Most SaaS and e-commerce either don’t know how to measure ROI on their content marketing or do it incorrectly. Let me give you my 4 steps to measure ROI on content and share my ROI calculator - a spreadsheet template you can copy and use yourself. In my experience, when executives ask ROI questions, what they want to know is - 1) How many leads & sales they will generate from content? 2) How long will it take to break even? & how much to spend before break even? Answering the first question is about understanding the total number of keywords in your space that have business value. Answering the second question —is the process I am going to describe below. Step 1: Define some concrete metric to measure Most of us measure vanity metrics. For instance, website traffic, email newsletter signups, webinar signups, social media likes, etc. These metrics are great but how do you attribute them directly to sales? You can only make assumptions. Producing content that generates a lot of traffic but very few leads is very easy. So instead, we should be measuring - Qualified leads Free trial and signups Booked demos Purchases in eCommerce & d2c businesses. Step 2: Set Up Google Analytics to Measure That Metric Use one of the above-discussed business metrics as a benchmark for content performance. To measure it, I use Google Analytics (GA). Create a Destination goal: You create a unique “Thank You” page for people who sign up, submit a form, & have that be a goal in GA. Step 3: Determine the number of Leads/Sales/Revenue per month required to break even. You need three numbers to calculate this : Annual ticket size Lead to close rate Cost of content marketing Multiply the first two numbers to get the "average money a lead brings in". Now divide content marketing cost by "average money a lead brings in" to determine how many leads you need to break even monthly. Further, you can also estimate traffic to break even based on conversion%. Example - your annual ticket size is $10k & your closing is 5%. So a lead, on average, brings in $500. Now let's say your content marketing cost is $4k. That means you only need 8 leads a month to break even. With 0.5% conversion on your blog traffic, you need 1600 visitors a month. (high conversions only possible on bottom-of-funnel articles) If you are an eCommerce or d2c business, you just use average order value (AOV)—the average dollar amount of purchase on your site & divide that by your content marketing cost. So, if your AOV is $400, & your content marketing cost is $4k per month, you would need 10 sales to break even. With this in hand, executives and founders can calculate their ROI in a jiffy. Here is the link to google sheets to calculate ROI yourself - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14DofXhXoYbMnjT5QQWBJq07KPOByPd8d32D2A1fbLvQ/edit?usp=sharing

Does anyone here use Apollo? I have a few questions to ask

Daily Growth Tip: Reference tweets in your blog posts to gain followers Subscribers are more important than followers, but followers are still crucial – and you can earn them directly from your own blog entries. Increase your following by mentioning your tweets in articles. Referencing your tweets in blog posts is an excellent strategy to grow your audience. This can be accomplished by hyperlinking clickable text or embedding the tweet. Any relevant tweet will suffice, but for the greatest results, generate complementing tweets that are slightly outside the content of the post. Alternatively, you can summarize the content in a tweet and then invite readers to share via that (linked or embedded) tweet at the end of the piece. The more you do this, the more your readers will visit your Twitter page and follow you.

Daily Growth Tip: Increase conversions by reducing time-to-value for invitees Optimizing time-to-value is critical — and it isn't just for new customers. Show potential clients who receive an invitation or the outcome of a growth loop that they have immediate value. If your product includes a growth loop in which the output is given to non-users, it is critical that the recipient's time-to-value is as short as possible. Loom is a wonderful illustration of this; when a user sends a video, the recipient may immediately view, comment, and so on without having to register or go through any hoops. Even if you don't have a growth loop like Loom, having a quick time-to-value is a key aspect of "refer a friend" features. Whatever you do, avoid putting these potential customers in conflict (like a signup form). Instead, deliver value right away. This should increase the likelihood of their signing up later on.

As an email marketing agency owner, I spend a lot of time crafting different cold emails for different clients in different industries. Based on what we have tested so far, our best performing cold emails are: • Are less than 90 words • Are 3-sentence paragraphs long • Goes straight to the point • Only ask one question Here's an example of a cold email template that has worked wonders for us: Hi first name - I saw you're the VP of Sales at Acme and are more likely focused on increasing sales and helping your reps hit their KPI So I wanted to send you a quick note about my company. We worked with a VP of Sales who used our tool to streamline their outbound sales, resulting to a 30% in booked meetings. I believe we can do the same for you. Interested? Let me know, and I can send over a few times to chat Hope this was helpful! And if you need help with your cold email campaign, feel free to message me.

Here’s a strategy that I've been using to book demos for both ourselves and clients in the US market, with a 7% reply rate and 1.5% meeting rate. It allows us to Book a Demo with ANYONE from CEOs of small businesses to Director and VP titles in Fortune 5000 using Reciprocity (for example, one of our clients just closed Best Buy for a $250K deal). Also the leads are much warmer. 1) Pick a very targeted Demographic Get accurate data. Without reliable data, nothing else matters. Also, clean it before sending it no matter where you get the data from. I like to use ZoomInfo for it. 2) Find an interesting gift (that's not too big) to send someone that EVERYONE will want. Usually a food item. If you're sending a gift, it must follow the path of a want, not a need. Almost everyone loves dessert, such as a local cookie shop and even if they don't want it for themselves, they give it to a colleague, friend, or loved one. 3) Don't just send a gift, ask if can you send it? This builds trust and also gets your attention to know if there is potential interest. You also don't break the bank by sending it to everyone on your list. 4) Once a gift is sent, follow up. Don’t ask for the meeting right away. This is where reciprocity takes place. Follow up with emails, linkedin messages, and calls to check in and ensure they received the gift. Only then do you casually ask to sync up. 5) Confirm the day of (and not just with Calendly reminders) Make sure to send a personal email, and a call (even if leaving just a voicemail) on the day of the meeting. Create a great reminder and accountability. 6) Create a no-show email campaign involving 2-3 emails and 2-3 phone calls. If anyone does miss the meeting, have a campaign ready to go just as you would on a 1st communication to get them back. We go with at least 7 steps. With this process, you can book as many as 1.5% of ANY target, even those in the Fortune 5000 space. ROI is always important. The usual cost for us is around 2,000 dollars to get 10-15 meetings (half the people accept the gifts and then half the people who accept gift, book demos). But if you have an offering valued at just $6 to $8K overall and close 10%, you're in a great place. The ROI can be 100s and even 1000x in the positive for larger deals.

Daily Growth Tip: Build backlinks with the teammate technique People are more inclined to connect to your article if you offer them an opportunity to improve their own material. Increase your SEO by identifying holes in articles and contacting the authors to assist them in filling them. I*tamar Blauer improved his referring domains by 553% in a year by employing an SEO approach known as the "teammate technique."* He has a 45% success rate with it, and the backlinks are among the highest-quality links he has ever produced. He also increased his profile and built partnerships. The objective is to add value to the website owner by assisting them in improving their material and/or skills - in essence, you're becoming a teammate. Begin by producing high-quality content that demonstrates your expertise. Include portions that go beyond the boundaries of what other people have written. Then look for content on the subject that is missing either these portions or other crucial features. Itamar gives the example of developing a YouTube SEO article and then targeting articles that do not have information about cards or end screens. You can locate these articles by typing intitle:youtube seo -cards -"end screens" -"end screen" into Google. Once you've identified a few prospects, reach out — people will be more open because it will immediately help their content. Itamar even offers to hop on a call with them to help them through it if they are unfamiliar with what he is saying. And, of course, he receives a link to his article in return.

that’s kinda stupid is like saying “You don’t want to DM people”. Scrapping is a technique that works in the right situation

for the right purpose

Yes...that's exactly the point of the article.

FWIW this data scraper has saved me thousands of hours over the years:

completely free too

great for small, visible datasets on a webpage

Daily Growth Tip: Summarize influencer content to gain exposure. Influencers can boost your content in a variety of ways. Utilize their knowledge and reach new audiences by summarizing your best bits of content. Joel Hansen of Kernal had over 100,000 views on a Twitter thread, with 271 likes and 52 retweets. It was his best-performing tweet to date, and it took him less than 10 minutes to write. How did that happen? He took a Sahil Bloom article he liked and summarized his favorite parts into 20 tweets, giving Sahil credit on the first and last. Then he posted it and DM'd Sahil, who liked and reacted right away (they had exchanged messages before, so this was not completely cold). Joel also pinned it for good measure. The thread went viral, presumably because it had strong content and anyone who knew Sahil was more likely to trust, read, and engage with it. The latter was especially useful as retweets began to pour in and Joel's thread reached new audiences — Sahil's reply surely helped in that sense as well. In addition to reaching new audiences, it's possible that this enhanced Joel's bond with Sahil.

I spent last weekend diving deep into Notion's ambassador program - here's what consumer brands can learn about creating an ambassador-driven growth machine: TL;DR: "Ambassadors" go one level deeper than affiliates or influencers. An ambassador resonates with your brand so much that they want to organically share your products. It's not always about getting the most # of influencers, it's about building deep relationships with a few advocates. ➡️ START WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS It's tempting to go in the influencer route and start cold DMing popular influencers in your niche. But in doing this, you miss out on another valuable asset - your own community! Notion's marketing team noticed a few tweets doing the rounds about how people are falling in love with their product. They reached out to these superfine and started off their ambassador program with raving fans as their first ambassadors. ➡️ BUILD CLOSELY WITH EARLY FANS As your program builds some early momentum, stay close to your early ambassadors and take their input on how you can improve the program. Notion added their first dozen or so ambassadors in a Slack group chat and built each part of the program closely with them. This helped them tailor an attractive experience for future ambassadors. Build small, scale later. ➡️ CLARITY AND EXCLUSIVITY Notion is pretty clear on who they want as an ambassador and who they don't want to work with. Not every casual Notion fan can become an ambassador as it comes with a set of commitments. It is important for you to know this for your brand. This way you attract less people, but you attract the right people. ➡️ SPECIAL PERKS Your ambassadors are more than just customers or influencers. They're a closer part of your brand, so treat them that way. You can't just have expectations and requirements from them and not give anything in return. Notion sends swag, has ambassador forums, and does other small things to make them feel special. You can do something like this too 🙂 ➡️ ACTIVATING THE COMMUNITY Chances are, if someone is aligned with your brand mission, they share a lot of other things in common. For example, if someone uses Notion, they're likely to be into tangential topics like productivity, journalling, reading, self-improvement, etc. Make the community stick to each other - your brand is just an excuse to come together. If you want to see my entire research, lmk and I'll send it to you. I'd love to hear your thoughts on these tactics, especially if you run an ambassador/influencer program! Cheers 🥂

Anyone with kickstarter fundraising success experience? Would love to get advice!

One strategy that has helped me book demos for clients who own a SaaS is this: Don't sell to the final consumer. For e.g If you sell a SaaS that helps eCommerce stores increase their conversion rate Instead of reaching out to ecom brands, reach out to agencies that do conversion rate optimization for eCommerce stores. Another example: If you sell a platform that helps hospitals build websites, instead of reaching out to doctors Reach out to agencies that build websites for hospitals. If you put this into practice, you will book more demos.

Daily Growth Tip: For more sales, display testimonials that follow a tried-and-true formula Testimonials are one of the most effective forms of social evidence, and you can improve their effectiveness. Increase trust and sales by providing testimonials that adhere to a strict criteria. Customer recommendations increase revenue by 62%. And, according to Brian Dean of Backlinko, employing a certain methodology can make your testimonials 10x more successful. The testimonial formula is divided into three sections: before, after, and what they would tell someone about the product. So you begin by making it relatable by saying, "Before purchasing [product], I struggled with [issue]." Then demonstrate how the product was beneficial by saying, "Then I got [product], and now I don't have to deal with [issue] anymore." And then bring it home with a consumer suggestion, such as "If you've ever suffered with [issue], I recommend getting [thing]." So, while choosing testimonials, choose those that follow this process. If you're looking for client testimonials, you can even provide one that follows this structure as an example to motivate others to follow suit.

How we drive 100 paid signups monthly from Content Marketing, netting us an additional $7k new MRR every month. And we started from 0 in December 2021. Back in October last year, I was brainstorming ways to get more signups on our app. We wanted to go after smaller users and get many of them. Doing outbound on them didn't make sense and google ads were not giving ROI. I had scaled a few saas websites before using content marketing and was sure this would be a success too. My only concern was, that our app is a little complex, with not the best onboarding, so I want sure of how many trials would convert into paid customers. Now, the first step was keyword discovery - I looked into our CRM and asked the developer to export all the sales transcripts, chats and customer feedback forms. I analyzed all this textual data and discovered customers' pain points in these conversations. I then found keywords which had enough volume and low competition. For instance - "How to send bulk emails", "my open rates are poor", "need sales coaching" and "how to measure sales engagement". So we started writing on these keywords. We immediately started ranking on these pages. With some paid backlinks on these, we started driving lots of free trials. Once we finished this batch of keywords, we then started writing articles on the 6 frameworks below - 1) Alternatives to ‘X’ - You talk about alternatives to your competitor 2) Pricing of ‘X’ - You talk about alternatives to your competitor 3) Reviews of ‘X’ - You write reviews about your competitor by aggregating from various sites like G2, Capterra 4) Comparison posts: this framework objectively compares your product to your top competitors 5) Best product or service lists: this framework helps searchers discover the best products in the category they’re searching for. 6) Product or Service Use Cases: this framework helps searchers figure out how to solve a problem they have and presents your product or service as a potential solution. After this, the articles that would be on page 1 and page 2 of google, we would re-write them (into the best articles on the internet) and secure more backlinks on them, so we consistently stay at the top. The paid signups suddenly started shooting up in March 2022. Currently, we are not writing a lot and still reaping benefits. Most of our focus is now on backlinks. These signups will never dry, even if we just get some backlinks. This is the Content Marketing for you. It scales slow but gives consistent results.

BROCHURE FOR SALES Hello experts, I am planning to create a product brochure for sales people. They close a semi product-led sales. This means customers land on our website > start free trial > sales people do a discovery call > setup a demo > close the sale during demo I asked them what ready-made info they'd need in the brochure to uplift their sales call. They told that if 'customer' jargon is in the brochure, that would help If benefits of core features are listed in the brochure, that would help. What other info could be there in the brochure? Thanks in advance 🙂

You can't take motivation to the bank We have this culture where a lot of people are seeking motivation, they want to be motivated by the things and people around then, they believe they'll change their lives when they are motivated BUT It doesn't work that way I used to be this type of person until I realized a 20% change every day of the week gets me further in life than 60% change once a week It's consistency over motivation It's the little changes Stop waiting for motivation to change your life Instead make a little change everyday Small changes over a long period = transformation Good morning from this part of the world 🌞

No matter how little or great the effort and speed, progress is progress. Never let the progress of others make you doubt your own🚀 Don't forget to applaud yourself, you're doing great! 💪

Video Growth Tip #1 What makes the best B2B sales pitch? From @Lidia Vijga

Daily Growth Tip: Use the "Dream 100" strategy to connect with influencers If you're only 6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, connecting with thought leaders within your own niche should be a cinch. Using the Dream 100 strategy, you can get connections from your contacts. The "Dream 100" strategy, as Joe Fier of The Hustle and Flowchart Podcast refers to it, has been critical to the growth of his network. The concept is straightforward. Make a Google Sheet with a list of 100 people you'd like to connect with — both low-hanging fruit and long shots. Explain what the sheet is for, who you are, and the best way to connect at the top. As an example, consider Joe's list. Then, from your signature in Gmail or Google Workspace, link to the sheet. According to Joe's link, "Our top 100 wish list. Do you know anyone?" Now, the first email you send someone will prominently display a preview of the sheet. And because it appears to be an attachment, the recipient is likely to open it. Every week, between two and four people try to connect Joe with someone on the list.

How do you write in a way that not only drives organic traffic but also converts visitors to customers? Let me break it down into 4 steps we have used in our company & some of our clients. Step 1: Come Up with Content Ideas and Identify Target Keywords That Have Business Value. Businesses should focus on bottom-of-funnel, “long-tail keywords” because these terms have much higher purchase intent & therefore, higher conversion rates. Step 2: Perform a SERP Analysis to Figure Out What’s Needed in Your Content for It to Rank. Some basic on-page optimization to the articles—like inserting the target keyword into their title tag & subheadings, or using a seo tool like Surfer SEO to add relevant keywords throughout the blog, isn't enough. It won’t reliably land you on the first page of a google search. So what else are you supposed to do? The most essential step to SEO content creation is to do a SERP analysis to understand - 1) All the different layers of search intent. 2) What types of content are ranking already? Is it mostly long “how to” pieces? Lists of things? Landing pages? 3) Which subtopics are being discussed in those pieces? You then use this information to decide on the type of article you’ll create, what you need to include & how you’ll differentiate it from existing top results. The goal is to create something that’s better & more useful than what you see on the first page. Review the topics discussed inside of those pages, and identify themes that come up repeatedly. Cover them in your blog. Determine the intent(s) of searchers typing in this term. If your piece is exactly what the searcher is looking for, readers will spend more time on your post, click on things, and thus display “on-page behavior signals” that tell Google’s algorithm your piece is fulfilling their user's search intent, so Google is likely to rank you higher. Further, the searcher is more likely to feel your brand understands their problem, thus more likely to convert. Step 3: Write Original, Non-Beginner Content That Weaves in Your Product or Service Step 4: Polish Off Your Article with On-Page SEO and Write Your Meta Description Use the SEO tool like Clearscope to ensure you’re using enough of the relevant keywords—the keywords that are showing up repeatedly in existing top content—should also appear in our blog. This requires creative ways of incorporating keywords that don’t quite fit in naturally. I don't recommend keyword stuffing. Google’s algorithm can pick up on this now. In cases where keywords just don’t make sense & we can’t find a way to creatively include them, we leave them out. Lastly, write meta description—the line of text that goes underneath the link to your post in the SERPs. Even if these meta descriptions wont help your pages rank, at the very least, they’re an opportunity to pitch potential readers on why they should click on post. How do you create content that both ranks and converts?

5 Best Product Launch Examples with Key Takeaways Product launch example #1: Cox Communications Cox Communications is the third largest cable provider in the US. With the constantly evolving EdTech (educational technology) industry on their side, they were preparing to launch a new educational app for kids called FastTrack. It enabled kids to practice math and English skills they needed more help on and work ahead of their grade level for enrichment. In addition, it would allow parents to keep track of their children’s progress and share information with teachers. But before all, this new and exciting tool needed to be tested to ensure it would work and get the word out before it was released. Their strategy was simple: a killer landing page capturing people’s email addresses and building a list. Investing in ads on Facebook allowed them to target moms and proceeded to reach out to influential mommy bloggers and educational gurus. The subsequent outreach campaign was designed to forge strategic relationships and secure opportunities for guest blogging. Each guest blog drove traffic to the landing page. The campaign converted an impressive 6% of the target audience to FastTrack. Despite large competitors on the market, there was still room for an app that provided the newest updates. Key takeaways: • Having a solid reputation and partnering up with influential people provides trust in the product you are selling. • Creating buzz and building anticipation increases the products’ popularity. • Relate to your consumers and sell them the experience your product or service provides.

Hello guys, a cautionary tale. Although we've just started and only have a couple of dozen of customers, we've just survived a massive hacker attack. And I mean it - hundreds on thousands of requests per hours from different countries all around the word. If not for our security guy, we would crash massively. Luckily we're okay. We've added additional security measures and now we're safe. I'm writing this to warn you that it's never too soon to prioritize security. Not a growth tip per se, but a very important thing nonetheless.

👩‍💻Have y'all tried out Writesonic? I just stumbled across them on Product Hunt. They help marketers with: • AI copywriting (blogs, posts, social media, emails, etc.) • Generating video intros/hooks/ideas (YouTube/TikTok/etc.) • AI song writing 🤯 (It can literally create a rap about your product in a few seconds) I tagged one that it wrote for me. 👇

Daily Growth Tip: Get backlinks by giving your product to nonprofits for free. Quality backlinks are critical for SEO. Increase your SERP rankings by donating your product to charities in exchange for a backlink. Many businesses benefit from nonprofit SEO juice by sponsoring or donating in exchange for a backlink. If your budget is limited, there is a less expensive option: offer your product (or service) for free. It won't cost much as long as new user onboarding is inexpensive. And it might be worth it to gain a few points in the rankings. Reach out if you believe your product would benefit a nonprofit. Give it away for free in exchange for a mention on their sponsor page, blog, or somewhere similar. Because most have a limited budget, they are often open to this type of arrangement.