Leveling Up with Eric Siu
How HubSpot Leverages the Freemium Model for Explosive Growth with Kieran Flanagan, VP of Marketing (podcast)
HubSpot has grown into one of the most credible names in the marketing and sales game in the last few years and we are lucky enough to have Kieran Flanagan, their VP of Marketing on the show today! If you listen to this podcast it is more than likely you know a lot about HubSpot already as we often refer to them, as happy customers of the company and having had a few of their team on the show already. The focus of today’s conversation is Kieran’s work on the freemium project at HubSpot and the impact that this initiative had on the company and their progress going forward. We speak about freemium and who it might work for; Kieran believes it is not a surefire way to success for every kind of company and links its usefulness to HubSpot to their product-led model. We also get some great insight into the company and how they approach tasks and challenges and Kieran breaks down their pod method for creating teams. Tune in to get it all!
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How SEO Expert Matthew Woodward Almost Tripled His Click-Through Rate
Hey everyone! Today, I share the mic with Matthew Woodward, SEO expert and owner of a successful SEO blog.
Tune in to hear Matthew analyze Google’s algorithm, how his blog gets 60,000 visits a month and how he was able to more than double his click-through rate using his Google search ranking strategy.
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How Ex Semi-Pro Chess Player Danny Rensch Grew a Website to ~5 Million Active Users!
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How Serial Entrepreneur Bill Widmer Turned a Personal Blog into a 6-Figure Website
Hey everyone! Today, I share the mic with Bill Widmer, an SEO expert and a serial entrepreneur.
Tune in to hear how Bill has turned his casual blog for family and friends into a 6-figure blog site, how his site is able to get 300,000 visits a month and what current SEO trends are working.
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How Zest Grew to 17K+ Users by Using Content Marketing and Machine Learning
Hey everyone! In today’s episode, I share the mic with Yam Regev, CEO and Co-Founder of Zest, where marketers go to share and discover marketing content that is manually curated by the Zest “tribe”.
Tune in to hear about Yam’s early career at a web marketing agency, how Zest manages to scale without automation (they’ve got 7,000 people curating content!), why they eschew traditional marketing, and how they are now serving enterprise companies in a unique way to generate revenues.
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How MindTouch Completely Revamped the Customer Self-Service Industry
Hey everyone! Today I share the mic with Aaron Fulkerson, co-founder and CEO of MindTouch, which provides customer self-service software that makes your customer smarter, happier, and more successful. Tune in to hear Aaron share what MindTouch is, how it increases average customer engagement for big brands from 40 seconds to 12 minutes, how MindTouch started as an open-source project in 2006 and evolved into a cloud-based business in 2012 with over 300 customers today. Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: How MindTouch Completely Revamped the Customer Self-Service Industry TRANSCRIPT Time-Stamped Show Notes:
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Have you ever had one of those days when that blank piece of paper or screen in front of you was dauntingly staring you down but you were just unable to write? That’s a classic case of writer’s block. I had writer’s block myself just this morning. I was sitting here trying to write my book and I just had nothing to add.
This doesn’t just apply to writing—it happens when you create any kind of content. You could even call it “Creator’s Block.” I struggle at times to come up with fresh, creative ideas for the multitude of things we do every week—one daily podcast for Marketing School, one weekly podcast for Growth Everywhere, new content every week for the Single Grain blog, repurposing material, doing guest posts—it’s a lot of content.
So how do we go about producing at that level consistently? And how do we make sure that we don’t give in to writer’s block?
The most important thing that I do when I’m creating content, and especially when I’m having trouble, is to just start writing. I know that may not sound like the most groundbreaking advice but you have to just start writing, even if you’re simply rambling. Starting is ultimately the hardest part, but it becomes much easier once you’re actually in flow.
Every time I actually get into the flow of writing, I feel good and think, “I should be doing this more.” The hardest part is actually getting yourself to start that process. That’s why I find myself putting these things off.
All too often, the things that should be done are the things you put off most. There’s a resistance against doing things you know you should be doing. A common example for many people would be going to the gym.
Learn More: Best Way to Ideate Blog Post Content
There’s actually a term called “The Resistance,” coined by writer Steven Pressfield and explained by Seth Godin. Godin talks about our “lizard brain,” which fuels our fear and resistance of things that are painful. But these are things we should be doing, such as going to the gym or creating content.
The secret to fighting the resistance is to not give yourself the time to prepare. Get those things done first every day, and it makes your life a lot easier. Make the hardest stuff your priority.
Prioritize your health and help yourself. Prioritize content creation because it helps other people. Think about what you’re truly doing and be deliberate about your actions. I sometimes find myself scrolling through my Twitter feed in the morning, saving stuff to my Pocket so I can read it later. But, honestly, 95% of the stuff I save I don’t end up reading. I’m just killing time.
Think to yourself, “What am I spending my time truly doing? Is it what I really need to be doing?” Don’t confuse mindless consumption with productivity or progress.
Learn More: How to Use the 2-Day Rule to Build Habits and Increase Productivity
When you face writer’s block or creator’s block or whatever block, push against it. Just start writing. It might suck initially, but you have to power through it in order to reach the next stage. Ultimately it lies in your hands to be deliberate and intentional.
Good luck!
This post was adapted from Eric’s Facebook Live videos: Growth 90 – DAILY live broadcasts with Eric Siu on marketing and entrepreneurship. Watch the video version of this post:
When I first started learning how to do internet marketing, keywords were all that mattered. Google Keyword Planner and a host of other keyword research tools, like SEMrush, helped marketers see which keywords were driving volume. Then we’d take what we learned and layer it on with a tool like Übersuggest, or come up with more permutations or more keyword phrases.
But the thing about looking at historical keyword data is that it’s the same as looking at past revenue. It’s a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator.
That means it explains how something happened only in retrospect. But it doesn’t necessarily help you predict what will work in the future.
As a marketer, you want to be ahead of the trend. For example, let’s talk about virtual reality marketing, which might really blow up in five years or so. I think we all know that that’s a trend that’s coming up, but there isn’t a lot of interest in it right now because the technology hasn’t fully penetrated yet. The timing is not correct. But in order to ride that wave when it crests, you have to be prepared.
And that’s why I spend a bunch of time on Google Trends.
Google Trends’ most obvious feature is their top charts, where you can see what’s going on in real time. This is what people are talking about right now. This is what people are interested in.
For example, if you look up the book Newsjacking, you can come up with ideas just by looking at these trends. Or maybe people have been talking about Conor McGregor recently. How can we spin that in a way that fits in with a client’s marketing?
By doing that, you can be at the top of SERPs when people search for Conor McGregor or newsjacking or whatever the topic is. Whoever gets to it first is going to win when it comes to trends.
Another example: Pinterest recently released their Pinterest Search Ads. Let’s search for “Pinterest Search Ads” in Google Trends. We can see that it is currently a trend right now and it’s spiking.
How do you take advantage of this? I like to scroll to the bottom of the results page in Google Trends to see related searches. If there aren’t many related searches, then this is a really fresh topic.
One of the easiest wins when you jump on a trend is to write a long-form piece of content about it. Most of the early coverage will be short-form news posts. For example, maybe you newsjack Pinterest’s announcement with a “Complete Guide to Pinterest Search E-book.”
Maybe we’ll jump on Snapchat Ads instead. They’ve been out for a while, and you can see they spiked for a little bit when the announcement first came out.
But it’s about to get even bigger because they’re about to IPO and open up their platform to third parties for bidding. As a marketer, maybe that’s a topic you want to jump on.
Learn More: The Marketer’s Guide to Snapchat
There’s also YouTube, which is adding the ability to target people based on their search history. So it’s like search retargeting, but through YouTube. They’re obviously trying to compete with Facebook.
There are a lot of different ways to think about this, but whatever you end up doing, start by looking at trends.
What should you not do? Write on topics without any regard to trends. For example, if you search for “SEO,” you can see that this topic has been played out. It’s the same thing over and over. If you want to own the top results, you need to be on top of trends that people are just discovering.
If it’s actually good content, readers will start linking to it and it eventually becomes a flywheel of high-quality links because it’s the top result. That’s the benefit of riding the wave before it breaks. You’re going to get more traffic over time than anyone else and you’ll be known as an authority in your space. That’s the power of using Google Trends.
And Google Trends is totally free! You’re using a free tool like this to spot things before they become really big and jump on them because people care about these new and exciting topics.
When it comes to content marketing, so much content out there is redundant over time. Many topics are basically just echo chambers of writers copying each other.
You have to figure out how to stand out. Whether it’s doing live videos every day (like my Facebook Lives) or daily podcasts (like Marketing School), think about what you can do to stand out.
This post was adapted from Eric’s Facebook Live videos: Growth 90 – DAILY live broadcasts with Eric Siu on marketing and entrepreneurship. Watch the video version of this post:
Today, I’m going to give you a little refresher (or crash course) on marketing automation and tailoring your email messages to people who behave a certain way on your website.
Take Single Grain, for example. If you visit our services page or our case studies page, you’re different from someone who has just visited our home page and bounced in a minute or less. So, as the site owner, I want to tailor my messaging based on visitor behaviors.
How many lead magnets does a visitor download on my site? What kind of content are they most interested in? Maybe they visited my SEO section 5 or 6 times. My goal is to find these interested visitors and tag them appropriately, then send them the correct message. That way it’s not just one general email nurture sequence for everyone. It’s tailored to what I think they want or need.
That being said, you should definitely still have a general email nurture sequence. Give people consistently useful content so they can raise their hand when they’re ready to buy from you. I’ll show you what that looks like. I’m also going to show you a little more sophistication with marketing automation, because a lot of the clients we work with don’t even have funnels built out and they need funnels.
If you need a little more elaboration on what marketing funnels are, just Google “marketing funnels.” We are usually the #2-#4 result (How to Create A Marketing Funnel That Generates Sales). Also check out AWeber and Kissmetrics because they also have great resources on this and they’re great companies.
Our email marketing solution, Drip (owned by Leadpages), is basically a cross between MailChimp and Infusionsoft (also known as “Confusionsoft”). MailChimp is a little too simplistic, but they’re getting more sophisticated. Also, I’m not going to hate on Infusionsoft because I’ve seen it do powerful things for Neil. But Drip is awesome because it gives you the best of both worlds.
Now let’s see how Drip works. If I go to the Growth Everywhere email campaigns, the content is basically my interview podcasts where I talk to a lot of different entrepreneurs. I’ve done over 200 interviews, so that’s a lot of content right there.
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The great thing about this type of content is it’s helpful to everyone who’s looking to learn how to grow a business, because I’m talking to these people, I’m getting their story, I’m finding out how they grew their business, how they started it, what struggles they went through, etc. The stories are evergreen. So it’s pretty easy for me to put all these emails into a general sequence (because everyone can benefit from them).
Here’s one: How a Middle School Dropout Built a 50 Million Pageview Site. Or how about this one: How Social Triggers Grew to 300,000 Subscribers Using this Formula. So I just keep going and going and I keep hitting them with content. This podcast is once a week, in addition to our new blog posts that are coming out regularly.
The idea is to keep hitting your list with incredibly useful, FREE content over and over and over. You don’t say, “Hey, come buy my stuff.” You keep giving value over time. And, naturally, your list will raise their hands when they’re ready to buy. Yes, you could throw an offer at them, like a webinar, but ideally you’re nurturing them through a sequence.
Learn More: Why Neil Patel Pays $30,000 for Content & Gives it Away For Free
One of the guys from Drip, Zach Grove, actually did an audit of our work flow. When Zach audited our account, he said, “Well you know, you have all these important emails, such as trying to get people to go to a webinar or trying to get people to check out a PDF. But in your current sequence right now, your general nurture sequence, you’re only hitting them once.”
They’re only going to see that email one time and then they’re going to move onto the next thing. Chances are, most people aren’t going to click these emails.
He was right. My open rate was 57% on the first one, but it started dropping and dropping until it was averaging around 20%. Instead, you should be hitting your list over and over with the same email (with minor variations, mostly in the headline), until they actually open it.
If they don’t open it over a 5-email span, we’re going to move them to the next sequence. But we want to give them more opportunities to view our main offers. That way we’re going to convert more people at a higher level.
So, after learning this from Zach, I made a Single Grain “important emails” workflow and anyone that opts into Single Grain or Growth Everywhere is going to move through this sequence.
If they subscribe, great, they’re going to be put into a delayed sequence. And then we’re going to send them a campaign, like a “13 customer acquisition campaigns” webinar. Once they open the email, they’re tagged and then they move to the next sequence.
I can also make a segment where if they’ve viewed all this stuff, I know that they’re really qualified and I’m going to try and send them additional offers because they’re further down the funnel.
But you’re not able to do this with a basic email marketing tool. You need something that’s more sophisticated, like Infusionsoft or Drip.
Eventually, once someone has moved through a lot of the workflow and they’re ready for more commitment, I start sending them to webinars. And then from the webinar we might send them our case studies or our marketing roadmap. I’ll send them a backlink campaign as well.
And if they view this backlinks campaign, guess what? I’m going to send them our Airbnb backlinks case study.
This is a study on 1 million backlinks, this is another one on 1 million Udemy backlinks. We have 10 of these studies, and this is just one sequence. Overall, we put people through 420 days of content.
That’s 14 months of content in addition to the general nurture sequences we run and that’s okay. That’s worth it, because a lot of our clients actually start working with us maybe a year or two in. Our sales cycle is pretty long; usually it takes about 3-4 months to close. And this is true for many agencies.
So, if you have all this content, why are you not doing a better job of getting it in front of the right people? If you have amazing stuff, it’s your job to put it in front of your audience.
This post was adapted from Eric’s Facebook Live videos: Growth 90 – DAILY live broadcasts with Eric Siu on marketing and entrepreneurship. Watch the video version of this post:
Let’s talk about why you should double down on what’s working and ignore all the noise around you.
With marketing or any kind of business, you’re always interested in looking at the next thing. I was just actually looking at a thread in an online entrepreneur’s forum yesterday, a Facebook Group, and one person brought up a good point. She said:
As entrepreneurs, how do you control yourselves from moving onto the next shiny object?
I think a lot of entrepreneurs are on the ADHD spectrum, myself included. They always want to start new things. There’s a shiny object here, another one over there, and look at that one right there!
It’s the next, big opportunity that excites us. I think that’s how we all are.
From a marketing perspective, when you look at your business, I think it’s important to look at what has been working for you and double down on that.
I’ve seen some people trying to jump on these new channels whenever they pop up. They’re on Snapchat. They’re on Instagram. Whenever the next big social media channel pops up, they’ll be on it like gravy. It’s fine when you’ve nailed down one thing and maxed it out, but a lot of people are just trying too many things at once.
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I’ve certainly fallen victim to next-shiny-thing syndrome in the past. I’ve reeled it in a little bit over the years. Now, from a marketing perspective and a lead-gen perspective, I only think about what’s actually working for Single Grain.
It’s always been one thing: content. It’s always been about adding value and educating people. Whether it’s through podcasts or videos or blog posts, content has always moved the needle.
It’s the same thing for SEO. You have to look at all the content you’ve been writing. Right now, we’re increasing our traffic by just upgrading our content. Again, it’s all about education. What can we do to continue to educate people and double down on the types of content that are working? Then we say to ourselves, “X type of content has clearly been working. Now let’s layer paid advertising on top.”
That is, in effect, doubling down on something instead of trying to do all this other crazy stuff. You could think about making funnels and things like that down the road. That’s also educating people, but first you have to think about what works for you.
I always like going back to the example of Apple in the early days. They just focused on the personal computer they had, the first Mac. They doubled down on that first product of theirs for years and years until Apple was finally a household name.
From a marketing perspective, look at what’s really been crushing it for you. At Treehouse, where I used to work, YouTube Ads did really well for us. We went all in on that and then we started diversifying into other forms of marketing.
Learn More: A Step-by-Step Checklist For a Successful YouTube Ad Campaign
The important takeaway is that you shouldn’t be guesstimating anything. Look at the numbers and the data and make good, sound decisions based off of that. The mistake a lot of smart people still make is they don’t look at what’s actually working and try to double or triple down on it.
When Warren Buffett and Bill Gates were asked, “What leads to your success?” they both had the same answer: focus.
I find that whenever I start focusing more on the agency, things just blow up in terms of growth. This year, we’ll probably do 2.5 to 3x more business than we did last year, and I don’t see it stopping anytime soon. I think it’s just going to continue to stack. And it’s because I’ve decided to focus on what works: content that educates our best leads.
So double down on what works for you. Look at your analytics. Look at your search console. Look at how your paid advertising is doing. Look at what truly is providing the most impact.
I would even say take it one step further and ask yourself: How much is a lead actually worth to you? How much is a customer actually worth to you? If you can figure out that number then the sky’s the limit because then you’ll know exactly how much to pay for advertising to acquire the optimal number of new customers each month.
For us, it’s all about educating with our content.
This post was adapted from Eric’s Facebook Live videos: Growth 90 – DAILY live broadcasts with Eric Siu on marketing and entrepreneurship. Watch the video version of this post:
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