Unfortunately for Masterclass their chasing-the-dragon volume play strategy is not sustainable. And I’ll tell you how I know this & why it’s bad: https://twitter.com/trungtphan/status/1379938847115542529

It’s obvious that Masterclass is running a strategy based on OUTPUT verses outcomes. They have published massive amounts of articles targeting pretty much every high-search volume “how-to “ kw under the sun, likely to try to get as much traffic as possible.

Why did MasterClass do this? Well it’s probably because they assumed [more traffic] x [average CVR] = more subscriptions

This strategy isn’t sustainable for a high-growth focused company for many reasons. But for business goals specifically, this assumption doesn’t always net out the forecasted increase in conversions.

And in the case of Masterclass, I would like to guess that it’s not currently working out for them, at least for direct conversions. How do I know this? Well take a look at these screenshots and it will be quite obvious:

I’ve seen this happen with SO many sites: they do the high-traffic volume play assuming it would = more conversions, but when it doesn’t, they keep adding MORE CTAs, quizzes, gated content, etc thinking that it will increase their CVR.

So now MC has spent money producing as much vanity traffic as possible and ultimately they ended up creating a bad user experience for their audience by spamming visitors with as many CTAs as possible.

BTW I forgot to mention: I like to call these kind of CTA placements the “local car dealership website strategy”