Case Study -
The Problem
Celtx is perceived as a low-cost/free simple tool. While it had market share, it had a bad reputation amongst industry hardcore users, high user churn and a low lifetime value per customer.
The Solution
Data-driven overhaul of Celtx's Go-to-Market motion - leveraging a new keyword strategy, pricing/packaging, partnershps, branding, website and messaging + most importantly - our customers!
The Results
The highest revenue generation period in Celtx's 25 year history, A monumental improvement in their search performance, a sky-high NPS score and Celtx's most profitable years since its creation.
The Company
Celtx is a 25 year old scriptwriting app that serves the media and entertainment industry.
Originally based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Celtx was acquired by Boston-based Backlight in 2022. Their scriptwriting editor is the most widely taught solution for educational institutions across the globe - over 25,000 educational orgs around the globe teach scriptwriting to their students via Celtx.
In addition to serving EDU via B2B motion, they serve a wide range of hobbyists and professionals looking to create film and TV projects. While two-thirds of their business is focused on the US market, they are a global company - with over 26,000 subscribers across 160+ countries - ranging from Somalia to Argentina to Vanuatu.
The Problem
Slow but consistent growth throughout the first few decades of its existence was met with a few major market events in the five years since. On the positive side, the global pandemic saw a massive injection of interest in scriptwriting - with so many people at home during isolation, many finally decided “Now’s the time to finally write that movie!” - in 2019-2020 they saw new membership thrive and initial subscriptions went to all time-highs.
However, once the pandemic passed a few major headwinds came to light:
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Whereas there had been relatively few competitors in the years before - and those that did exist were relatively low tech / immature in their digital operations - a few new competitors, who understood digital marketing and SEO were stealing Organic traffic positions and users from Celtx.
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This was exacerbated by a confusing website and marketing messaging. Celtx before 2015 had been free to download. Once they went to paid plans, they did not want to alienate the core industry scriptwriters who still equated Celtx = free. In the Creative industry, Celtx was seen as not something professionals would use.
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Revenue per account was declining - to capitalize on that pandemic interest, they had offered a 50% discount in the first three months. Once those coupons expired, the vast majority of subscriptions did not renew.
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Churn was out of control - scriptwriting has a high learning curve. The vast majority of users who created an account would not return on day 2.
Celtx’s Marketing team had attempted to address these issues by focusing on creating blog content, monthly webinars - and little else. Most of their team were junior. While they were doing their best, they were losing ground against competitors and losing growth.
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Once I joined the Celtx Marketing team, the first thing I did was realize they were living the embodiment of Bikeshedding - major problems were not addressed, but four or five people would work on a single blog post with random topics.
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It was clear that Celtx needed a new website. Whereas they previously had only a handful of pages, it lacked professionalism and a compelling message. As well, the site was slow and only one person in the company could make changes - and it would take days, not minutes, to change even a single word.
Major Challenges at a Glance:
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Low ACV High Churn
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Competitors Taking Market Share
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Low Efficacy GTM motion and messaging
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Lack of Clear Marketing Direction
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Low performant website
The Solution
In an effort to align the team, I implemented a data-driven, customer-centric approach. We interviewed customers. We gathered every single piece of data we had to paint a picture of what was happening and why. From there, we ruthlessly prioritized based on the PIE model (potential, importance and ease).
The biggest priority became addressing the Top of Funnel efforts - Celtx simply wasn’t attracting enough customers, wasn’t ranking for terms that would lead to conversion and its paid plans were arbitrary in construction, without an elegant upgrade path or compelling reason to upgrade for power users.
In interviews with customers who had left, very few (as in less than 10% of respondents) said they had left for another platform. Most had left because they couldn’t figure out the software or their project had concluded. Celtx was losing customers to scriptwriting, not to competitors.
By doing a comprehensive SEO audit, I realized that there was a solid gap in terms of non-branded keywords: expanding beyond only scriptwriting to pre-production and from shifting our content from “free” to “best” type keywords. We also refined our target personas to creative professionals, creative teams and on the Education side going after teachers and administrators instead of the lower-income and lower-motivated students.
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Over the course of 5-6 months, I led a massive GTM redesign effort - touching on everything from a new content strategy on the web including a brand new sitemap and value proposition positioning, to new template layouts on the website and the migration from a static website to a cloud-hosted CMS.
We set big goals and milestones, aligned over the strategy to get there, and then executed like crazy:
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Daily design and copywriting sessions kept the creativity - and productivity - flowing.
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Working with the engineering and development team to ensure the new website architecture was moving forward.
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Dealing with the Customer team to ensure the voice of the customer was taken into account in the new web journey
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Updating the company blog and post structure so that blog content would point to our website for conversion
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Launching quick tests to validate messaging components before the bigger relaunch
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Working with the Product Marketing and Funnel teams to create new packages and prices, and how we would market those.
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Creating new B2B lead generation flows and processes to help our Sales team quickly qualify and nurture leads.
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Partnered with the Raindance Film Festival to build brand credibility and get amazing Marketing assets that could be used as a part of the redesign.
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Simply put, there’s too much to list here, but we took a simple 15 page website with a dated design and slow performance to a brand new cloud-hosted website that was faster, cleaner and with a cohesive messaging framework that aimed to bring more people into the tent - industry standard scriptwriting and pre-production for everyone.
To learn more about the specifics of the solution - including a strategy roadmap and prioritization process that can easily be applied to any project, contact me here.
However, when you’re driving the team forward, it’s important to not forget about how your team operates. I spent months working with each team member to ensure they had a path to personal and professional growth - and provided mentorship to help them get better at their jobs. Regular 1:1s, with agendas, were put in place. Everyone had metrics they were responsible for and it was my job to help them grow in crushing those metrics, while staying sane.
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The Solution Highlights:
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New Website, Branding and Messaging
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Industry partnership
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Keyword Focused SEO Program
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Conversion Optimization Program
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Focusing Product Development on the User Experience
To accomplish this task, I needed the best team of all time.
Here's how the team was constructed:
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Copywriter
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Designer
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FE Developer
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Product Marketing Specialist
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Funnel (ecommerce) Developer
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Me (Strategy lead, approvals, timelines, exec signoff, etc.)
The Results
With a new website, new messaging, new design, new Martech stack, new lead generation process and new packages and prices, there was a lot of moving parts. What if we had erred in one area? What if our message didn’t resonate with a large cohort of our potential audience? What if our new keyword driven content strategy was too radical a shift?
Those were possible, but I’m a firm believer that a well thought out and data-driven strategy is always the best path forward - and the market agreed.
Take a look at the immediate increase in Organic traffic in the months following the new launch. Within a year, we had increased Impressions by 3X and Clicks by 2X.
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The average revenue per user increased and total recurring revenue steadily grew. In the two years since the redesign, New and Reactivation signups have grown and revenue is at all time highs.
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Best of all, we retained more of that revenue - churn decreased by over 3% Year over Year.
Mission accomplished, right? Not quite.
The market was not done challenging Celtx - at the end of the second year, the Writer’s Strike and the emergence of AI threatened not only Celtx but also its competitors.
However, in the months since, Celtx has managed to stay profitable and even grow. Growth YTD is at over 4%, which many companies would kill for.
In Conclusion:
Growth is never linear. It comes in fits and starts. A massive project can bring big growth - but a well thought out, data driven, customer centric project can build - and maintain - growth through whatever challenges may come.
Celtx weathered many headwinds and tailwinds and continues to be an industry leader, serving hundreds of thousands of creatives every year.
I’m just happy that my GTM Strategy and work with the team helped them navigate those winds and remain the great company it is today.
To learn more about Celtx, visit Celtx.com
As a part of the rebrand, we created - in-house - the following video with our central theme "Tell Your Story with Celtx".
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I'm extremely proud of what we produced. Check it out below...