Michael King - Open Source Marketing at SIC2013
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Transcript of Michael King - Open Source Marketing at SIC2013
OPEN SOURCE MARKETING: HOW WE DO MARKETING AT IACQUIRE The reason why you know who we are is due to the efforts of the people in this presentation
@iPullRank
DOWNLOAD THIS DECK http://iacq.co/how-we-market
@iPullRank
YEAR ONE: BRAND AWARENESS How marketing was born at iacquire
@iPullRank
iacquire.com
WHEN I ARRIVED AT IACQUIRE APRIL 2012… Nobody knew what it was, when I showed people the website they thought it was a software company. They purposely obscured their messaging.
@iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Brand reputation was meh
Those that did know iAcquire know it for the bad reputation largely inherited from the acquisition of Conductor’s Paid
Link practice and one of the co-founders having been involved with Text Link Ads.
This isn’t an excuse, it’s just me
explaining that I didn’t understand the
magnitude of the paid link building until I
did the quantifying outreach study which
was literally days before my official start
date.
In hindsight… I realize that iAcquire hired me to act as a figurehead showing their “commitment” to thought leadership and being a white hat SEO company.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
iacquire.com
OF COURSE MY FRIENDS SHOWED SUPPORT…
@iPullRank
iacquire.com @iPullRank
Site traffic 3/30/11 – 3/29/12
Sorry for the Clicky screenshots. iAcquire was still very tinfoil hat about Google Analytics at this point,
but this was their site traffic for the entire year before I joined.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
Site traffic 3/30/12 – 5/10/12
In the 6 weeks since I’d started I’d gotten iAcquire double the traffic they had the entire previous year.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
How did I do that?
I posted the Noob Guide to Link Building as a compainion piece to Oli Gardner from @Unbounce’s Noob Guide to
Online Marketing and linked back to downloadable PDFs on iAcquire.com.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE! WE DO INBOUND MARKETING. To be clear I don’t develop marketing plans, I develop a quarterly content strategy and we execute against that with regard to iacquire’s business goals..
@iPullRank iacquire.com
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
The numbers behind the strategy
To date that post on Moz drove 1,211 newsletter signups and 451 tweets which helped increase brand awareness
and build a brand asset in the mailing list.
Paywithatweet.com This is one of my favorite tools for spreading a message. Make users tweet about your content to get it. Make sure the content is worth tweeting for though.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
@iPullRank iacquire.com
Diversify content types
PRESS
BLOGS VIDEO
UGC
COMICS
PRODUCTS
PHYSICAL SPACE
ADS
PHOTOS
INFOGRAPHICS
SERVICES
EVENTS
UI ELEMENTS
PDFS TOOLS
APIS
ANIMATIONS
COMMENTS
DATA
PLATFORMS
PRINT MATERIAL SLIDE DECKS
PLUGINS
TWEETS
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
GARY & cOGSWELL
I dreamed up a two robot characters based loosely on iAcquire’s co-founders called Gary & Cogswell and built a
comic strip series with illustration done by Kyle Bastian.
IN KANSAS
Reinclusion Afterlife Presentation:
http://bit.ly/reinclusion-afterlife
@iPullRank
This was great for me. I actually got the chance to do to affect change right away. The reality of it is iAcquire had an offering that I didn’t actually believe in. They
sold me on joining by offering me the power to build an SEO capability the way I
believed it should be. I don’t believe that’s what they actually expected to let me to
do that, but the brand crisis left me in a position to do so which effectively made it
possible to build offerings that I did actually believe in and make the marketing
that much more effective.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Hired megan & Norris
I hired Megan Brown (@thatgirlmegan) as our Social Media Strategist to help manage our growing community and
Norris Rowley as our Manager of Market Research & Analytics to help make our offering unique.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
I spoke a lot
Between this year and last I have spoken at dozens of conferences on behalf of iAcquire to let people know that we
exist and are on the cutting edge of Search.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
I brought on Josh Giardino
I hired Joshua Giardino (@techarity) so he could do Research and Development so we could stay on the cutting edge
with ideas for marketing and build tools. We built Authora & Broken Link Index from the Common Crawl
@iPullRank
Closed a $240k deal with a guest post I realized there was a knowledge gap around how to keep your social shares after a 301. I wrote a post on SEW, someone saw it and it ultimately generated $240K of new business for us.
iacquire.com
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Hired tom
Selling on-page SEO projects made for products I could really believe in and enough revenue to hire someone to run
it. So Tom (@tomharari) joined the team as our SEO Manager.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Tom guest posted too
Almost right away Tom found his stride and started contributing not only to our own blog, but on Moz as a thought
leader.
Video content We also started doing video content to showcase the iAcquire culture, spread brand awareness, educate and entertain. Our video content doesn’t perform that well.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
12 days of linkmas
I had thought leaders put together link building tips in the form of Christmas cards in the 12 Days of Linkmas
campaign. 51 Links from 16 LRDs for free. 5199 Pageviews. 107% traffic growth from Twitter. Coverage on SEW.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
12 days of linkmas Social activity
Almost right away Tom found his stride and started contributing not only to our own blog, but on Moz as a thought
leader.
@iPullRank
There was no end to end measurement plan at this point Sure we measured traffic and conversions per channel, but never rankings. We
didn’t really have any way to tie site traffic to how much business we were driving.
At this point it was far more about how do we get more eyeballs on iAcquire. And
yes, we did that.
YEAR TWO: DIRECT RESPONSE Primetime lead generation
@iPullRank
@iPullRank
Goals (finally), Generate 15 leads per quarter
Build brand awareness
Launch new website
Develop Editorial Calendar
Promote Content via Social Media
Reach more Directors, VPs, and C-Suite Execs
Launch Co-marketing efforts
Develop email marketing / lead nurturing
campaigns
Create 3 case studies per quarter
Limitations, No defined budget
Lack of communication on resource requests
Not enough staff
Non self-sufficient team
@iPullRank
We started the year strong with 5 http://www.iacquire.com/blog/how-the-mad-men-of-iacquire-
performed-in-2012-and-what-to-expect-in-2013/
iacquire.com @iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Redeveloped our target personas
Norris rebuilt our personas using data from Simmons Connect and we’ve since used those to develop Content
Strategies that have been incredibly effective in lead generation.
@iPullRank
Our core strategy is to produce entertaining and/or educational content with the goal of positioning iAcquire as the global leader in inbound marketing.
OUR CORE STRATEGY
@iPullRank
The iAcquire brand voice is that of a savvy yet trustworthy friend., It is authentic, authoritative and
friendly. The voice exudes confidence but does
not foster alienation. iAcquire speaks the same
language as its audience and while we are
experts we are not wizards. No buzzwords…
Tone • Authentic but not Brash
• Fun but not Silly
• Direct but not Uninitiated
• Authoritative but not Persnickety
• Questioning but not Rebellious
• Informal but not Unprofessional
• Cool but not Unapproachable
• Effective but not Complicated
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Developed a slogan and philosophy
Unfortunately the CRAFT philosophy never caught on internally. Even in video interviews on the site with the
executive team some of them couldn’t tell you what it stood for.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Developed a search-driven information architecture
Despite the fact that we are doing marketing across multiple channels we developed a site architecture based on the
things that people are searching for to make sure it performs well Organically.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Updated the branding
Our Creative Director Robb Dorr and I worked to refresh the brand and make it look at cooler.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Developed the wireframes
Robb and I developed wireframes to help us all stay on the same page with the content that we’d need to create for
this new site.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Hired devin
I hired Devin Asaro (@copydev) as our lead Content Strategist to own the Content Strategy for the website in addition
to developing the copy.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Homepage before and after
…
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Hired jenn
I hired Jenn Sager (@jennsager) to give us Creative firepower in NYC. She helped speed up the site launch working
on icons, case studies and other site content. She stayed until 10pm on her first day. She builds marketing materials.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Offering clarity
One of the main goals of the new site was to showcase our expanded offerings with a lot of clarity to completely offset
the obscured messaging of the previous iteration of the site,
The industry took notice.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
iacquire.com @iPullRank
More importantly the metrics took notice
Organic search traffic increased We saw an immediate uplift in traffic from the Organic Search
channel.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
Mom organic search traffic Our Organic Search Traffic has continued to substantially increase
MoM since the launch of the new website.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
Our best referral lead source Having a mention on Moz’s recommended list has been our single
most consistent lead source. It cost us $0.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Moz referrals by the numbers
To date being on the Moz Recommended list has sent us 72 leads, most of which have been qualified.
Established a content calendar We’d had a content calendar in the past, but until now we hadn’t been able to sufficiently stick to it. With more staff we’ve gotten better at it.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Hired Konner
Konner (@konnersmith) is our resident Video Producer. He came in and helped us streamline our video work and
improve its quality. Up until then I was shooting and editing all the video.
WE blew out our video content We haven’t put enough efforts in promotions of the video content, so the views are low, but they look great! However people often comment to us in person on the content they’ve seen.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Hired j-li
Jiafeng Li (@jli_jiafengli) came on to our Strategy team and made us a much stronger team from a quantitative
analysis standpoint. We leverage her Excel skills to make sure all of our data is strong.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Iacquire got a lot easier to market
Now that I had a strong team of badass digital marketers and new cutting edge offerings it became much easier to
market something we could believe in.
DIGITAL STRATEGY
DATA & TECHNOLOGY
Data Partnerships
CAPABILITIES
COMPETITIVE Analysis MARKET RESEARCH IN-HOUSE EXPERTISE
REPUTATION MANAGEMENT SEO CONTENT MARKETING Social Media
IRANK
Content Strategy
measurement & optimization
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Experian webinar
We did a co-branded webinar with SurveyMonkey
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Surveymonkey co-marketing
We did content with SurveyMonkey
Meetups for brand awareness We launched our first meetup in partnership with Zemanta and Distilled
and it was a smashing success with 50 in attendance. We’ve continued
to grow them and have over 100 people attend each time.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
The single best traffic driving piece of content on the site
My post on 18 Meta Tags Every Webpage Should Have in 2013 has driven over 70k visits and 61k unique pageiews
in 8 months making it our best traffic driver. That traffic is 100% organic.
MAKE DEFINITIVE TACTICAL GUIDES AND GET REWARDED WITH TRAFFIC. But not conversions if your content is too high funnel.
@iPullRank iacquire.com
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Hired amanda
Amanda (@agalluch) was one of our all-star interns the previous year who had continued to contribute to our blog so I
brought her on as an Associate Content Strategist. She owns our blog, email marketing and landing page creation.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Unbounce shredded our landing page
The guys at Unbounce tore apart our landing page and at the 0.20% conversion rate they are absolutely right.
iacquire.com
SO WE STEP OUR GAME UP IMMEDIATELY
@iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Hired sasha
We hired Sasha (@galkinator) who primarily works on the Strategy side as a Copywriter, but also frees up Devin to
do more Marketing work.
How we affected the business
@iPullRank Date
AN EXAMPLE OF HOW THE TEAM WORKS
I lead the thought with this I challenged the SEO industry to leverage the new data that Google has given us rather than complain about the data they have taken away.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
iacquire.com
THE CONVO AROUND IT GAVE US AN IDEA
@iPullRank
Then devin made this Devin talked about how (not provided) moves us away from
keyword stuffing back into marketing and telling good stories.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
WHICH MADE US REALIZE THIS…
@iPullRank iacquire.com
iacquire.com
AND THE AUDIENCE REJOICED
@iPullRank
AMANDA AND DEVIN MADE THIS With help from our creative director @usethedorr. Signup: http://landing.iacquire.com/solving-not-provided/
@iPullRank iacquire.com
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
We ran twitter ads targeting seos
Our Twitter ads have resulted in 524 clicks to the landing page at a spend of $283.
iacquire.com @iPullRank
We a/b test to get the most out
iacquire.com
SO FAR WE HAVE 90 SIGNUPS Not bad for a few hours work.
@iPullRank
How we affected the business
@iPullRank Date
METRICS AND MEASUREMENT
iacquire.com @iPullRank
We don’t build links, they just come
We have over 11k links from 1.3K domains without ever sending a single outreach email. Marketing > Link Building.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
traffic
Traffic in general is up 172.74% YoY and Organic Search traffic specifically is up 1323.50%. Our content strategy and
site relaunch paid off.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
conversions
Conversions are up 65.16% across the board and while the conversions we tracked last year are down substantially
the new ones that we truly care about (Site Contact Form Submit) are up.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Helloooooo conversions
Safe to say we crushed that.
That’s 283 leads in 3 quarters vs. the 45 we’re supposed to get
iacquire.com @iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Cost Per Acquisition
Based on the numbers at my disposal which may not be a complete picture of the cost of the sales and marketing
teams our CPA is $3,756.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
CPA:LTV Ratio
Our SalesForce setup is not entirely accurate, but based on the numbers that have been recorded our average
lifetime value per customer is $53,502 which makes our CPA:LTV ratio 1:14. (1:3-5 is considered good).
1:14
FAILURES Things we never quite executed on
@iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Outbrain doesn’t help us meet business goals
Only the most off-topic articles generate traffic for us through Outbrain and that traffic is largely unqualified.
We never launched this project. The
interactive developer who was working on it
completely disappeared and the project died.
USER GENERATED COMICS
@iPullRank
REPUTATION TRACKER We never launched Reputation
Tracker. The co-founders of iAcquire
announced they didn’t want me
making tools when I was in the middle
of it.
@iPullRank
AUTHORA Josh and I were ahead of our time
with trying to open source the Author
Graph. iAcquire didn’t believe in it at
the time and stopped putting
resources into it. Now they are
revisiting the idea as the basis of
ClearVoice’s author ranking system
VoiceGraph and VoiceRank
@iPullRank
BROKEN LINK INDEX The Outreach team wasn’t able to
properly implement the broken link
building as a viable method of building
links so iAcquire decided to stop
funding this project as well.
@iPullRank
NEVER LAUNCHED IACQUIRETESTS.COM We announced that we would we start making our seo tests public. The project never happened.
@iPullRank
KEY TAKEAWAYS What you should implement right now
@iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Understand your audience
This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Identify knowledge gaps that set you apart
We tend to b blog about things it no one else seems to be thinking about. It’s very effective in establishing us as
thought leaders.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Focus on content strategy
This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Have channel owners
Our efforts became substantially more effective once we had someone to own each channel.
Social Media Owner Blog, Email Owner
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Over communicate
Meetings, emails, phone calls, Google+ Hangouts. I don’t care how you do it, just communicate what you’re doing.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Track everything
This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.
TOOLS WE USE What you should implement right now
@iPullRank
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
hootsuite
This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
mailchimp
This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Experian simmons
This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
moz
This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
sysomos
This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
15five
This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
trello
This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Google analytics
Google Analytics is of course how we measure all the things. http://www.google.com/analytics
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
feedburner
This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Sharedby.co
We add our branding to the URLs and the top of every page that we share to easily drive people back to us.
http://www.sharedby.co
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Bit.ly
We have our own URL shortener via Bit.ly for iacq.co. http://www.bitly.com
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
Ga url builder
For measurement purposes we need to tag our URLs with the right parameters. This tool makes it easy http://gaconfig.com/google-analytics-url-builder/
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
unbounce
Unbounce is a WYSIWYG tool for building landing pages and running A/B tests. We don’t run enough A/B tests.
http://www.unbounce.com
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
eventbrite
We use Eventbrite for tickets to our meetups. It provides metrics and Google Analytics integration
http://www.eventbrite.com
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
wistia
We use Wistia as our video hosting platform so we can get visits directly to our site from Organic Search.
http://www.wistia.com
@iACQUIRE Iacquire.com
speechpad
We use Speechpad to transcribe our videos so we can place the copy on the page and better improve its visibility in
Organic Search. http://www.speechpad.com
@iPullRank
wwww.iacquire.com
Thank you Michael King Director of Inbound Marketing @iPullRank