Sales were falling. Advertising revenue was disappearing. Competitors were retreating. Here is how a bold, accountable direct-response strategy helped TheStreet.com create new revenue, launch four premium products, and gain market share.
Key Takeaways
- A declining market does not automatically require a declining marketing budget. It requires a smarter, more accountable strategy.
- When customer attitudes change, your positioning, products, offers, and copy must change with them.
- TheStreet.com did not simply cut costs during a recession. It repositioned existing services and created new premium products based on what investors valued most.
- CDMG helped transform RealMoney.com into a premium subscription website, even though investors already had access to extensive free financial information.
- The response to the new premium positioning exceeded the client’s expectations by more than 200%.
- Four new premium investment services exceeded projections by 350%.
- A coordinated multichannel strategy—including websites, email, digital advertising, cross-selling, upselling, and shopping cart improvements—created multiple new revenue streams.
- When competitors retreat, the right marketing strategy can help your company capture market share and emerge stronger.
Sales were falling.
Competition was increasing.
Advertising revenue was disappearing.
And the economy was working against them.
That was the situation confronting TheStreet.com when I received the call.
The company faced a decision familiar to many business owners, presidents, CMOs, and marketing directors:
Should it retreat, reduce its marketing, and wait for conditions to improve?
Or should it change its strategy and find new ways to grow?
TheStreet.com chose to act.
That decision helped turn a difficult market into an opportunity to create new revenue, launch successful products, and capture market share from retreating competitors.
Here is how it happened—and what you can learn from it.
1. TheStreet.com Faced a Dangerous Revenue Squeeze.
TheStreet.com was being hit from several directions.
Sales were declining.
Competition was increasing.
The financial markets and economy were down.
At the same time, advertisers were cutting their budgets. That caused
TheStreet.com’s advertising revenue to fall just when the company needed it most.
The pressure was real.
But indiscriminate cost-cutting would not solve the underlying problem.
TheStreet.com needed an accountable marketing strategy capable of producing measurable revenue—not simply more traffic, impressions, clicks, or activity.
After carefully analyzing its products, customers, positioning, and marketing, I recommended three immediate actions:
- Reposition existing products to reflect the new economic and marketplace realities.
- Rewrite and strengthen the copy to address changing investor attitudes, objections, fears, and priorities.
- Launch new premium products based on what customers wanted and valued in the new market.
This was not a matter of changing a few headlines.
It required changing how TheStreet.com presented its value—and how it converted that value into revenue.
2. While Competitors Retreated, TheStreet.com Moved Forward.
Many companies respond to a down market by becoming paralyzed.
They cut marketing.
They postpone product launches.
They stop testing.
They wait for the economy to rescue them.
But when competitors pull back, a window of opportunity can open.
Advertising competition may decline. Customers may become more receptive to a company that understands their new concerns. And market share may become available to the business willing to act strategically.
Instead of retreating, TheStreet.com moved ahead with a fresh approach based on disciplined, scientific, and accountable direct-response marketing.
Every major marketing decision needed to answer a practical question:
Will this help attract, convert, retain, cross-sell, or upsell more customers profitably?
Here is what we did.
3. We Redesigned TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com to Produce Response.
My CDMG team redesigned TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com websites using proven direct-response principles.
The goal was not merely to make the websites look more modern.
A website can be attractive and still fail to produce revenue.
The redesign focused on helping visitors quickly understand:
- The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and Big Idea
- What was being offered
- Why it mattered
- How it was different
- Why it was credible
- What benefit the customer would receive
- What the visitor should do next
All with direct response copy.
We improved the positioning, offers, copy, customer journey, and conversion opportunities.
The websites became more than information destinations. They became valuable information destinations.
They became revenue-generating marketing platforms.
4. We Turned Free Information Into Demand for a Premium Service.
One of the greatest challenges involved RealMoney.com.
TheStreet.com already provided investors with a large amount of free financial information.
Why would someone pay for information when so much was available at no cost?
That was the central marketing objection.
The solution was not simply to place a price on existing content.
We had to establish a clear and compelling difference between free information and the premium insight, access, expertise, and value offered through
RealMoney.com.
CDMG repositioned RealMoney.com as a premium subscription service.
The marketing demonstrated why serious investors could benefit from paying for timely, high-quality financial analysis rather than relying exclusively on information available free of charge.
The new positioning increased perceived value—and gave investors a persuasive reason to subscribe.
The response was significant.
Results exceeded the client’s expectations by 200%.
5, We Launched Four New Premium Investment Services.
The next opportunity was to create new sources of revenue.
We analyzed TheStreet.com’s content and identified its most popular columnists—experts who already had credibility, readership, and a loyal following.
That existing relationship created a natural foundation for new premium products.
CDMG helped turn the expertise and popularity of those columnists into four premium investment services.
But popularity alone does not guarantee a successful product launch.
Each service required:
- Clear positioning
- A compelling promise
- A defined audience
- Benefit-driven direct-response copy
- A persuasive offer
- A coordinated launch strategy
- Follow-up marketing
- Cross-selling and upselling
All four services launched successfully.
The new product launches exceeded projections by 350%.
That is an important lesson for any company with valuable expertise, intellectual property, content, services, or customer relationships:
You may already possess the raw material for your next successful product.
The opportunity is often hidden inside assets you have not yet packaged, positioned, or marketed correctly.
6. We Created a Multichannel Cross-Selling and Upselling Strategy.
A customer who buys one product may be an excellent prospect for another.
But cross-selling does not happen automatically.
It requires the right offer, message, timing, sequence, and channel.
For each product, CDMG developed an integrated marketing program that included:
- Powerful email campaigns using direct-response copy
- Revenue-producing digital advertisements for the home page and internal pages
- A more effective shopping-cart strategy designed to reduce abandonment and increase completed orders
- Cross-selling campaigns that introduced customers to relevant additional services
- Upselling strategies that encouraged qualified customers to select higher-value premium options
Instead of treating every sale as the end of the transaction, the strategy treated it as the beginning of a potentially longer and more profitable customer relationship.
This helped TheStreet.com increase the value of its audience and generate additional revenue from customers it had already worked hard to acquire.
7. The Results: New Revenue, New Products, and a Stronger Business Model.
RealMoney.com became one of America’s largest premium financial websites.
TheStreet.com successfully launched premium products that could be cross-sold and upsold to its existing audience.
The company generated badly needed new revenue during a difficult economic period.
Just as important, it developed a scalable and highly profitable marketing model designed to restore—and ultimately surpass—its previous profitability.
TheStreet.com did not achieve these results by waiting for the market to improve.
It achieved them by adapting its positioning, copy, products, offers, and marketing to the market that actually existed.
The Lesson for Today’s Business Leaders
When sales weaken, the instinctive response is often to cut marketing.
Sometimes reducing waste is necessary.
But eliminating marketing without determining what is working—and what could work with the right changes—can accelerate the decline.
A difficult market may require you to spend more carefully.
It may require you to test more intelligently.
It may require new positioning, stronger offers, clearer benefits, more persuasive direct response copy, or a different product strategy.
But it rarely rewards paralysis.
The right question is not simply:
“Where can we cut?”
The more profitable questions may be:
- What has changed in our customers’ thinking?
- Does our positioning still reflect what the market wants?
- Are we clearly communicating our value?
- What objections are suppressing response?
- Which existing assets could become new products or revenue streams?
- Where are prospects abandoning the buying process?
- Are we maximizing cross-selling, upselling, and customer lifetime value?
- What are our competitors failing to do?
Your answers may reveal opportunities that are currently being overlooked.
Action:
Is Your Marketing Producing Everything It Should?
Your business may not need a complete reinvention.
It may need the right diagnosis.
A change in positioning, copy, offer, product strategy, conversion process, or multichannel follow-up could reveal revenue that your company is currently leaving behind.
CDMG has helped companies diagnose marketing obstacles, improve response, launch products, and develop accountable growth strategies across changing markets and economic conditions.
The first step is a conversation with Michael.
He can help you examine:
- Why response or sales may be falling
- Whether your positioning still matches today’s customer
- Where prospects are dropping out of your conversion process
- Whether your copy and offers are suppressing response
- How you could create additional revenue through new products
- Where cross-selling and upselling opportunities are being missed
- How testing could improve your marketing ROI
- Whether your current strategy can be scaled profitably
Do not wait for declining response to become a full-scale revenue problem.
Call Michael at 615-933-4647 or email him at [email protected].
Ask for a review of your current marketing challenge.
A focused conversation could identify the overlooked obstacle—or opportunity—that changes the direction of your marketing.
FAQs:
Q: Should a company reduce its marketing during a recession or down market?
A: Not automatically. A company should eliminate waste and carefully track results. But across-the-board marketing cuts can make a bad situation worse—especially when competitors are also retreating. A down market often requires better positioning, stronger offers, more persuasive copy, and more accountable testing. Companies that continue marketing intelligently may capture customers and market share that competitors abandon.
Q: How did CDMG help turn TheStreet.com’s marketing around?
A: CDMG recommended a three-part strategy:
1. Reposition existing products to reflect changing market conditions.
2. Rewrite the marketing copy to address investors’ new concerns and priorities.
3. Launch premium products based on what customers already valued.
CDMG also redesigned TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com using direct-response principles and developed coordinated email, digital advertising, shopping-cart, cross-selling, and upselling strategies.
Q: How did RealMoney.com persuade investors to pay when free financial information was already available?
A: CDMG positioned RealMoney.com as a premium service offering a level of insight, expertise, access, and value that investors could not receive from free information alone. The strategy did more than describe the content. It gave investors a persuasive reason to pay for it. The response exceeded the client’s expectations by 200%.
Q: How did TheStreet.com identify opportunities for new products?
A: CDMG examined TheStreet.com’s existing assets and identified its most popular columnists. Those columnists already possessed credibility, expertise, readership, and loyal followers. CDMG helped transform that established audience interest into four clearly positioned premium investment services. The new product launches exceeded projections by 350%.
Q: What is direct-response website design?
A: Direct-response website design is intended to produce a measurable action—not simply create an attractive online presence. It helps visitors quickly understand:
● What is being offered
● Why the offer matters
● How it will benefit them
● Why they should believe the claims
● Why they should act now
● What they should do next
That action may be requesting information, subscribing, scheduling a consultation, making a purchase, or upgrading to a premium product.
Q: Why are cross-selling and upselling important?
A: Acquiring a new customer can require a substantial investment. Cross-selling introduces an existing customer to other relevant products or services. Upselling gives that customer an opportunity to select a more comprehensive or higher-value option. Both strategies can increase average order value and customer lifetime value without requiring the company to start over with an entirely new prospect. The key is relevance. The additional offer must logically help the customer solve another problem or receive greater value.
Q: How can a company reduce shopping-cart abandonment?
A: Shopping-cart abandonment can result from unnecessary steps, confusing instructions, unexpected costs, weak reassurance, technical friction, or unanswered objections. An effective direct-response shopping-cart strategy may include:
● Simplifying the checkout process
● Clearly restating the offer and benefits
● Removing unnecessary fields or distractions
● Addressing security and privacy concerns
● Providing guarantees or risk-reversal information
● Following up with prospects who do not complete their purchase
● Testing each stage of the checkout process
Even a modest improvement in completed orders can create meaningful additional revenue.
Q: Does a business need to create entirely new products to increase revenue?
A: Not necessarily. New revenue opportunities may already exist within a company’s current assets, including:
● Popular content
● Established experts
● Proprietary research
● Existing services
● Customer data
● Frequently requested solutions
● Training or educational material
● Products that can be bundled, upgraded, or repositioned
TheStreet.com’s successful premium services grew from expertise and audience relationships the company already possessed.
Q: What should a company examine when sales or marketing response declines? Start by asking:
● Have customer attitudes or priorities changed?
● Does the positioning still match the market?
● Is the offer sufficiently compelling?
● Does the copy communicate specific customer benefits?
● Are important objections going unanswered?
● Is the company attracting the right prospects?
● Where do prospects leave the sales process?
● Are there missed cross-selling or upselling opportunities?
● Which campaigns, channels, and offers are actually profitable?
The goal is to diagnose the cause before prescribing the solution.
Q: How can direct-response marketing make a marketing budget more accountable?
A: Direct-response marketing connects campaigns to measurable actions and financial outcomes. Depending on the campaign, those measurements may include:
● Leads generated
● Cost per lead
● Conversion rate
● Cost per acquisition
● Average order value
● Shopping-cart abandonment
● Upsell and cross-sell response
● Customer lifetime value
● Return on advertising spend
● Overall marketing ROI
This allows marketers to test alternatives, improve performance, and direct more money toward the strategies producing the strongest returns.
Q: Can CDMG help a company that is not in the financial publishing industry?
A: Yes. The principles used in this case study apply across many industries: understand the customer, strengthen the positioning, communicate benefits, overcome objections, develop persuasive offers, test the marketing, and measure the results. The exact strategy will vary according to the company, audience, product, competition, and economics.
Q: How can I ask CDMG to evaluate a marketing problem or growth opportunity?
A: Call Michael at 615-933-4647 or email him at [email protected]. Be prepared to discuss your current marketing challenge, what you have already tried, where response is declining, and the results you want to achieve.
Michael can help determine whether CDMG should examine your positioning, copy, offer, product strategy, conversion process, testing, or multichannel marketing program.
About Craig Huey:
Craig Huey is a Christian, political commentator, and marketing expert. He publishes The Huey Alert and hosts the Huey Alert Podcast with his wife Shelly. Together, they stand at the intersection of faith, politics, and culture, helping Christians understand the issues shaping America today.
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