook user, I might click on this ad.

Then I would see that the video covers a specific theme, and that the ad gives me an option to subscribe. If I click then I would be taken to a sales page prompting me to spend $1 for a four week trial.  

The next thing I noticed was the thoughts, comments, and questions in my head about what I would subscribe for. Am I subscribing for news about a specific theme? What type of information would I get access to for each theme? Breaking news, latest updates, hottest trends, etc?

My take on this would be to test utilizing the description in each ad to give me a better reason to click subscribe. There's many different ways to write a description and each way has a major impact on the actions a user takes. The description can be educational, controversial, emotional, promotional, etc. whichever way we fill in the blank, it's important to know that each one can be leveraged to guide a reader to a decision. In this example, that decision would be to buy a trial subscription.

However writing the copy (descriptions) for an ad or promotion is a whole other science that I don't have time to get into, but I will give you a personal experience in just a minute on the impact it can have,

Along with the ads itself, there's a process to go about finding the right audience, optimizing the ad for that audience, and then optimizing the conversions on that ad. Since I don't have the internal insight behind each one, I will leave it at that. If you ever have questions on that process or how to better your results, don't hesitate to reach out!

Don't worry, even though there's a lot of things you can test with an advertisement, one of the biggest impacts of it's performance, aside from the right audience, is the copy.

My Previous Experience Increasing Conversions

Not too long ago I was running an ad on social media for a fitness trainer promoting a bootcamp. Similar to readers wanting to gain knowledge, whether to entertain or educate, Fitness Bootcamp attendees want to be fit.

In my preparation for the advertisement I had a constant reminder in the back of my head, "Our attention span is less than that of a goldfish, so keep your ads short and to the point".

So I went about my way creating a general advertisement for this bootcamp promoting fitness! I mean, at the end of the day, that's what people want right?

In my case, I was wrong. The advertisement flopped. The cost per registrant was over the Lifetime Value of the customer, and the fitness trainer would have exhausted all of their funds before making a profit if I were to continue.

So what do we marketers do when something doesn't work! Give up.

Totally kidding! We test, and test some more. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with multiple reasons why some people just can't seem to get to the gym.

Here's what I came up with based on my own experience starting out in the gym; keep in mind, a survey of actual previous customers is best, however I was working on a timeline and with a limited budget.

-I hated going to the gym alone, the motivation to stay was short lived.

-I hated the fact that I had no idea which machines did what.

-I felt like I was under a microscope from the die hard fitness junkies judging my every move.

I took these questions and lengthened the ad copy:

Everyone wants to be healthy. However, it's tough walking in the gym alone. It's overwhelming with all of the machines we know nothing about and being under the microscope of the die hard fitness junkies judging our every move. Let alone, getting a personal trainer in the middle of this chaos just screams, "I don't know what I'm doing!"

We're just trying to get started, keep momentum, and make progress, right?

Don't worry, we know what it's like, so we reserved an entire hour just for you and your peers to come together to get your momentum going, calories burning, and walk out knowing every machine like the back of your hand with our top personal trainer.

If that sounds like you, then don't wait, take 10 seconds to register below for the next class and we'll see you there!

P.S. you just might even find a steady workout partner to come back with the second time!"

This promotion outperformed it's previous one on every level. We received more readership and registrants all while keeping our cost per acquisition less than half of the lifetime value of a customer, resulting in cash flow and profits to continue funding the campaign.

There's much more that was involved in the creation of the promotion, however the lesson I learned here is that hyper targeting our prospects interests, fears, or desires is something to test in a campaign that is being optimized for conversions.

EMAIL NEWSLETTER

Hi Julia, great to meet you! Since I'll be emailing you shortly, you will be right here, reading these words, getting a 3rd person perspective of your email. Funny how things work these days, right?

Anyhow, I figured, why not continue our conversation here!

I like your introduction. Getting news bright and early helps get my creativity flowing. I also heavily appreciate that you welcome us, the reader, to get in touch with recommendations, suggestions, and questions. It definitely adds a personal touch that I haven't seen anywhere else.

I love California, and many people I meet feel the same way. The interesting thing is that many of us put a different level of emphasis on what we think matters most.

Now I understand this introduction email must appeal to a broad audience, so I give you props for making sure to highlight that we're getting important news, however if I can pin point the stories and news that I value as an individual then I would be much more invested into the information I receive.

This ties back in to my concept suggested above on the exit-popup for the Free Newsletter. If I could select a category I'm more interested in, then my welcome email could be hyper targeted and tailored to what I value, thus increasing my investment in receiving the newsletter. I imagine a simple test on this topic just might increase the average email open rate, click through rate, and time spent on the website. What do you think?

The First Email Newsletter

*Drum roll!*

Here it is, the first email newsletter. I must say, catchy introduction, and well written copy. I have nothing but positive words to say about this release. However if the goal is to increase readership and keep our email list engaged, then I have to say, I didn't read the entire email.

Not because of how it was written, you did great. However I personally don't have an interest in Billie Eilish. I typically start my morning reading news about business, marketing, economic changes. So I'll be on the look out for that when it comes!

The only issue is, I'm not sure when that's coming :(

Similar to your readers, since the LA Times likely has millions coming in every month, I would guess that they too give weight to certain content than others. And if they don't know exactly what's hitting their inbox every morning, then they give it less attention since it requires more work to figure it out than to be conditioned to already know they are getting what they like.

Open Rates

Since you get an inside view of the open rates, click through rates, and bounce rates of each email that is pushed out, I will go out on a limb and say, those numbers aren't always the same, are they?

If I'm right, then the next question would be, how come? Different headlines have different open rates predominantly because of two factors.  

How compelling the headline is and how relevant the content inside is to the consumer. If that's the case, then our assumption must steer towards the idea that the readers all have a different taste of what is compelling and what they would like to see being discussed.  

What would happen if we custom tailored our content towards those readers?  

Now we have to ask, well Victor, we can't custom tailor millions of emails, that's ridiculous! It sure is, however if you were able to divide those millions into, let's say 5, different categories then we can custom tailor 5 emails and increase the appeal of our newsletter to our readers highest interests. Thus, increasing our readership, open rates, and opt-in rates.

Second, I noticed the bottom of the email has links to different articles. Take a look at the image to the right:

If we think about what's happening here, we can see that we're being suggested content from two categories. Grammy/pop culture and top stories that impact the community.

I'm sure these suggested links weren't arbitrary, however, to my point above, it's a hit or miss with what the readers might find interest in. Mixing it up is good, however what about the other 14 categories listed on the LA Times website. If we knew more about what each reader wanted, we have an arsenal of content that can be tailored to them in the suggestions below.

This would then take them to the website, and when they realize they ran out of credits for free articles, they would have two options: wait until the next newsletter hits their inbox, or buy the trial subscription.

If there's one thing I know, it's that people don't like to wait. Amazon built it's entire business on the concept of reducing wait times. Now the question is, how much business can the LA Times get by doing the same?

ORDER PAGE

Who's to say this order page above is anything but perfect, right? It's easy on the eyes, simple to understand, and broken into two steps which is proven to increase conversions. With a two step order form you get to re-engage those that started the order process but never finished (i.e. they entered their email but stopped when they were asked for their credit card after hitting 'continue'.)

But why would someone even visit this page if they didn't want to make a purchase? It is an order page after all...

I never fully understood this until it was broken down to me by one of Agora Financials top copywriters producing millions in sales from a single financial publication. It is stated that visiting an order form is similar to browsing a store and holding a product in your hand. You like the idea of the product or else you would have never picked it up. You know it's for sale because it's being displayed in the store and has a price tag. Yet, most people end up putting that product down and walking out empty handed. Why?

Think about the last time you held something but didn't purchase it.  

What were you thinking at that very moment. Usually we're having a debate in our mind on why we should or shouldn't buy it.

-"This is interesting, I wonder (what it does, how it feels, what it looks like on me).

-"Not bad, it actually fits, looks pretty good, and I might use it once a week"

-"Do I really need it? There's a hundred other places I can get the same thing for cheaper, if not free."

-"If I just lost weight I could fit into my old pair that looks brand new like this."

-"I have the money but I could probably use it for something better"

-"It just doesn't seem like it's worth it right now, maybe later"

Every time we hold something in consideration, we're having a conversation, and if you're at a blank order form, you're letting the prospect decide based on the conversation in their head, when instead you could guide that conversation with more content and increase the number of buyers.

There's a few ways to do this:

The first way is to validate a good buying decision: When people see a line of buyers, they automatically put more weight on it being "worth it". Using this psychology online can increase your number of sales fulfilled on the order page.

For example, order forms with small popups showing visitors every time someone makes a purchase is proven to increase sales by an additional 5%.

Second, you can let your current customers speak on your behalf: Imagine now, your standing next to this line with an item in your hand, thinking about buying it. At the same time you see a long line of buyers waiting to hand the cashier their credit card and on top of that, everyone that purchases comes up to you and tells you it was a great decision, they love it, and you should buy it too!

Now you have more weight in favoring it's purchase and are less likely to put it on the shelf and walk out empty handed. You can use your top 5 or 10 customer testimonials and slap it right under the order form. This is proven to increase purchases up to an additional 10%.

Now those that love to purchase, will buy right then and there with no further explanation. However you'll still have a percentage of visitors to the order page that objections in their mind. Those that are careful spenders shouldn't be discounted, they should be leveraged.  

The difference between a good salesman and a bad salesmen can mean millions of dollars for any company.  

What if you can find the top producing salesman (or woman), and have them talk to every single customer that visits your website 24 hours a day 7 days a week to close the sale.  

They would create the utmost desire, answer their every objection, and walk them through the product they're about to purchase. That would be pretty great right?

So why not have one. This can be done by having a video at the top of the order page and/or a sales letter following the order form.

World class sales letters can build a business completely from scratch, it's worth having one.  

By having all of these items in play, you're looking at adding an additional 17% more sales from those that visit the order page.

Increase total sales by up to 50%

What is the strategy that the Wall Street Journal uses to increase their sales by up to $115,000,000?

Adding an additional offer on the order page. Instead of just having a digital product, they offer a physical product as well, and they offer a mixture of digital and physical.

If you look at any book reader, there's always those that just have kindle books, those that just have hard copies, and those that have both. Why limit your sales potential by just having one?

Of course adding a physical product can become time consuming and logistically exhausting, however, the principle is the same. The Los Angeles Times can offer a multitude of things to increase sales to certain types of buyers.

This alone has sometimes grown a business by 150%-300%. It's worth looking in to!

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

I'm sure the readers of the LA Times weigh heavily in favor of a certain demographic. However it's good to note, that demographics are changing every year.

Consider this, what if every year we lose more elder readers than we gain in younger readers. Over time this results in a slow decline in subscribers and ultimately, growth. Isn't that how business that survived for the past 30 years all of a sudden disappeared?

Toys R Us used to be the place for kids... when those kids were our parents. However when each next generation came along, things became easier and more tailored to the customer. They decided why spend time driving and walking past the aisles we don't care about just to get to what we do care about. Now we can avoid that and buy online, set timers to remind us about exactly what we frequently buy and when we need to buy it. It's a whole new world.

With the internet and resources now, everything is custom tailored to our needs. Even social media tags our interests and delivers us content based on it. Maybe that's why Myspace slowly started it's decline and eventually disappeared.

Competition is only growing, and that competition eats away at our customers attention and dilutes the value that things once held. Discounts used to hit home runs all the time, now you see them everywhere and pay less. Heck Honey, the company, is built on discounts and completely destroyed a stores ability to gain customers on price. There can only be a lower price until someone is out of business.

Television and Physical newspapers used to hold the world in it's hand for the latest and greatest news. Now it's delivered by different providers directly to our phone. Whether it's on social media, websites, or emails, our customers now have the luxury of deciding what they want and don't want.

We covered a lot today. However if we were to dive into the details more in depth, I would require a book instead of an article. Regardless, the suggestions made above can be implemented on the surface and tested to see if they need more attention.

I must say, I enjoyed doing this more than you know. So if any other reader would like a deep dive of their marketing from an outsiders perspective, don't hesitate to reach out!

-Victor Sabbagh