Post on 08-Sep-2014
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Inbound Marketing for StartupsHow to earn your customers’ interest, rather than buying it
with great content, SEO, social & conversion marketing.
Rand Fishkin | CEO
http://bit.ly/imforstartups
Let’s Start with a Story
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My First 6 Years as a Startup Founder
Blog post: http://randfishkin.com/blog/103/just-keep-going
Rand and Gillian’s Combined Personal Debt
The Last 5 Years
More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz
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We took one round of financing in 2007; $1.1MM
from Ignition + Curious Office
The Last 5 Years
More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz
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Launched our Link Graph Index
The Last 5 Years
More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz
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In 2009, we dropped consulting entirely
The Last 5 Years
More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz
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2010 had 7,000 paying subscribers
2010 had 7,000 paying subscribers
The Last 5 Years
Full story at http://randfishkin.com/blog/128/misadventures-venture-capital-funding
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Failed to raise funding (despite long, nasty
efforts) in 2009 and 2011
The Last 5 Years
More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz
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2011 will be our first 8-figure year, with 15,000 subscribers and nearly 1.5mm visits/month
How Do We Get Customers?
~18% of our signups come via paid channels (in blue); the rest are via inbound channels
Paid Channels
Inbound
Interruption vs. Inbound
Interruption Marketing
Inbound Marketing
Interruption Marketing
Inbound Marketing
Interruption Marketing
Inbound Marketing
Some Marketing
Interruption…Stop Us
From Doing What We Want
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So It Can Sell Us
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Stuff We Don’t Need
That’s Interruption Marketing.
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Interruption Marketers
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Interruption Marketers Me
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Interruption Marketers Me
Ads
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That’sNotHowWeRoll.
How People Buy in 2011
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Realize a Need
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Investigate Options
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Ask Our Friends
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Seek Out Experts
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Find Communities
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Dig Into Every Detail Available
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Convert
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You Don’t Buy Those Visitors.
You Earn Them.
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In∙bound Mar∙ket∙ing-noun
Any tactic that relies on earning people’s interest rather than buying it.
In∙bound Mar∙ket∙ing-noun
Any tactic that relies on earning people’s interest rather than buying it.
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We’re Here to Help
Startups Disrupt Markets. How About Marketing?
Inbound Channels
Content
Influences Everything
Without Great Content…
There’s No Chance of Success.
Content Can Mean:
“Content.”
Community
Product
Or Distribution
No Matter the Form; Content is the Foundation of Great Inbound Marketing
Search
Search is How Things Get Found.
Search = Discovery
Discovery Leads to Sharing
Search is Still Big
And Growing
Currently, there are more than 3 billion searches/day
on Google
Search Often Brings the Most
Highly Qualified Traffic
But Guess Where Searchers Click…
~20% of clicks
~80% of clicks
Social
Social Lives at the Top of the Funnel
Social is Discovery Prior to Interest
Social Demands Great Content,
And Rewards It.
Today,
Social is a
Huge
Influence
on Search
And Social Appears to Be Fragmenting
into Multiple Large Communities (and thousands of small ones)
Users: 50mm 750mm 200mm 120mm120mm 10mm
Users: 14mm Millions 14mm 6.5mm
Email is Social’s “Secret Weapon”
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/05/social-medias-secret-weapon-email.html
And Email Marketing is Insanely
Profitable/Powerful
http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/seomoz-case-study/
Conversion
The Funnel Only Exists So It Can Convert.
Optimizing Conversion
Means Measuring & Testing
http://dmix.ca/2010/05/how-we-increased-our-conversion-rate-by-72/
It Means Listening, Too.
A Lot of Conversion is Wrapped in Soft Metrics
Branding
Messaging
Familiarity
Trust
CRO is a Critical Practice
But it Requires Holistic Marketing to Succeed.
Building an Inbound Strategy
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Who is Your Audience?
http://xrrr-slog.blogspot.com/2007/10/corporate-demographics-2007.html
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Where are they on the Web?
http://searchengineland.com/a-portrait-of-who-uses-social-networks-in-the-u-s-and-how-social-media-affects-our-lives-81653
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What Content Works There?
http://blog.echen.me/2011/03/14/hacker-news-analysis/
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How Will You Get Visitors Into Your Funnel?
Multiple paths can work, so long as you segment them when tracking CR + CLTV
Retargeting
Social OAuth
Phone NumberMailing Address
Branding/Awareness Free Trial
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How Will You Measure & Improve?
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tracking-the-roi-of-social-media
Step #1: Discover
Step #2:Test
Step #3: Measure
Step #4: Repeat
Find inbound marketing paths that look promising and make a list.
Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector.
Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact
Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.
Top 10 Inbound Marketing
Tactics & Examples for
Startups
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#1: Create Sharing Incentives
http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html
to link to!
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#1: Create Sharing Incentives
Urbanspoon’s “Spoonback” program allowed them to compete w/ Yelp and build awareness to foodies, direct traffic from relevant
sites and great SEO. Founders credited the concept as being the most important part of the company’s success.
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#2: Mine the Social Web for Engagement Opportunities
Twitter, LinkedIn, Q+A Sites, Google+, Blog Posts and Facebook can all work
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#3: Create & Spread Embeddable Content
http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/home is a great example
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#4: Make Your Data Interesting; Share It
Probably the best case study around: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/
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#5: Mine Your Twitter Followers, Emails, etc.
Via Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/using-twitter-and-backlinks-to-build-links/2011/07/28/; tool is here: http://simplymeasured.com/freebies/twitter-follower-analytics
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#6: Use Social to Connect w/ Journalists + Bloggers
An amazing research tool: http://followerwonk.com
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#7: Build Features that Require and/or Reward Sharing
http://www.quora.com/How-effective-is-Dropboxs-referral-program-at-bringing-in-*paying*-users-i-e-how-many-subscribers-do-they-have
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#8: Give Your Community a Platform
Moz has a Q+A forum, a blog and a user-generated content platform, along w/ robust user profiles and a
points/gamification system. Content contributed by non-employees is ~35% of our overall traffic
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#9: Rel=Author & Video XML Sitemaps
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author - good how-to
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#9: Rel=Author & Video XML Sitemaps
We use http://wistia.com to post videos that automatically send video XML Sitemaps to Google
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#10: Create a Monthly Top X Influencers in Your Industry
http://www.seattle20.com/startup-index.aspx updates monthly, but doesn’t use badges (which I highly recommend)
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Blogs + Blogging
Comment Marketing
News/Media/PRSEO
Social Networks
Word of Mouth
Q+A Sites
Forums
Online Video
Podcasting
Webinars
Research/White Papers
Infographics
Social Bookmarking
INBOUND MARKETING!(AKA all the “free” traffic sources)
Direct/Referring Links
Type-In Traffic
Local Portals
Every One of These Marketing Tactics
Helps Every Other One
I Can’t Wait to See the Awesome
Things You’re Going to Build
http://bit.ly/imforstartups
@randfish
www.seomoz.org/blog
rand@seomoz.org