Bianca Johnston Customer Research

Independent Customer Research Consultant

Shopify

Integrated Campaigns Lead

Senior Market Researcher

LoyaltyOne

Market Research Manager, AIR MILES Reward Program

Market Research Consultant, AIR MILES Reward Program

Market Research Specialist, AIR MILES Reward Program

Espresso

Espresso is  an integrated brand agency that drives media-agnostic thinking in brand strategy, marcom, advertising, and custom technology products.

Account Supervisor

I help you do research right and become a more customer-centric marketer | 🇺🇦 🇨🇦

🤔 Making decisions based on gut rather than data? 
😕 Marketing efforts not giving you the ROI you’d hoped for? 
🤪 Trying to do your own customer research and feeling out of your element? 

Ask any successful marketer and they’ll tell you the key to growth is to know your customers. But from there the advice gets a little…well, fluffy.

I share tactical, no-fluff tips on how to do customer research right, so you can: 

- Uncover customer truths 💡
- Optimize your marketing and content ⚙️
- Drive business growth 📈

I have 13 years’ experience in market research and marketing roles, across industries and customer segments. I’m a big believer in no-BS marketing and love sharing actionable advice on how to do research right so you can quit winging it and start winning! 🚀

Bianca Johnston 🔮✨

✨ Custom projects for website copy and messaging ✨

“We needed a neutral third party to validate messaging for our website update, and I knew that Ekaterina gets stuff done from our work together for AMA Triangle. Observations made by Ekaterina triangulated with our internal interviews, and we got the information we were hoping for. Ekaterina fit in nicely as a virtual extension for the project, used our tool stack to do the outreach and the interview analysis, and did what she said she would.” — Ron Carson, Chief Marketing Officer, Advisor, Investor, and Entrepreneur

“We’ve narrowed down on a customer segment that we really want to go after and needed a copywriter to help us speak to our new segment in a fun way. Ekaterina was able to make suggestions and take the lead which made life so much easier for us.” — Polly Wong, Marketing Executive, Float Cash Flow Forecasting


✨ Website audits to uncover conversion rate optimization opportunities✨

“I needed help auditing a website with a focus on data and reading Hotjar, and remembered that Ekaterina loved doing the data part of audits. I reached out, and the client was very happy, they especially loved the ideas for their pricing page. Would absolutely recommend for anyone who needs an audit with a focus on the user’s behavior on the page.”  — Kaleena Stroud, Freelance Conversion Copywriter & Brand Voice Strategist for SaaS & DTC

✨ Consult calls ✨

“I was really pleased to see how structured Ekaterina was, very rational, very efficient, yet fun to work with. A very unique mix! The experience of working with Ekaterina was absolutely fantastic. She provided so much value that I ended up booking extra hours because her work was very clean and streamlined.” - Nelio Leone

Conversion copywriter and strategist for growing SaaS startups

GrowthMentor

Helping startup founders construct better copy,evaluate conversion rate optimization opportunities and make sense of customer data.

"Ekaterina was fantastic! She took the time ahead of the call to understand our sales and Google ads Strategy, which informed her recommendations for our landing page. She was flexible and communicative in the lead up, and I walked away with tactical, practical advice which I could implement immediately to improve conversions." -- Harri Thomas
 

"Wow 😭😭 So many insights from the call with Sam. I can't thank you enough.I was in the process of doing customer research interviews to inform our brand messaging, but she helped me improved the questions I was asking.Many of them were leading questions (that could lean the customer one way or another). And other questions were not necessarily at all.Highly recommend!" - Isaac Perdomo

Customer research and conversion copy mentor

Facit

Facit was planning a rebranding and a website redesign and was looking for specialists to help create a modern, converting website aligned with SEO best practices. 

At the time, the team had been attracting new customers through a combination of PLG and sales motions for its product portfolio, but it has become clear that their website had a lot of potential to both drive additional sales and attract more traffic.

As a part of the group working together on messaging, copy, web design and SEO, I helped Facit achieve a 9.45% lift in free trial signups for the PLG product plus improve their search ranking and brand authority by expanding their website and optimizing it for organic search.

With a new website launch, Facit was ready to drive traffic to their new website aligned with their brand and conversion goals. Keep reading to find out more about the project and the process.

Read more: https://ekaterinahoward.com/facit-case-study

Conversion copywriter

Float Cash Flow Forecasting

“We’ve narrowed down on a customer segment that we really want to go after and needed a copywriter to help us speak to our new segment in a fun way.

People often need to look for external help like copywriters because there’s usually a skill gap within the company.

It’s only productive to find someone who is not afraid to take the lead. Ekaterina is not afraid to ask hard questions and even role-play the “mean customer.”

I had to be very prescriptive with other copywriters and I thought that was the standard. But Ekaterina was able to make suggestions and take the lead which made life so much easier for us.

Working with Ekaterina has also helped us highlight internal gaps, and this is a very positive thing – it’s better to catch them now than later.”

— Polly Wong, Marketing Executive, Float Cash Flow Forecasting

SocialBloom

Email outreach copy for startups with outbound sales motion

“I know I can count on Ekaterina to go above and beyond to ensure that the work is as perfect as possible.

Ekaterina doesn’t just deliver copy. We also get:
    - in-depth ICP notes
    - onboarding summary
    - super clear looms and docs that my entire fulfillment team can look over and apply to their work with the client.

Basically Ekaterina’s work has become the base of our campaigns. We can always go back to the copy doc to better understand the ICP and decide on changes from there.

One of our clients booked 3 meetings in the first week of emails going out, other clients booked calls with decision-makers at Series H and publicly traded companies.”

— Caleb Sinn, Founder, Social Bloom

Email copywriter

Wonderway

“Sure, but can you actually deliver on the results” is a question that prospects will inevitably ask every startup.

Wonderway has been helping their customers effectively onboard and train sales teams – and they needed help with publishing case studies to prove it.

We’ve collaborated on publishing customer success stories that hihglighted different use cases.

Case study copywriter

Participate Learning

The global pandemic prompted Participate Learning to think about what virtual offerings could complement their existing programs. Anamaria Knight, Online Learning and Product Development Manager at Participate Learning, was looking for external support for her team to run some lean tests to guide the product development team.

Together with Sarah Sal, a hypercaffeinated Facebook ads specialist, and the Participate Learning product development team, we worked on developing various asset ideas and testing them. Once the ads were launched, we were able to track conversion and click-through rates, as well as monitor ad performance and identify the winning ideas and funnels.


“Working with Ekaterina was a wonderful experience: her unrelenting guidance came from a place of warmth and caring, while challenging us and pushing us to think differently about things.

I very much appreciated how she blended these two seemingly opposite approaches to her work, and am convinced that this was key to how much we trusted her throughout our work together.

If you want to feel like your perspective matters, while also being gently encouraged to investigate other perspectives, I highly recommend working with Ekaterina.” 

— Anamaria Knight, Manager, Online Learning and Product Development at Participate Learning


Read more: https://ekaterinahoward.com/case-study-participate-learning

Orbiit (acquired by Hivebrite)

“How can we talk about our product in a way that would attract our best customers?”

Orbiit’s product was helping companies manage active and engaged communities, but many of the prospects booking demos seemed to be a bad fit for the product.

To solve this challenge and start converting more of the best-fit customers, the team worked with me on voice-of-customer research for the website rewrite – as well as building out use case pages to showcase Orbiit’s capabilities.



    “Ekaterina gave our product a voice when it had none and offered us solutions to problems we didn’t even know we had.

    During our work together, Ekaterina was incredibly personable, and professional.

    She turned our words into imagery, and her process was so precise that she was able to get content we didn’t even know how to ask for.” 

— Charles Cook, Demand Generation Marketing Manager

Security Journey

As the HackEDU (now Security Journey) marketing team was getting ready to update the website and marketing collateral, they realized that existing sales & marketing messaging was inconsistent and based on team members’ perception of ICPs’ pain points and priorities, rather than customers’ JTBD.

Some of the questions we needed to answer:
>> What are the outcomes that ICPs hope to achieve — and how do they make purchasing decisions?
>> What are the hesitations they have — and how can we address them?
>> How do customers perceive the brand, which features do they perceive as the key differentiators — and why?
>> Finally, what information is missing from the current website — and how can we improve conversions with optimized copy? 

Finding answers to those questions would mean going from assumptions to research-based data with the power to inform decisions around funnels, website structure updates, content planning, features hierarchy for different ICPs and more.

“I think the understanding we gained about our buyers and what motivates them to buy was incredibly enlightening and debunked internal myths. Working with Ekaterina has given us the data to back up the changes we need to make to our messaging to drive effective lead gen.” 

— Amy Baker, CMO at HackEDU (now Security Journey)

Read more: https://ekaterinahoward.com/case-study-hackedu

Conversion copywriter and messaging strategist (HackEDU)

ClickGUARD

ClickGUARD has been consistently publishing content educating readers about click fraud and related topics since 2016. Some of the content pieces, including the What is click fraud (or WICF) long-form blog post, were ready for an update. For WICF, the goal of the update was to bring in more organic visitors and convert them to prospects.

Both traffic volume and the time on page increased over the testing period, and the page got a 16% lift in free trial conversions from organic traffic landing on the page.

Read more: https://ekaterinahoward.com/case-study-clickguard

I help B2B SaaS startups find message-market fit and optimize their copy to convert and retain more of their best-fit ICPs

I’m a conversion copywriter working with B2B SaaS startups to convert more of their best customers once they find product-market fit. I’ve worked with growing tech startups in cybersecurity, sales enablement, fintech, event management and CRM space.

Some of the problems I’ve helped my clients solve:
✅ “How do we explain what we do so that we attract more of our target ICPs?”
✅ “What do we need to change to on our website to get more demos?”
✅ “Is changing the way we talk about our product to talk to this new audience the right call?”
✅ “How can we improve our product and industry pages to increase signups?”
✅ “How do we get more conversions from our blog posts?”
✅ “What do we need to do change to have our landing pages convert better?”
✅ “How can we tell our brand story in a way that changes our audience’s mind?”
✅...and more

My superpower is making sure that every page is optimized to align with ideal customers’ goals and JTBD. I do this by grounding copy decisions in customer research and conversion copy best practices.

Some of the results I can share are:
🔥 16% higher free trial signups from a long-form blog post page
🔥 3x average industry conversion rate for a landing page
🔥 25% sales sequence conversions for warm subscribers

With 7+ years of conversion copywriting work experience, I’ve shared my copy tips in presentations at events like Hotjar’s HOTSAUCE in NYC and MicroConf Remote, as well as contributed written guest blog posts for RevGenius and Indie Hackers. You can also hear me talking shop about B2B SaaS copy on podcasts like Marketing Spark and Better Done Than Perfect.

“We were spending money on social ads that drove to the same general webpage and needed help developing lead gen pages to support ads. Ekaterina turned everything (and more) around quickly, and delivered lead generation copy that felt strategic and on-brand. From setting clear expectations to providing value beyond the specific ask, I really enjoyed working with Ekaterina and will certainly recommend Ekaterina to folks that ask me for copy help.” 
— David Annis, Founder at Parallax

“When Ekaterina reached out, I didn’t even look at other freelancers. Although we haven’t used freelancers much, this was definitely worth it. Working with Ekaterina was very easy — she took responsibility for the whole process. Ekaterina is very competent and gets the job done to a high standard.” 
— Bowen Moody, CEO & Co-founder, Wonderway

If you’re looking for help with optimizing your copy for higher conversions, reach out: https://calendly.com/ekaterina-howard-copy/30-minute-meeting

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Bianca Johnston 🔮✨

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard

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