Bob is an online marketer for the B2B SaaS company BestofSaaS.
He is in charge of the company’s blog and content marketing.
With software like Google Analytics he noticed there are not a lot of readers
following his posts. It seems visitors read a post, but do not come back for the following posts.
Should Bob be concerned about this?
No!
Bob’s blog is facing the ‘double jeopardy’-concept, a term coined in the 1960’s by a social scientist named William McPhee. In the marketing world the concept got popular thanks to Andrew Ehrenberg.
What is the ‘double jeopardy’-concept exactly?
Double jeopardy
‘Double jeopardy is an empirical law where brands with lower markets shares suffer both from low purchases and low brand loyalty. Simply said, “less popular” brands not only have fewer buyers, but also have fewer loyal customers compared to popular brands.’
It seems the small brand / less popular brand is ‘punished’ twice:
it has fewer buyers, but also fewer loyal customers compared to the more popular brands.
Examples of double jeopardy in the consumer business (B2C) are described in the paper Discovering how brands grow by David Reay Corkindale (2011). A famous one is the washing powder example, also discussed in Byron Sharp’s book ‘How brands grow’.
Double jeopardy and SaaS online marketing
Great! Now we have examples of double jeopardy in the consumer business.
But does this also apply in B2B online marketing?
Yes, only the measurement is different. You do not analyze buyers, but visitors.
A less known blog does have less visitors than a popular blog and market share is therefore also low.
You can’t blame a blogger like Bob for this, the blog does not have yet the market share, so it has lower visitors. This is a natural phase, and you should not be worried about this.
How can Bob improve the market share?
By making a great post or rank higher in SEO rankings.
Bob has to improve his site by testing which content is read, which design for his blog is preferred and what SEO strategy to be used.
If Bob follows these steps, the chance of visitors going to follow his blog are increased and the blog’s loyalty base is increased too.
Conclusion
Don’t wonder about why the visitors of your blog are not coming back.
Accept this as a part of your blog’s evolution.
Start testing different content types and strategize your SEO.
If done properly, the blog’s loyalty base will grow and
you don’t have to worry anymore about the ‘double jeopardy’.