I want to get back to growing With Jack after a year of distraction by running lots of mini experiments and being more intentional with measuring results.
Hold up, aren't we missing a month? I mentioned May's focus would be on SEO. I outsourced a SEO audit, but I was distracted with competing at Four Nations and making progress with our quote and bind so didn't get much done beyond that.
June, however, has been excellent. I don't want to speak too soon, but it's starting to look like the compounding efforts of the monthly experiments are yielding results.
What makes me say that? We've doubled the number of enquiries coming through the site compared to this time last year.
In June we engaged in two partnerships and sponsored two conferences, plus the final episode of our sponsorship with DIFTK went live.
Conference sponsorship
I travelled to England for Middlesbrough Front End. With Jack was the lanyard sponsor so our logo was worn by every attendee.
As part of the £1000 package I was allocated two tickets. I gifted one to a customer and used the other myself.
Most of the talks were too technical for me, but a few things happened that made the trip worthwhile.
- All sponsors were introduced to the room. This was a great opportunity to put a face to With Jack and make my presence at the event known
- Some of my wonderful customers said hi
- As a big football fan I loved the tour of the Riverside Stadium on the lunch break
- I reconnected with people I know from a past life like Gavin, Jake and Harry
- Instead of sticking to familiar faces, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone on the networking breaks and introduced myself to people I had never met before
It's difficult attributing sign-ups to conference sponsorship since nobody is following a URL I can track, but I've received a couple of emails from attendees.
The following week With Jack sponsored Pixel Pioneers in Bristol. This was more up my street with a focus on design, but I wasn't able to attend in person. Work has been nutty and we had a camping trip arranged the following day so travel was tricky.
The £500 package got me a ticket to the conference, links on the website, newsletter and social media. Plus With Jack's logo on the signage and a mention on stage.
Ideally I'd have had a presence at Pixel Pioneers because I think it leaves more of an impression. We've sponsored 3 conferences this year (one still to come) and that's as far as I'll take this type of advertising for 2025, but next year my goal is to attend every conference I sponsor and have more of a physical presence.
Partnerships
Last year I had a meeting with a freelance network to explore partnership opportunities. I didn't have the funds to do anything with it at the time, but in June we signed a two month deal.
It's pricey—hence why I've only committed to two months—but with it comes access to publishing blogs, newsletters and social takeovers through their platform. They have tens of thousands of freelancers on there.
I've heard mixed feedback from providers on how effective partnerships are. Another broker I know attributes much of their growth to partnerships. Similarly I've heard they're a waste of money from others.
In the 3 weeks it's been live we've only had 24 tracked visits to the site and our social takeover had '1' like. Granted this may be down to the dry topic of insurance, but when I look at the engagement from our podcast sponsorship I'm thinking I've made a mistake.
Tomorrow our blog post is published and we have 3 social media takeovers left. Hopefully one of these bangs because even if all 24 visitors bought a policy (they won't), that's not even half of our spend recouped. Interestingly we are getting more traffic from ChatGPT right now.
The other partnership we're trying is a bit different. It's a monthly membership to a network that includes meet-ups, personalised intros and digital networking events.
This feels a lot more "bespoke". I believe this will be a case of 'you get what you put in' so I intend on participating in as many of the networking events as possible. My goal isn't to sell With Jack—it's to be helpful to people. Address any late payment concerns or answer any insurance-related questions they may have and see what comes of it.
So far I've got one concrete follow-up scheduled and a bunch of new LinkedIn pals.
Looking back at my other mini experiments
If you're new here, here's a recap of my monthly experiments:
- Encouraging backlinks with "insured by" badges in January's mini experiment
- Posting to social media consistently and investing in video content with February's mini experiment
- Delving into advertising with podcasts and more in March's mini experiment
- Developing landing pages for specific industries and improving existing ones for April's mini experiment
I can only see two new backlinks since I last checked. Is there a more accurate method for tracking than filtering by "first seen" on Ahrefs? I believe more customers are adding them than Ahrefs is showing judging by the response when we highlight the badges at point of sale.
Having reduced posting from three times a week down to just once, I can confirm that quantity does indeed matter with social media. Our engagement and growth stalled. Three times a week is too much in terms of publishing new content, so I'm compromising with twice a week.
The last episode for Doing It For The Kids was published last week. It's difficult to track sign-ups from podcasts unless customers explicitly tell you. Luckily for us, lots of customers have told us they've discovered us from DIFTK! They have such an engaged listener base. I hope I don't regret funnelling money into partnerships when this was showing promise. I guess that's the point in these mini experiments though—to figure out what does and doesn't work.
Rankings improved for the existing landing pages I worked on and we picked up new keywords for the landing pages I developed, but none of this has translated to much traffic. I just received the SEO audit today and apparently there's a lot of untapped potential. It will be good to see what can be achieved when following the advice of somebody that knows what they're doing.
A look at July's mini experiment
There won't be one. I have a holiday with my family booked and I really want to switch off. We're mid-way through the year so it seems like a good time to recharge.
When I return from holiday I intend on spending the rest of the month doing deep work with my quote and bind system. We are so close to getting it over the line.
