WBUR BizLab’s mission is to identify and test ideas for new revenue in public radio.

WBUR strongly believes that all of us in public media and nonprofit journalism need to remain vibrant and financially strong, so that we can continue to serve our mission of being a trusted and indispensable source of news and information. And to do that, we need to work together to identify paths forward in sustainability. And that is what BizLab’s year and this Summit is about: all of us coming together to learn, and to openly share what we’ve learned, to collectively become stronger.

2019 was an exciting year for us. Because of funding from CPB and Knight Foundation, BizLab was able to work with a diverse group of NPR stations across the country, all with different challenges and different opportunities. The 2019 cohort of stations were the DCist from WAMU, Louisville Public Media, WDET from Detroit, Capital Public Radio from Sacramento, WLRN from Miami, and Vermont Public Radio. The challenge put forth to these stations was to spend 6 months with us identifying a new path to revenue.

How does an organization find a new path to revenue?

There are a lot of ways to launch a new revenue stream within an organization. Many of us have experience in doing this, both at our stations and in other industries.

One way is through acquisition of a business or expertise. For example, NPR, WBEZ, WNYC, and This American Life acquired the podcast distribution platform Pocket Casts. By acquiring a revenue-generating business in an adjacent industry (in this case podcast distribution), an organization can add a new revenue stream and valuable new assets to its portfolio: new technology, skills and expertise, and podcast consumption data insights. The acquisition of non-revenue-generating assets allows organizations to further branch off to create new products or to use the assets to increase revenue in existing revenue streams.

For organizations where acquisition of new products and other organizations is not a viable option, the best option for creating new revenue is by innovating internally, using the skills and resources already available to the organization. While “innovation” can be a buzzword, and R&D and innovation labs can be more flash than substance, there are known methods that work: Design Thinking and Lean Startup methods are used by startups and entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes to identify product ideas and test them quickly and efficiently. This model for new product design has been used for over a decade by both  fledging startups and top corporations.

But we are a mission-driven non-profit. How do the principles of product development apply here?

Although we are in public media, where our content is provided as a public service, the principles of product design still apply. Even when we do not directly charge for the goods and services we provide, that doesn’t mean that the value we provide cannot be monetized. The example of corporate sponsorship is probably most clear: when corporate underwriters provide support for our station, they are receiving something of value to them: access to new customers. Our underwriters need access to our audience, and the on-air underwriting spots provides this to them.

This concept of value exchange also applies to a donation. Our public radio members donate to us because of what they get when they donate. It varies per donor: some donate because it makes them feel good that they financially supported something aligned to their values. Others donate because they want the tote bag or exclusive premium — they are purchasing a good. Others donate because they want to reinforce their identity as a “public radio nerd” and be an insider. By projecting to the world that they donate, they are making it clear they are true insiders.

Self-declared Public Radio Nerds on Instagram

The point is that new revenue comes from us providing new value to our audience, and asking them to pay for it. And the tighter the connection we can tie between the value we produce and the benefit people get from it, the more likely it is that the audience or user will contribute, by taking action and paying. 

The first step of product development is identifying a problem people want solved

With the six BizLab stations, we set out to understand the values, needs and wants of the target customers of their ideas. Through interviews, focus groups, surveys, and data analysis, each team spent two months focusing on listening and learning about what matters to the audiences, companies, and external stakeholders who interact with public media. Several themes emerged. From audiences, we heard statements like:

“I need my news delivered when and how I consume it.”

“I want to be up to date on what is going on near me.”

“I want the latest news on the topic I am passionate about.”

“I want access to exclusive events.”

“I want to be in the know.”

These needs and wants speak volumes to personalizing our delivery of news and information, on their terms and on their platforms. If we make their lives easier, we will have earned a place in their news landscape. From companies and potential sponsors we heard:

“I want to connect with people who care about my type of business.”

“I need a simple way of creating ads that work.”

“I need a one-stop-shop for buying ads across multiple regions.”

These statements reveal how complex the advertising world has become, and if we can simplify the landscape and enable connections between companies and their customers, we will be solving concrete problems for them.

Cohort Station Product Ideas

With these values identified, the six stations were each able to define a product around a specific need or want they could solve.

• WAMU designed a membership for the DCist, distinct from a membership to WAMU with perks designed for the loyal DCist reader.
• Louisville Public Media launched a new membership program for Do502, an events listing website, centered around exclusive events and ticket discounts, again, distinct from a membership to Louisville Public Media.
• WDET tested the product offering for small businesses in Detroit — a social media sponsored content product, designed to reach their desired customers.
• Capital Public Radio reimagining a cross-network underwriting sales product, converting a longstanding 15-second spot agreement between CapRadio and California public radio stations into a regional underwriting product, giving new access to underwriters to reach the state of California.
• WLRN created a new climate and environmental newsletter product, launching it with an eye towards it being a new membership donation channel and sponsorship opportunity.
• Vermont Public Radio focused on deeply serving Southern Vermont residents by delivering localized and targeted news on multiple platforms, to increase their engagement with VPR content and to increase donations from the region.

Lean Testing

Today’s Summit will share the details of these projects through lightning talks and panel presentations. Because teams followed our innovation process, they did not launch these products immediately after determining these ideas met user needs. Instead they tested them. They each created the tiniest example of what the idea was and quickly showed it to customers in as much of a real way as possible. In this way, the teams collected evidence that the idea was a good one. And sometimes it wasn’t good! But because they had moved quickly and hadn’t spent many resources on their test, the failures were quick and painless. The teams could move on, glad to have not expended more time on the idea. 

Stations each went through four months of testing each idea, launching experiments as frequently as every two weeks. After each test, they refined their product idea. They continually built evidence of what was working, pivoting and changing as they learned what didn’t work.

Some examples of tests include: DCist and LPM asked people to join non-existent membership programs. LPM printed membership cards for the first 12 members on their office printers. WLRN posted sign-up sheets for non-existent newsletters to gauge interest in topics. WDET asked small businesses to sign up for a pilot program, simply to see if anyone would sign up. CapRadio pitched an advertising product that didn’t have a name yet. VPR asked people to register for a news & brews event that ended up being cancelled. But they learned in that test that people wanted to attend.

These teams went out on a limb and asked potential users to take action, so that they could see if there was tangible interest in this concept. They ran small, fast tests and earned small amounts of revenue in the process, in order to determine what would work and what would not work. It was through this process that the stations identified ways of expanding existing station revenue, whether that was through entirely new products or through new donation channels, or with new content to drive new donations. 

The Financial Results

Each project has many lessons learned embedded in the details you’ll hear today. In aggregate, the projects also tell a compelling financial story. During the testing phase, stations collected $83,000 in revenue. Remember, our goal during testing wasn’t to make revenue, but to learn what was working. And it was from this testing, that each team made proposals to their stations to launch a new product, defined based on the lessons learned. And their collective revenue targets for 2020, the first year of each product, totals to $600,000. The charts below break down these numbers by product type and by station. These teams deserve applause for these results!

Summit Overview

This introduction gives you the basic framework of how these stations went from a challenge to find new revenue to actually finding it. They took on the role of entrepreneurs this year, and through flexibility, speed, and curiosity they found new opportunities for their stations.

The rest of today will be about sharing our collective discoveries of what works, what doesn’t work, and the challenges we faced. The day begins with each station telling you more about their projects and results. Then we will discuss the organizational and cultural challenges of introducing new ideas and launching new products at an organization. We have a fantastic panel on leadership and innovation. And we will wrap up the day with concrete case studies of tools and tips for using text messaging platforms and asking for podcast donations.

In Conclusion

Lean in today, and have conversations and capture ideas that you can apply at your own organization. This work is not easy, but it is urgent, and we are in this together.

I want to emphasize one thing: all of us can do this. Every public radio station can identify new possibilities for revenue and quickly test and size the opportunity and choose to take it forward. When hearing about how BizLab cohort stations did it, in addition to observing what they learned, pay attention to how they did it. You can take both their lessons learned and their techniques home with you today.

[Download slides from this presentation or watch the video.]

All of these resources are provided here. You will see that these are written for the stations – giving them instructions about when they need to do planning or review with the BizLab team. There are references to enable teams to learn more – especially as our goal is to enable teams to continue to apply the BizLab method on future projects. 

We are pleased to be able to provide you with BizLab’s methods and tools. 

Packet 1: BizLab Method – An overview of BizLab’s 6 month engagement

Packet 2: BizLab Research Methods and Tools – 11 methods & tools plus how to recruit people and do preliminary analysis

Packet 3: BizLab Analysis Methods and Tools – 7 analysis & synthesis methods and tools

With these materials, may you find and implement new revenue streams at your station. 

Reach out to us with your use cases and questions on Twitter @WBURBizLab or email at bizlab@wbur.org.

Tamsen Webster, a 20-year brand and message strategist and former TEDx Executive Producer, will be the keynote speaker, explaining how to make it easy for your team to say “yes” to your innovation ideas by creating the right message and presentations.

This video recap summarizes Tamsen’s approach for making the case for your innovation, with a special guest on stage, Rebecca Lavoie, from New Hampshire Public Radio. Rebecca and Tamsen build the case for a new podcast focused on a beloved New England store, Market Basket.

We shared best practices, tools, tips, and real life examples of this work, enabling attendees to hit the ground running at their own media organizations. The Summit covered revenue generation through digital audience engagement, spinning off new brands, event monetization, text-to-donate platforms, and podcast donation strategies.

https://youtu.be/dIqNF0-vSXg

Now is the time to try out new revenue ideas

WBUR launched BizLab because of a desire to ensure public radio stays financially strong, vibrant, and relevant to our audiences. BizLab is dedicated to evaluating new membership and revenue sources, identifying new markets for content, and developing new partnerships with business, education and tech communities. 

Since I joined WBUR a year ago, my team at BizLab has earned a little revenue and a lot of sweat equity. We are at a point where we are looking for stations to join us in this approach to finding and testing new ideas for revenue. To shed light on what that means, I’d like to share a bit of what we’ve learned and our approach to running revenue and innovation experiments in public radio.

Use the best tricks of User-Centered Design, Lean Innovation, & Agile Development

I’m a believer in the methods of user-centered design, lean innovation, and agile development, but I’m not a stickler for the details on how you apply them. My advice is to use these methods in so far as they get you towards your goal. And in the case of revenue and innovation experiments, your goal is to figure out if the idea has revenue potential.

You need these essential pieces:

1. Create a project plan with an end date. I’m talking about documented deadlines and a realistic, week-by-week schedule so you know if you’re on track. Define what “done” looks like for your experiment (and take inspiration from Agile’s two week sprint).
2. Document your hypotheses. Why do you believe this idea is a good one? If you can’t articulate it, you can’t make progress. As soon as you define why you think this idea will work, you can think of a way of proving it will work. I like using the Strategyzer’s Test Card as a way of planning out an experiment.
3. Create an artifact for testing your idea. Whether it is a webpage, a survey, or a paper sketch (e.g. the Lean Startup MVP) you need something to show your idea to others. The only way to find out if others like your idea is to show them, not tell them.
4. Collect as much feedback and behavioral data as you can. User data is your guide — collect as much behavior data as you can (e.g. any method from UCD). Our natural biases, opinions, and stubbornness can only be put in their place with lots of hard evidence contradicting us. We’ve used interviews, surveys, click throughs, as well as completed purchases and donations.
5. The moment you learn something, reflect & adjust your course. Use every lesson learned. Change the project plan. (e.g. Lean Startup’s Pivot.)
6. Talk regularly with your peers about these learnings. The people in your organization who will be impacted by your projects… keep them engaged with your progress. Put another way, if you want your projects to have impact, you need your peers to be engaged and interested in what you’re learning. Your only hope for transferring successful projects out of the test/learn cycle and over to the core operations of your station, your peers must be engaged. Must read: The Stage Where Most Innovation Projects Fail.

Biggest Opportunities

BizLab ran three experiments last summer engaging our listeners in different ways and there were a couple of common themes which likely apply to other stations:

• Content is king. Our target market is looking for deep, engaging content. We found that WBUR’s listeners love our book content — articles and lists of books. And it was easier to get users to click on links for books than ads for t-shirts.
• Curation is our unique value proposition. WBUR shares content that is pulled out from the deluge of information available to us. Our listeners appreciate us for our curation, and they trust the voices and people who make these editorial decisions.
• Women are leaning in. We have more female than male donors, and our merchandise store had 60% women shoppers, and the women’s shirt was the top seller.  In every opportunity, the female perspective should be the first use case we focus on.

Biggest Challenges

I’ve been surprised by some of the challenges we have encountered while designing and running our experiments. We have so many loyal listeners and only 15% of them donate, so I thought it would be easy to find the 85% and engage with them. It is not. In each of our experiments, the people signing up, filling out the surveys, buying the t-shirts, and looking for book recommendations are… existing donors.

Reaching new audiences and engaging them will be challenging. Whether you are looking for younger, digital-only, non-donors, or a new demographic, the path to them has not been tread, or else they’d be engaged already. I’m looking forward to cracking this open next.

The other enormous challenge is culture. We like to say at WBUR “culture eats strategy for lunch,” and no matter what the best laid plans we have, if the culture of the station isn’t ready to receive the project’s findings, there is no point in doing the project.

Your Station’s Context Matters, A Lot

When considering an idea for new revenue for your public radio station, your ideas are naturally constrained by your station’s capabilities and resources. For example, if your station does not have a website with significant traffic, then you cannot monetize that traffic (with ads, cross-promotion, etc.). If your station doesn’t have any email addresses of non-donors, any email marketing campaigns will be handicapped.

But the constraints go beyond this. This summer we opened an online merchandise store to test out if merchandise, separate from a pledge drive, would sell. We hoped that non-donors, who like WBUR, would buy a $25 shirt, even if they don’t donate. We also hoped donors would spend money on getting an item they really wanted. We found that the market for WBUR merchandise was much smaller than we’d anticipated. Of the customers we obtained, 60% were already donors. And from many informal comments we got about the merchandise we’ve concluded that WBUR fans 1) automatically assume WBUR merchandise is a gift from us (so FREE) and 2) already have more than enough fan merchandise because we’ve given it to them (for FREE). In short, we eroded any market for merchandise by supplying our best customers lots of free stuff.

Your existing revenue channels are influencing the available market for your revenue idea. It is important to know those factors going in, and make deliberate decisions about how to work with or around them.

Staffing and Skills

I had the amazing good fortune of hiring three fantastic Fellows last summer (hi, Wendi, Suzie, and Cynthia!) and they taught me a lot about what kinds of skills a station needs to kick start some innovation experiments. The BizLab summer experiments couldn’t have happened without a bunch of this:

• Hustle — given a goal they run with it and update you two hours later.
• Can quickly move past blockers. Inevitably there are a lot of “no, that can’t be done” moments, and your team needs to immediately come up with a new game plan that gets you to your goal in a new way.
• Visual design sense — know how to layout a webpage, create a logo, and use imagery for conveying the right message. This is important for designing prototypes, user interfaces and internal presentations.
• Social media savvy — know how to write a tweet, post on Facebook, and ideally know how to run paid social campaigns.
• Can learn new platforms very quickly — Facebook ad manager, Google Ad words, Shopify, Google analytics — all these tools were learned by my fellows within a day so they could build something, test it, and move on.
• In awe of NPR and public radio — If your team has respect and admiration for the station’s work, it goes a long way in establishing trust and rapport with collaborators. And when this is the case, you do not need your staff to know much about how radio actually works.

Onward!

If you’d like to chat with us about your innovation experiment, reach out: bizlab@wbur.org.

We are looking for up to six other stations to join us in experimenting with revenue models. If you have ideas for raising additional funding for your station, or few ideas, but feel the urgency, considering joining us!

Currently BizLab is in the process of launching evaluations of multiple projects. We have three Fellows joining BizLab for the summer with skills in behavioral analysis, experience design, and business, and they each have 10 weeks to build, test, and conclude a project.

We have frequent discussions with WBUR leadership about BizLab’s mission to identify new business models and the trade-offs of big ideas versus incremental improvements. Some of our projects are for “Revenue Expansion” and others are for “Value Expansion.” The third set, shown in the upper right quadrant of the diagram below are examining a combination of new revenues and new offerings, testing new business models. We are pursuing projects in all three quadrants.