BLR Profile Gives You ‘Backstage’ Information To a Very Audience-Friendly Company
“We do everything we can think of to get visitors to the site,” says Bob Brady, founder and president of BLR—Business and Legal Resources. “We use paid search, organic search optimization, email promotions, demo disks…. anything that makes sense, because you’re never really sure what might work.”
BLR’s formula does work and has been for many years. That’s one reason why this leading compliance information company is profiled in SIPA’s latest management report, Building Subscription Websites That Sell: A Marketing Perspective. The profiles in this report give you very workable examples of many kinds of successful subscription websites.
Another reason is that BLR has its own special way of doing things. Non-subscriber site visitors are allowed to view quite a bit of free content in the form of news articles and introductions to articles or topics of interest. Through the homepage, a visitor can get to a community forum—the one today happens to be asking what happened to all the male HR workers (apparently 80% of the profession is now female)—product showcases, the BLR blog and several other windows of interest.
The community forums sit in front of the pay wall to build site usage and as a source for prospects. An Ask the Expert feature allows only subscribers to submit questions and receive an emailed response. When visitors reach a level that is behind the pay wall, they are challenged with an invitation to subscribe for unlimited access. Pages throughout the site feature a free trial button that also links to a sign-up page.
“Our strategy has been to take all the material we’ve been providing for years and years on paper or other formats, put it on the Web, and then provide a navigation system so our subscribers can find what they need whether they’re analyzing a problem, doing training, or creating a job description,” explains Brady. The Minimum Information Unit (MIU) on HR.BLR.com is the application that allows the subscriber to fulfill those goals.
“Navigation and search are tremendously important,” stresses Brady, “because that’s how people find information. The challenge is building the architecture so that, once you post the information on the website, people can find it.”
Webinar listings are placed prominently on the BLR website—and for good reason. During the week of Aug. 16, seven Webinars are being offered on subjects like New York Employment Law, Mileage/Commuting Reimbursements and a new OSHA Proposed Standard. From the schedule, it looks like this is a typical week for BLR.
As with many SIPA members, most individual customers who subscribe online respond to the free trial offer and register by providing an email address, a credit-card number, and a billing address. The credit card is charged only at the expiration of the free trial, unless the subscriber cancels before the trial period expires.
BLR has experimented with many trial offers. The current standard offer is 15 days, but “we’re constantly testing,” says Brady. “Price testing, offer testing, ad testing—it’s all very important.” A recent test of registration form headlines, for example, determined that one variation of a new headline improved conversion rates 15.74%. BLR uses Google’s free Website Optimizer as its management tool for testing.
This management report includes many other full case studies, so you really get a spectrum of successful subscription websites. Building Subscription Websites That Sell: A Marketing Perspective follows the very popular Independent Publishers Legal Handbook as part of this exciting new SIPA series, designed to help make the member experience a very productive one.
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