Crain’s Chicago Business serves the business community, nonprofits, and public policy. Its revenue comes from subscriptions, ads, and events, and it reaches the most powerful executives in the city. The Crain’s Chicago Business team entered with the intention of giving their Data Center product another life.
For years, they have had a high-value but little-known Data Center product with little understanding of what their audience wanted or, much less, who they were. The Data Center has always been a gold mine of information below the surface. It’s like a 5,000-piece puzzle, and the pieces are all there.
In an effort to solve the puzzle, Crain’s created a solution. They wanted the revamped Data Center to be a B2B product, and they figured people would pay for the ability to download and manipulate the data and then use it for lead generation. However, Medill’s research found that only a few people would be interested in the lead-generation angle.
We completely misunderstood what our customers wanted from us...(The Local News Accelerator) saved us so much time. We would have headed in the wrong direction.
Elizabeth Couch, Crain’s Director of Audience Engagement
The research and insights gave Crain’s the information on its audience to create the product its readers needed. The project was a product development revelation, and the Local News Accelerator gave it the time, space and resources to think about what it should be.
The research was everything for Crain’s. The biggest hurdle was understanding the audience, and they found the audience for the data center through the research. Thousands of readers could be interested in what the data center offers. What survey respondents want is more like a wiki page. Crain’s would create profile pages; each page will feature work they’ve published about a company or person, including a couple of fast facts and high-value figures. Crain’s would link the profiles to references of any relevant story. In this method, the excellent data in the little-used Data Center will be accessible to their audience.