Celebrating a landslide victory in market share
How does one brag without dropping names or presenting proprietary data?
I’m going to try anyway, because this victory was too big to not share.
User metrics provided by a standard-bearer in the industry showed that my newsroom, my team and I were dominant winners in our market during January — emerging from a busy month with a victory larger than we’ve ever seen before.
We’ve been in a long-running tug-of-war with a very strong competitor and in the past we’ve sometimes emerged with a 1-2% margin of victory. That happens a few months in each year, usually on the strength of a great response to breaking news or a major storm.
This time, our January was stacked with a series of major tragedies that spawned multiple stories and gained national attention. These stories happened in the core of our coverage area and our team’s emphasis on distribution through SEO and social media was immensely successful.
On the strength of that coverage, we eclipsed our main competitor by approximately 70%!
The circumstances of this win were unusual, but the experience shows that ultimately our organic growth strategies will be successful.
Furthermore, it suggests that our competitor’s paywall strategy limited the extent of their reach. Both of our websites have great loyalty, but the paywall approach does not provide room for expansion when a tsunami of national attention strikes.
Incredibly, and proudly, our team followed this remarkable January victory with another win over all tracked competitors in the market during February!
And again in March, making it a perfect first quarter! The first time we’ve ever had such a long winning streak!