Consumer is a non-government organisation in New Zealand.
Funded largely through membership revenue, Consumer independently tests products and services and publishes results online and in a monthly magazine.
The long and the short of it
The brief to me was to identify the ‘step change’ needed to grow membership revenue.
I quickly identified that the business was facing a relevancy challenge.
42% of Consumer members were 65 years old or older. Many of them became members at a time when consumer protection was lacking.
Cancellation reasons said things like ‘I love what you do but I’m buying less now, and I can’t afford to support what you do’.
My recommendation was that we conduct market research to understand and then establish a more relevant Consumer brand over the long-term.
Our research found
- As consumers age, they become more confident in making purchasing decisions and less willing to pay others for decision making advice.
- 25-34 is a key stage of life where confidence in decision making is the lowest and willingness to pay is the greatest, particularly around ‘first time’ decision making.
- There are clear decision making areas where confidence is low and willingness to pay is elevated e.g. housing and property, insurance, new and used cars and financial services.
- If magazines are consulted, they appear later in the decision-making process and contain specialist content.
The research resulted in a ‘eureka’ moment for the Executive team with some of the findings being implemented immediately. Consumer magazine for example pivoted to bi-monthly bumper issues focussed on specialist subjects.
To drive sales in the short-term, I:
- Optimised the company’s SEM budget.
- Ran a digital advertising campaign to ‘disseminate content in culturally relevant spaces’ for example by promoting baby content in mum’s forums.
- Launched a digital pass product that would allow consumers to buy a one-off test result.
- Started an eDM series that reminded supporters of our wins asking for donations.
- Promoted the magazine at newsstands, adding PoS displays around the country.
I also worked with a UX agency to overhaul the website, improve its information architecture and optimise the paywall experience to drive more conversions and reduce the bounce rate.
Results
- Reduced SEM CPA by 72.7% and increased conversions by 272.5%.
- Drove $2,000 in revenue through a single donation.
- Increased magazine sales by 6x fold through PoS marketing.
- Doubled membership acquisition from 246 users in April 2018 to 588 in May.
- Increased online transactions by 25% YoY.
- The digital pass campaign received 5 million impressions in just a few weeks.
- We sold 3,447 digital passes in just two months.