How I helped my team solve a political and content channel and distribution problem by turning a landmine into a gold mine
BACKSTORY Who knew the word “blog” would be so controversial? With some disappointing paid and organic bounce rates, it became clear we needed a viable landing page where our marketing team could 1) CTA to a juicy content resource; 2) test new content’s value; 3) build indexable SEO/SEM juice. But, with the CEO actually and strictly forbidding (yes, forbidding) we market with a blog, we still needed the channel for strategic growth and tactical value.
INSIGHTS
It seemed so simple: just repackage the blog as a collection of content clusters in a “resource library.” With some wireframes to pitch, our stakeholders could see rather than fear, and we got the green light to build, curate, and launch.
DELIVERABLES: Content strategy, distribution strategy, copywriting, copy editing
Creative partners: Caroll Casbeer (art direction); Christa Seabolt (UX design)
Check out the blog, I mean, resource library >
RESULTS
Sure enough, bounce rates dropped. Number of visits increased. More forms got filled after ad clicks. And PR gave us a little love for opening our indexable library to some of the content they’d craeted, too.
“Solving for this had become a politically charged obstacle, but your solution built trust and resolved stakeholder objections. Thank you for picking this up when everyone else had put it down like a hot potato. Your fresh perspective met everyone’s needs.”
ABOUT VACASA AND VACASA REAL ESTATE
Vacasa is North America’s largest vacation rental real estate brokerage and property management organization. Vacasa is also Portland, OR’s first tech unicorn, valued in 2019 at $1B+. In 2018, Vacasa launched its real estate arm. In less than two years, our national brokerage scaled from coast to coast, helping us own every moment in the vacation rental business lifecycle. As the senior most content strategist and writer, I supported Growth, Product, Partners, UX, and our Marketing Ops teams.
Why is Vacasa Real Estate B2B and B2C? We market to real estate brokerages and their top agents; multi-unit short-term rental real estate investors with their own LLCs; and families who buy their vacation homes specifically as revenue-generating assets.