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Why Your Customer Acquisition Strategy Should Be Content-Driven

magnet showing acquiring customers with content

Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of any business. It’s the driving force behind marketing strategy and overall business growth.

It’s also extremely competitive and more expensive than ever — customer acquisition cost (CAC) has increased more than 60% in just the past six years. Sounds daunting, right?

It’s definitely a challenge in today’s oversaturated digital marketplace, where every company(?) has websites, blogs, paid ads, social media, and more. But those same digital channels offer a huge opportunity to attract new customers acquisition with content — and not just any content.

We’re talking high-quality, user-focused, SEO optimized, unique, innovative content that grabs attention and converts web visitors into paying customers.

The thing is, pretty much every company knows that digital content is important. But far fewer of them are staying laser-focused on creating quality content that actually performs rather than the crap most companies spit out.

We are proving every single day with our own clients that getting smart about content helps you acquire more customers more quickly, more affordably, and faster than your competition.

Ready to learn how to do it? Let’s get started.

Quick Takeaways:

  • Great content drives customer acquisition by building brand trust, an important motivator of purchase decisions.
  • You can optimize your content strategy for customer acquisition by creating content for every stage of the buyer journey.
  • Brands can capitalize on existing content by continually optimizing their best performing posts and webpages.
  • Gated content like high-value lead magnets drives acquisition by capturing contact information.
  • Social proof is another important creator of brand trust and assures customers your brand will deliver on its promises.

The Connection Between Customer Acquisition and Content

Like savvy companies leveraging digital opportunities to find and convert customers, consumers are smart when it comes to choosing brands and making purchases. Traditional marketing tactics of the past — catchy taglines, salesy language and the like — are not enough anymore to capture their interest.

This dilemma? It’s why content has become so important to customer acquisition.

Consumers are not just looking for the brand with the best marketing slogan of the moment — they’re looking for brands they can trust. Research has found that 81% of consumers cite brand trust as an important factor in their buying decisions. They rated it above any other company factor or attribute outside of direct product quality and value.

The research proves that being a helpful provider of thought leadership content will win you new customers.

Trust Barometer Special Report: Brand Trust in 2020 | Edelman

Image Source: Edeleman

To boot, the same study found that 76% of consumers pay attention to ads from brands they trust, versus only 48% for brands they don’t trust.

Where do consumers go to establish the trust they value so highly? Your content. By creating and publishing consistent, high-quality content, you establish credibility and brand authority, build your brand’s personality, and provide value for consumers that tells them your brand can deliver what they need.

Why Content is the Key to Customer Acquisition

Content vs Ads

Most people think marketing is just ads. It’s the annoying stuff that interrupts the content you are trying to consume. Watching the superbowl? Nope, we’re gonna serve up 3 ads first. Reading an article of Forbes? Nope we’re gonna pop-up an ad for something you are not interested in. Ads don’t work. And everyone knows it. But that’s what most people think marketing is.

We use the term “content marketing” to refer to the kind of content that actually helps people. It’s what marketing is supposed to be. And marketing’s main goal is to acquire new customers.

Content marketing works because it is written by people for people. It works because it is intended to help you get educated, to share experience, to drive you forward. Content marketing works better at acquiring new customers because it’s goal is to help, not sell.

Content for Search, Email and Social

Want to rank for search engines? Don’t try using ChatGPT for that! In order to rank for search engines, you simply need to answer the search intent of the keywords and questions your buyers are asking.

When you create content that ranks, it also works well in email and social media. You see, search still matters! Alot.

How to Shop for Video Games from the USA to Worldwide | Ship7.com |

Content ROI

Ok, now we’re really getting into it. I said the main reason to use content marketing for customer acquisition is because it works. There is the famous marketing stat that content marketing leads cost 62% less than traditional marketing. And that’s because content marketing is better at attracting and converting new customers for less money.

At SAP, our content marketing platform delivered $7 in revenue for every dollar we spent. That’s a 7X ROI. Guess what the ROI was of the rest of marketing? Around 1x. In other words, marketing barely paid for itself. (In fairness, we influenced hundred of millions of dollars of pipeline that didn’t get “credited” to marketing)

Content + Paid

There’s a lot of talk about AI taking over content marketing. And while we’ve proven that nonsense wrong, it is true that it’s getting harder, not easier, to acquire new customers through organic means. One way to supplement organic content acquisition is through paid.

I’m not talking about banner ads that have 99 problems and a click ain’t one. I’m talking about paid content marketing. We take our best client content and promote around the web. Then we re-target those readers with later stage offers.

Our CPC is 90% less than industry average and our click through rate is 20x higher. Paid content marketing works for customer acquisition as well!

How to Ace Customer Acquisition with Content

Align your Content with the Buyer Journey

You might hear that any traffic is good traffic when it comes to website visitors. To some extent that can be true, especially when your company is new and your main goal is increasing awareness. But when it comes to powering customer acquisition with content, you need to get intentional.

That means matching your content up with your buyer’s journey.

As your buyer moves through the sales funnel, the content that best matches the intent of their visit to your website will change. Someone doing their first Google search on a product or service they need is likely looking for more information about the problem they’re experiencing, meaning content like your top-of-the-funnel blog posts would be really relevant.

Someone later in the stages of the buying process might be looking for confirmation that your brand is indeed the one to choose, and that person might be better convinced by a whitepaper or in-depth case study.

Here’s a great visual to help you think more about the kinds of content that belong in each stage:

buyer's journey graphic showing progression through the awareness stage, consideration stage and decision stage

Image Source: Hubspot

When you’re thinking about aligning your content with the buyer journey, you always want to think of two things:

  • Giving potential buyers the information they need at their current stage
  • Including a Call To Action (CTA) or other motivator to pull them into the next stage of the buyer journey

Get Serious About Your Blog

Your blog is the foundation of your content marketing strategy. It’s great to know that you need a blog, and by now most companies do. But it’s not enough to just publish content — even if it’s fairly relevant to your industry — and hope it will perform.

Your blog content must be consistent and customer-focused. Always be extremely intentional with your blog content. Use categories to organize your content in ways that align with your content goals with customer search intent and your buyer journey.

You can start with SEO keyword research and a current content audit, then build from there. For more on the process, check out our guide to choosing blog categories and content themes.

You can set up your blog for success by combining your content optimization tactics with close attention to backend technical details that help your blog perform, including blog visibility on your home page and main navigation, using article page templates, configuring URLs and more.

(Or maybe you need a weekly blog service from us?)  😜

Optimize your Best Performing Content

Optimizing your best content is the low-hanging fruit strategy of enhancing your customer acquisition with content. You’ve already done all the work, and your work is already paying off — the content is performing well and driving traffic to your website.

Now it’s time to take it a step further so it converts that traffic into leads and sales.

Here’s how you can find and optimize your best content:

  • Visit tools like Ahrefs or Semrush and search for your domain.
  • Click on “organic keywords” to access a list of keywords you rank for and their corresponding URLs

Once you can see which content is ranking high, do a deeper dive using other tools on these platforms or by doing your own research. Be sure they’re as optimized as possible. Mainly, be sure they rank for the right keywords and have tactics in place to capture visitor information (like gated content, CTAs, subscription forms, and more).

One of our favorite tricks is to find articles that used to perform well and update them. This post was originally published in 2018 but we updated it with the latest stats, links and information. Here are some tips to updating your old posts.

Digital Customer Acquisition Strategy: 2023 Guide

Leverage High-Value Gated Content

Gated content, also known as lead magnets, capture visitor information by offering them something extremely high-value in return. Gated content comes in many forms, but it always offers something different and more valuable than what your visitors can access in your free content.

So, for example, if your blog covers why content audits are important, your gated content could be a complete PDF guide to performing a content audit.

Some of the most commonly used (and effective) types of gated content include ebooks, whitepapers, checklists, templates, and how-to videos.

Create Videos

Video is currently the most in-demand type of content by online users across the board, and brands are responding accordingly (86% of companies currently use video as part of their marketing strategy). Cisco predicts that video will account for 82% of all online traffic by next year.

The good news? You don’t need to have expensive video production equipment to produce great videos that can drive customer acquisition.

Companies (and most people around the world) are using smartphones to record and share high-quality video content.  Simply creating social media stories is an effective way to make your brand visible to customers. As you get better at video (or can afford more resources), you can expand your strategy.

Other exciting video marketing trends you can try include vlogging, live online events, webinars, and user-generated content (sharing video of customers interacting with your product/brand).

Demonstrate Social Proof

Social media alone isn’t enough to acquire new customers. But it can support your content marketing customer acquisition.

Do you look for reviews and testimonials when you’re buying a product or choosing a brand? So does everyone else! Research shows that 88% of consumers trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations, and buyers often read dozens of reviews before making a purchase.

You can power your customer acquisition potential by highlighting social proof throughout your content. Some of the best ways to do this are:

  • Including reviews and testimonials throughout your website
  • Publishing case studies that demonstrate your success with other customers
  • Sharing user-generated content (like online reviews and product photos or videos)

Social proof assures your potential customer that you’ll deliver on your promises. It is often the deciding factor for a customer considering making a purchase. Integrating social proof content into your customer acquisition strategy makes it more likely to convert leads and drive sales.

Grow Your Business with Customer Acquisition Content

If you’re ready to publish content that is always optimized to drive results, Marketing Insider Group has solutions. Our writers can deliver ready-to-publish content every single week for a year (or more!) and our Content Builder Service includes a customized strategy to help you deliver it.

Schedule a quick consultation to get started today!

The post Why Your Customer Acquisition Strategy Should Be Content-Driven appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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The Complete Guide to Fintech Content Marketing

complete guide to fintech

The financial technology market is in a golden-age, a renaissance if you will. It’s the 21st century and everyone wants in on the next big advancement in tech. But just like every other industry, the key to business growth lies in content marketing.

If you aren’t effectively using content marketing – check out this graphic from Codefuel.com. Some studies suggest digital ad spending will soar to $242.80 billion by 2024.

Source: eMarketer

If you aren’t using content marketing, you’re behind the times and this is your sign to catch up!

If you are using content marketing already let’s get a little honesty going… No one is perfect – and there are things to keep in mind when improving the content you’re putting out on your website.

Here’s a quick brush up on the basics from Intrinio:

Quick Takeaways:

  • If you aren’t using content marketing, it’s time to get with it
  • Building an organic audience over time can be more efficient and better for your bottom dollar than 100% paid advertising
  • Maintaining a consistent and quality content marketing schedule is crucial to your bottom line

We’ve thrown a list together of helpful tips for your brand to maximize the value of your content marketing efforts for your Fintech business:

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a cost efficient way to get your name in front of prospects most likely to convert.  By creating and publishing your own content using proper SEO practices, you can cut down your overall marketing costs for good.

You need to adopt a solid content marketing strategy to maximize the eyes on your product or service. It’s easy to forget about in the hussle, but crucial to your short- and long-term sales goals for your business.

This guiding star is especially beneficial for businesses that expect their prospects to seek education and information before they purchase. In Fintech, this is most of your base, so creating context about why they need your item and leading them to the conclusion is key. Why is your app the next Robinhood?

So is content marketing that difficult? Well, it can be – but it is worth the effort. Content marketing is sustainable and gives the benefit of offering exponential growth to your brand. Here are the definitions you need to know:

Traffic:

Source: Growth Badger

Traffic is about pageviews and users. Services like google analytics can give you an accurate read of this data. It also helps you see exactly where your views are coming from.

Conversions:

Views are great, but what happens after the initial click? Is the reader just leafing through your website? Are they sharing it? Are they actually purchasing your product or scheduling your services?

Conversion rate shows how many prospects are becoming customers. This metric is the real shining gem of your content marketing efforts! Converting prospects should be your number one goal with content marketing.

SEO:

Seeing how your organic search rankings are performing is crucial to a healthy content marketing strategy. Keywords drive your content, because the higher you rank with keywords, the higher you are on Google’s search results. Be honest, when was the last time you clicked the seventh link down?

So, what does quality content look like? Well, if you’re looking for blogging advice, we’ve got you covered with our guide to the perfect blog post. But for good measure, here’s some quick pointers for publishing content on your website.

1. Keep your word count between 1000 – 1800 words

Google likes articles within this range. Too little or too many might keep your hard work from ranking where it should!

2. Know your keywords

SEO/SEM is most successful when you know what words are the most important to what you talk about. Back to our tech example, words like tech, wearable, watch, would likely contribute best to a higher ranking among similar articles.

3. Have a compelling meta description

The hook is everything, right? Having a good description under your article title will be the blurb prospects read. If it’s boring or irrelevant to them, why would they click on your article?

Tips for Content Marketing Your Fintech Business

Know your audience

Any great piece of content starts with a firm understanding of what your audience needs from an article. Naturally, you’re trying to get them to your site to buy into your product or service, but the key part of that is getting them to your site.

As mentioned, in Fintech this is most of your base, so creating context about why they need your item and leading them to the conclusion is key.

Imagine for example, you’re looking to sell your new mobile budgeting app. Creating content focused around keywords like budgeting or financial will bring your target demo (budgeters) to your site. Things like Top 10 Financial Assistance Apps or Best Ways to Invest will draw them into your site.

Use Good Sources

Good sources are important. Being able to show legitimacy in what you’re saying improves trust with the reader, making them more likely to convert. Think about it this way – using someone else’s credibility to prove your point is not just okay to do, it’s the smart thing to do.

The big sites to avoid? The same ones that your high school teachers used to yell at you for (We’re looking at you Wikipedia).

This also includes citing data.

ConvinceandConvert.com says:

Ground your content in facts: Data, research, and numbers are the foundation for any story. Your ideas and opinions and spin might be part of that story—or they might not be, depending on what you are trying to convey.

They’re right! Data drives your legitimacy and your points home to the reader, especially to those in your industry who rely on numbers and trends.

Hire Great Writers

If your operation is expanding or you’re running out of time to properly handle your content marketing efforts, it might be time to hire some help!

There’s two options for this that yield similar results. You can either hire experienced content writers that have experience in SEO writing, or – hire a content marketing agency to do the research, writing, and publishing.

If you look to hire individual writers, try to find those not just with SEO experience but also Fintech experience in general. Having specialists on your team that have been brought up in the industry can provide excellent viewpoints and content for your website.

There’s benefits to both, but with a consultancy you often gain access to resources and experience you can’t always get with individual writers. Doing your research on both is important to finding what’s best for your business.

Optimize for SEO

Source: Marketing Charts

Seeing how your organic search rankings are performing is crucial to a healthy content marketing strategy. Keywords drive your content, because the higher you rank with keywords, the higher you are on Google’s search results. Be honest, when was the last time you clicked the seventh link down?

There’s tons of automated SEO tools that can make your life much easier when optimizing your content.

Publish Consistently

This should be a no-brainer, but sometimes things slip through the cracks. But the reality of content marketing is that for your efforts to be successful you need quality content as close to daily as possible.

On average, it takes about 3-4 months of consistent, quality content to see larger yield. One article per week is a solid start, but getting into a daily rhythm of publishing will give you the quickest result over a shorter period of time.

Distribute on Social Media

How’s your social media presence? If your answer is we have none or not great, chances are your visibility is low. Being plugged into your target communities builds brand recognition and trust with prospects.

If you haven’t been already, you should be publishing your content across all of your social media channels in your brand voice to give your traffic that extra boost.

Distribute to Mail Lists

Who can forget services like MailChimp and Constant Contact? Creating subscriber lists out of customers and prospects that visit your site creates an easy line of communication. Sending out daily articles straight to their emails is a no-nonsense way of getting your information out there.

These sites also have built-in analytics pages to give you the best overview of your distribution efforts. Things like open rate, best time of day to send, and percentage of links being clicked.

Use Analytics

Analytics should drive your content. Using Google Analytics and other internal analytics tools from the resources you already use will give you insight into where your content does best.

Additionally, analytics tell you where your content could use some work. If certain pieces aren’t drawing many eyes or have the lowest conversion rates, it might be time to experiment with other types of content.

Optimize For Mobile

This seems like an obvious one, but when was the last time you opened your website on your phone? Mobile viewability is not only necessary but a must have when publishing content. More than half of all content is viewed on a phone. If your website isn’t optimized for it, you’re only making yourself look bad! Especially in the Fintech world where technological development increases your credibility. This is one of those things that is perfectly acceptable to hire contractors or consultancies for.

Repurpose Your Content

We didn’t forget about all that hard work you’ve already put in! Your best performing articles don’t need to sit on your website rotting to the webpages of time.

Articles that once brought in great traffic eventually fall out of touch with the ever changing world of search engine optimization. Not to mention, the actual content can become irrelevant to today’s world. This happens all the time in the ever-changing world of financial technology.

SocialMediaToday.com says:

Marketers can turn an article into a video, or an infographic – or the opposite in each case as well. They can reuse tips in an article by breaking them down into a series of posts or Stories frames, or they might post soundbites from a podcast directly to their social channels.

Having your writers restructure your content into different forms can be the gift that keeps on giving. Even a quick freshening up of an old article from a few years ago with modern information can be the makeover your content needs to be back on top of the page!

Ways of Using Paid Content Marketing

Paid SEO

Google something. Anything. Chances are that the top 2 or 3 sites are promoted, or paid to be ranked that high. Companies in every industry often commit funds to put their sites above the competition.

Google ads sponsors their own form of an auction that you can bid on. Typically you’d bid on keywords that are relevant to your topic or business’ product or service.

The point? People like seeing their favorite social media stars showcasing products and their favorite companies. Lately companies like Hello Fresh and BetterHelp have seen record sign-up numbers with targeting paid advertising on successful podcast channels of diverse genres. Next time you’re listening to your favorite tech podcast, listen to what’s being marketed to you.

Paid social media promotion

How’s your social media presence? If your answer is we have none or not great, chances are your visibility is low. Being plugged into your target communities builds brand recognition and trust with prospects.

If your answer is pretty good, actually, paid social media promotion might be one of your best options when considering your paid content marketing strategy.

These companies have their own algorithms and targeting practices so that you know your advertisements are reaching your target audience and buyer personas. By paying your way in with your social media content you can gain followers and engagements on your posts to attract new customers.

Influencer marketing

How about a different way to advertise on social media? Influencer marketing is sending money to users with prominent follower counts to demonstrate or promote your product or service.

Many financial-centered apps have found their way onto sites like Twitch and YouTube, hiring popular personalities to showcase and promote their products. Look into Marques Brownlee for examples of this – companies will send him tech to showcase to his 10 million viewers!

Influencer marketing may be new to the fold but it’s definitely here to stay. How can your company utilize it?

Wrap Up

Content marketing, while rewarding, can be difficult to keep up with and regularly maintain for your Fintech business. By using some of the tips we’ve provided, you can get and stay on track to blow past your conversion goals for your content marketing efforts!

Do you want to use some of the marketing strategies seen here on MIG’s site but need some help or advice? Marketing Insider Group has a team of 35+ experienced writers ready to produce content for YOUR business. Check out our weekly blog content service or schedule a free consultation.

The post The Complete Guide to Fintech Content Marketing appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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Speed Up Your Business Growth Through Experimentation

Speed Up Your Business Growth Through Experimentation written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Andrew Warden

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Andrew Warden. Andrew is the CMO of SEMRush – an online visibility management SaaS platform that has been used by millions of marketers worldwide including this one.

Key Takeaway:

A crucial component of growth is experimentation. Experimentation is the engine that drives innovation. It helps businesses implement and test ideas quickly so that you can learn and define failure and success quickly and pivot accordingly. In this episode, I talk with the CMO of Semrush, Andrew Warden, about leading a mature organization and how experimentation helps push its growth as an organization.

Questions I ask Andrew Warden:

  • [1:40] Setting the record straight on how to pronounce “Semrush”
  • [2:44] What prepared you to take on this job at Semrush, a really somewhat mature organization?
  • [4:52] As a CMO, given the DNA, and all these acronyms of the organization, do you feel a tug to just do more SEO sometimes?
  • [6:38] I want to talk a little more about your experimental process – do you have a process for saying, you know, we’re gonna throw these 10 things out there and this is how we’re going to measure them?
  • [11:41] Today, Semrush offers many more solutions other than an SEO tool – what’s been the challenging part of redefining what people view your company as?
  • [14:08] As a mature organization, how do you balance the need for branding versus the need to acquire more users?
  • [17:16] Is there a small set of metrics that you rely on?
  • [19:43] So pretend you are speaking to a group of CMOs in an audience only today and somebody said, what do you think is the biggest challenge for most CMOs today? What would your answer be?
  • [22:44] Where can people learn more?

More About Andrew Warden:

  • Semrush

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    • Take the Assessment

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John Jantsch (00:00): This episode or the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the nudge podcast, hosted by Phil Agnew and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. You can learn the science behind great marketing with bite size 20 minute episodes packed with practical advice from admired marketers and behavioral scientists. Nudge is a fast pace, but still insightful with real world examples that you can apply. Her recent issue. Talked about the, the idea of getting your customers, your prospects in the habit of buying from you or listening to you or following you habit based marketing, download, nudge, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Andrew Warden. He is the CMO of Semush. Semrush. We’ll talk about that. Yeah. Time in the second square we’re on behalf our conversation, right? it’s an online visibility management SaaS platform that is used by millions of marketers worldwide, including this one. So, uh, Andrew, welcome to the show.

Andrew Warden (01:14): Great. Thanks so much. So good to be here. And let me just clarify, let me just jump really quick, cuz this is like one of the hottest contested things in our community, I would say. And beyond it is Semrush here, it here, here, the way that it sounds the way it rolls off your tongue, you think people it’s true historically it was Semrush and it didn’t help when we went public because our stock checker is S E M R so people automatically, but if you wanna know where the brand and the heart is, it’s with Semrush.

John Jantsch (01:40): Yeah, I actually was gonna ask you that directly and then I actually blew it in the intro but I know I’ve even seen some of the videos you’ve produced of, you know, making fun of the idea. Is it, I’m curious since we got on the topic, even though it’s a goofy topic, is there a regional preference? Like do Americans use one or the

Andrew Warden (01:59): Other? No, you know, I think it’s, I actually, I don’t think it’s necessarily linked to geography. Yeah. I think that’s linked to history. Right? Number one, because originally right, the founding of the company was, it’s always like square in the search engine marketing at the yeah. Yeah. Kind of die hard SEO community. And that’s true. And that’s still very much a core of our community, but you know, now gosh, 14 years later, we’re 55 plus tools. Not only SEO, not only at the sweet spot. So I think it’s probably more linked to his history and maybe our, maybe our diehard SEO fans. Right. S SCM. Right? Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:34): So you’ve been, in fact, I think you had a LinkedIn post at celebrating your one year anniversary mm-hmm so you’ve been there a year. I’m curious, just because I didn’t give a lot of background, obviously, what prepared you to take on this job as you know, really a somewhat mature organization?

Andrew Warden (02:49): Yeah. Well, I mean, this is my third time as a CMO, right? So it’s not my first rodeo. I would say, I think you’re referencing this, this LinkedIn post. I, you know, it’s taken me so many years to be absolutely comfortable with being vulnerable as a leader, wearing my heart on my sleeve. There’s a lot of people who totally go against this concept or they say, no, you should always be rather stoic and be very, you know, but I, you know, after years and years, you know, working with people from all different backgrounds know late state later stage career, early stage career at the end of the day, you know, people just want a path to grow. They want a path to grow themselves. They want, obviously we want to earn, but people wanna be engaged, you know? And so that post I was reflecting after a year, you know, it’s like all of the things, all of the points in my career of the super Heights, you know, being at Cisco when I was in my early twenties, you know, promoted several times in a couple of years to crashing and burning effectively with a startup, with our own money and you know, several other people’s money.

(03:46): And we’re all still friends, but the points of the, kind of the peaks and the valleys, and even some of the troughs it’s like, you know, had this moment, this illuminating moment a couple weeks ago where it’s like, this was all preparing for this exact moment actually. Right. And that’s really resonated with I’m. I’m really curious and happy that you bring it up. Cuz a lot of people have been talking about this, right? It’s like not many officers of public companies are making such statements, but I have to, you know, and it resonates with our team internally. It resonates with people outside. Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:13): Frankly I think self-awareness is the new like key leadership skill, frankly.

Andrew Warden (04:17): I, I couldn’t agree with you more. I, you know, really, you know, I, I, for years it’s always kind of this player, coach mentality, you know, people at the, my job at the end of the day, again, I am a very hands on CMO. I get stuck into at any given day, I get stuck into ad copy or going to board level to add copy. I’m always there to jump in and help a junior and to senior member of the team out. But at the end of the day, you know, I just try to remove as many blockages and those can be sometimes budget or resource blockage, but it can also be psychological blockage. Right. Sometimes people get in the way of themselves how to unlock people. And that’s where I think the awareness that you’re talking about, you know, really comes in. Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:53): So as a CMO, given the DNA, all these acronyms of the organization, do you feel a tug to just do more SEO sometimes?

Andrew Warden (05:04): So I feel a tug to do more SEO. No, actually it, yeah.

John Jantsch (05:08): I mean to use that, like as your core

Andrew Warden (05:09): Channel, I got you. Yeah. That’s a great question. Actually. I can tell you something. No, cuz it’s been the opposite this year. Right? I can tell you that this year, this past year we made significant, I mean incremental significant and material investments into large scale paid campaigns. And actually that was a really interesting inflection point for us as a company. It’s like, you know, we, we are on a rocket ship trajectory, right? We have the, again, all the DNA, as you said of a startup culture, right? High educated risk taking high experimentation, fast fail and like a matter of weeks versus quarters and quarters. And I really look at the whole mix, but one of the things that I noticed as soon as I came in September of 29, excuse me, 2021 is that we were not experimenting as much as I would like to with paid. Right. Because we have very, very competitive, I’d say ad positions compared to other others in our sets. But I will tell you that the organic piece for next year and for the others, there will start to be more balance. But no, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t face any problems of inertia if you will, on, you know, given that SEO is at our core, but at the same time, it’s also something that we should be pretty damn good at. Right. Because we that’s how we started

John Jantsch (06:20): Yeah. I hate to say it. I always, you know, I get pitches like everybody from SEO experts that are gonna put me on page one and it’s like, I can’t find you ,

Andrew Warden (06:29): It’s a big deal. And also anyone promising a silver bullet like that, especially so quickly. Right, right. It’s always something to be very wary of. Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:37): Yeah, absolutely. So, so let’s talk a little more about your experimental process. Yeah. I mean, do you have a process for saying totally. You know, we’re gonna throw these 10 things out there. Here’s how we’re gonna measure. ’em I’d love to hear

Andrew Warden (06:47): That. We absolutely do. So I’d like to, we have a, a system set up and this was already in place before I joined. I’m just putting, I’m just adding more fuel to it. I would say at least from a marketing side. So we have a quarterly bets and experimentation program. And I like to think of it. These are totally my words. I was like O OKRs on steroids, right? This is like, you know, BES are what we believe is possible. And we have a format that’s really clear. It’s like, what is it that we wanna do? Why is it needed? Why do we believe X is possible? And here’s how we measure success. Like here’s what success is. And here’s what failure is. And the most important thing is crucial for me is that it’s okay for a bet to fail. And when, you know, for me, this is also the big difference, in my opinion of like on a big corporate, uh, versus a company like Sam, right.

(07:39): I would rather a leader usually, you know, that can be conceived by anybody in the company. Right. But I will hold our VPs or heads of accountable for, for the mixture between experiments. And that’s the, I would rather somebody focus on two, three or four bets, you know, if one of them pans off, you know, pans out, like we’re off to the races, I’m always after a sign of life, you know? And so it is so helpful to hear how teams think about bets on a quarterly basis of, yeah, we think that we can capture more people through advertising on Hulu. We think that BEC, which is a new channel, right. We think that’s possible because you know, X percent of our demographic for this persona hangs out there. Right. And we believe it’s possible to achieve X number of registrations trials, subscriptions, or payments.

(08:27): And if it makes less than a certain amount, we’re like, you know what? It just didn’t work out. And we should not do that for another couple of years. And it’s very similar with experiments. I would say are a little bit, even more further afield. Like it’s could even liven more out there. Right? We have a hypothesis that actually, we just did one of these experiments. I don’t have the result yet, which is kind of a let down for this kind of conversation. Sorry. But we did a direct mail experiment. How’s that for a SEO or for a digital marketing company, you know, it’s like, I wait to the team and I said said, has anybody sense, literally, a mailer to small business owners, you know, cuz I had this contention that small business owners, it’s not necessarily like me or like you or somebody else who hangs out online. Right. The barber. Yeah.

John Jantsch (09:08): They’re not reading search engine land, the barber

Andrew Warden (09:10): Who’s cutting my hair, who I love. Right. Is opening the door for me, cutting my hair, sweeping the floor register, you know like this person is on LinkedIn, you know? It’s like, how are you reaching that person? So, so we did two different tests over the summer or sorry one over the summer. I think one just went out as well. So I’m waiting to see, I have no idea, but this is what I, you know, you ask about experimentation and you always have to make sure that you’re carving out, you know, 10, 10, 15% of your budget of your spend to try new channels. Because the moment that you rest on the laurels of the channel, that’s working so well for you is the moment it stops doing that.

John Jantsch (09:46): No question BEC if it’s working well for you, other people are using it too. Right. To me when I hear that, it sounds like, like if I came to you and said, Hey, I have an idea. We should do both. It sounds to me like the hypothesis is gotta be really soft. Like you really believe this is going to work

Andrew Warden (10:01): Because absolutely right. Yep. Yeah, no, you can’t just like you can’t just be like, Hey John, I wanna, you know, I want to go and take out and add in the wall street journal. Okay. Why do you wanna do that? I don’t know. I mean a lot of people read it. No, you know, you know, you have to be able to, I mean, look, you could, there are ways to make that more scientific. You can say, you know, during this period there or the wall street journal, you know, more for financially focused people, it’s like earnings typically happen between this day and this day tech earnings come out between this day and this day. So we want to run this and with this type of promotion, because people in that demographic tend to buy around that period. It all has to be, it’s quite, it’s a lot more scientific than I had anticipated. I’ll put it that way, but I love that. You’re

John Jantsch (10:42): Gonna, you, you’re gonna get a sales call from the wall street journal. Now I

Andrew Warden (10:45): Guarantee you. Yeah, well we’re already talking to him. That’s okay.

John Jantsch (10:49): Now let’s hear from a sponsor, you know, today everybody’s online, but are they finding your website, grab the online spotlight and your customer’s attention with Semrush from content and SEO to ads and social media. Semrush is your one stop shop for online marketing build, manage and measure campaigns across all channels faster and easier. Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Get seen, get Semrush, visit Semrush that’s Semrush.com/go to try it free for seven days. All right. You kind of may alluded to this already, but I was going to ask you, I mean, it’s certainly, I’ve been, uh, a Semush user for many years. Thank you. And I certainly saw it as, uh, as an SEO tool. Mm-hmm over the year. Well, it was more than that years ago, but it is certainly more than that. Now what’s been the challenge of getting of changing. People’s thinking that, oh no, it’s 50 tools and it’s, you know, it’s a, in fact, I think you even called it an online visibility platform. Yeah. As, as a differentiator, is that Mo moving the definition of what your company is? Yeah. Has that been

Andrew Warden (11:57): A challenge? It’s a, it’s a huge, I mean, it’s still very much in progress, right? I mean, again, we are so, and thank you for being a user for all these years as well. You know, I don’t take anything for granted and there’s so many solutions out there. I would say that, you know, we, we believe, you know, over the next several years and we, I mean, if we see it right now, we feel it right now in the, but we also know, particularly with small business owners that breaking through the noise in today’s market, right. This, and that’s, it’s not even necessarily new, this kind of like fragmented view for a consumer and, you know, people spend on average seven hours online, you know, it’s but how do you actually get through all of that noise and reach a perspective customer? How are you building your audiences?

(12:33): And, you know, again, all respects like that started out with SEO, you know, but at the same time we realized over time that there’s a need amongst our own user base and our future customers for content creation for marketer, you know, you name it, you know, for traffic analytics, right? It’s not only about finding what your audience is looking for, what they’re searching for. It’s also like how do I solve the problem of now figuring out how to talk to them and engage them. Right. So if you’re asking me, is it a challenge to change how we’re, how we are viewed in the market? Absolutely. You know, but at, you know, at the same time and we’re adding, uh, we’re adding our growth rate has not slowed over the last couple of years. So when you think about a comp, a KR, a compounding annual growth, we are, our velocity is not slowing down. So we are adding more and more people and expanding our own audience and reach. So I would imagine the days where this is a big, you know, question for the future, the days where, you know, this kind of Semrush or the core of SEO, I think that will always remain amongst, especially our initial users. But I think that there’s also a future people join because they have like myriad problems they’re trying to solve. Right. Not only SU yeah.

John Jantsch (13:41): Yeah. And that’s how they’re introduced to you. Yes. Yeah. You know of the brand is different. Yeah. Let’s move a little bit to cuz, cuz I know you’re running some, you know, some television that is, I would call it very branding oriented as opposed to say growth oriented. But has that, is that a conscious, in other words, it’s not saying by this because it’ll get you this result. Mm-hmm , it’s more like your CEO will think this, you know,

Andrew Warden (14:03): That kind of, are you talking about that kind of thing? Are you talking about the most recent one? Yeah. Okay. Okay. I call this

John Jantsch (14:08): And that’s just an example. My real question is, you know, how do you as an organization, that’s this mature, how do you start? How do you start balancing mm-hmm the need for branding mm-hmm versus the need for just like we gotta have X amount of new

Andrew Warden (14:20): Users. I think the problem starts is that we think they’re separate

(14:24): Because those campaigns are the goal for those campaigns are new users and they’re achieving them. The first one we did in the year will exceed the target. The second, which the second campaign, which is, which was a dedicated for a small business owners. And we’re, you know, this year is as much as it has been are, you know, about growth. We’re also doing what I call these grown experiments, large experiments. So these foray into connected TV advertising the, using the same creative that can be used for, of course banners and digital classic. We can also then use that. There’s so much production value. You can turn around to Hulu or YouTube connected TV, Disney plus like you name it. And you can like literally upload that ad and set a budget and go. So this year is also about testing new audiences, new ideas, new ways to engage.

(15:12): And one of our big bets is looking at what I would call and I didn’t mean to correct you, but what I mean is that there’s like brand, you are right. That like the approach is more about positioning the company and how it can help you grow. Right? This is this I call, these are, this is a customer needs based play versus a classic like, you know, every tool you need for X per month, right? That’s more of what you call the classic performance or growth marketing. Yeah. Those hacks. But guess what? We’re really good at the ladder. Like we’re pretty okay at that. Right. In terms of digital and paid and even on the organic side, but we have incredibly aggressive growth plans over the next five to 10 years. And so I’ve gotta be able to lay my head on the pillow at night, knowing that we’re testing every new channel, every new style of marketing and advertising that we can to keep new or existing and new customers engaged. So, but I do love how you distinction. You make a distinction right. From off the bat. Cause I get that a lot. People are like, well, you know, but this is a big kind of like kind of branding push on connected TV. And it’s like, yeah, but we can trace back the connection that we acquired, that, that user, the attention of that user from that ad. And we can trace it through to visiting us. We can trace it through to registering doing a trial and eventually becoming summer’s customer. So

John Jantsch (16:31): Yeah, you, I think you can almost make a case for saying it’s targeting. It is in a way, because I think your core acquisition person that says these tools for this much and they know what those tools are. Right. that’s right. Whereas your typical business owners actually like I don’t really wanna know what the tools are. Yeah. I wanna solve this problem. Yep.

Andrew Warden (16:48): Yeah. And again, these are very large place and I, I’m not here saying every single one of these is gonna knock it outta the apartments goal obviously. But I think that I can tell you that the entire team, the entire its 200, 200 marketers in the organization every day, we’re learning every day, we’re stretching what we thought was possible again on our existing user base, what people want to expand for their relationship with summers, but also like net new people who have totally different needs and value sets compared to existing. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:16): So couple maybe these are your easy questions. Maybe these are hard. Sure. Couple more questions. Is there a small set of metrics that you rely on as

Andrew Warden (17:26): A C a small set? No, they’re only big. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:29): I wanted to say small because , I didn’t wanna see what you can. Yeah, I, yeah,

Andrew Warden (17:34): Well, yeah. I, I would say small at Semrush is big and it would be, I would, I wouldn’t want in any other way, but the ones that I really live in the stress or get excited, you know, we measure very much on new user. Mr. So look, you know, know as a SAS based company, you’ve got SA classic SA SA metrics and we are a very different organization in terms of marketing than I would say at other kind of corporations or big company. You know, a lot of companies marketing is assisting with sales and kind of provides M QLS or SQLs to sales leadership. And then they carry on and close the deal at Semrush. Actually it’s a little bit different. We are responsible for bringing in new user acquisition, right. And that’s a material difference from other companies. So the emphasis and the laser focus on metrics is like not optional.

(18:22): You have to know every day. So I’m looking at, I’m looking always at registrations at trials. Trials is always a leading indicator. If, you know, if we see a swell in trials, there will be a, certainly a bump in new subscriptions. But new user MRI is my first, the first kind of traffic light. If you will, I’m also looking at increase or decline of our own spending, right? Because sometimes we slow down the engine either during holiday periods or periods where we don’t think people are gonna have the propensity to buy and that’s, we don’t always get that. Right. You know, it’s hard to know when to pull, pull or release that lever. I’m also looking at global dynamics, like different by different markets. Like right now the dollar fluctuation, you know, is difficult for a lot of companies. Right. And yeah, yeah. You know, in Europe, gosh, I just came back from meetings with the team in Amsterdam, in London.

(19:07): I got back late last night and you know what, you actually, you see and feel not only inflation, but also the currency of fluctuation, you know, in London, it’s like 1.15 to the dollar. I mean, even when I was in grad school in 2007, it was never that low, you know, it’s like, it hasn’t been that low in, in 30 years or something. So, so there are different dynamics about the global economy. But I would say if you’re asking for the shortest list, the shortest list, I get nine emails every morning at 7:32 AM that give me the holistic view of the business, but I would tease those as the kind of the ones that really matter. Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:42): Yeah. All right. So pretend you were speaking to a group of CMOs in an audience only today, and somebody said, what do you think is the biggest challenge for most CMOs today? What would your answer

Andrew Warden (19:55): Be? I would say the loss of innovation culture, and I would say too much emphasis on having to be the smartest person in the room that is to the CMO audience. I would say that it is increasingly more and more difficult. Look as marketers. We are, it’s almost like encoded in our own DNA, our personal DNA, every single action you take must yield an outcome, must yield a financial improvement right. To, to the top line even. And I think that the reality is, you know, again, it depends on which stage of growth you’re in as a company or even if you’re even as a small business or large business. The fact is marketing is a constantly evolving and field. Literally the pitch, the field, the markers change every day. You know, as soon as, like I said before, as soon as you find a channel that works, it doesn’t work anymore.

(20:44): Or you say something that your audience doesn’t like, and then you kind of get like temporary put in the timeout box. You know, it’s like it happens. But I think that is also conditioned people. And I would also, I do say this to my peers, that it conditions us to like be a risk averse and to not take, take too much time on experiments. I mean, I have, for example, every month I have what I call elevator pitch sessions. Like anybody can turn up to this call. It’s like 15, 18 minutes long. You get two slides, you get five minutes, you know, it’s like, what’s your idea? What do you wanna do? What do you, you know, and it can be a request for like a 50 K campaign. It can be a request for a $5 million acquisition doesn’t or 10 or whatever, you know, that’s not the point.

(21:23): And it’s funny, these are they’re meant to be intentionally very snappy very quick. Like if anybody’s kind of drowning on, it’s like, come on, tell me that, what’s the point, what’s the point. But you know, I’ll tell you, like, we’ve done real things based on those, like we’ve done, we’ve made that’s cool, real investments, material investments. And so, yeah, I would just say that, you know, I think especially as a CMO, it’s very easy to get kind of stuck in your own routine and rhythm of what works. And I think that’s why I was just reflecting after a year. Like I have more energy John than when I started. And usually like, you know, you kind of know yourself at this stage in your career. Usually you’re like, okay, I found this works. We’re gonna go head into budgeting season and then we’re gonna, we’re gonna keep going. But like I make stuff. I make shit every single day, you know? And as soon as, as the CMO, I think is an executive leader, as soon as you stop doing that, like, like you personally, I think you have to kinda reevaluate what’s going on. Right? Like

John Jantsch (22:15): I think those little mini pitches sound really empowering, especially imagine somebody who like got their deal.

Andrew Warden (22:20): Anybody. Yeah. No, but really, but we have like junior PR ex execs within the team, like with a handful of years of experience, like I want to do, I wanna try this, you know? And I’m like, why is that a good idea? Well, are you sure? Tell me why you believe it, you know? And it’s like, it’s even just going through that experience early in your career, it changes you. Right. It opens your mind and that’s also, you know, really important to me.

John Jantsch (22:43): Yeah. Awesome. Well, Andrew, it was really a pleasure to have you sub by the duct tape marketing podcast. And we can, you can tell people how they can reach Semrush. You can spell it for them. if you like, we’ll have it in. Well, it’s, we’ll have it in the show notes. It’s on your shirt. Yeah. Semrush

Andrew Warden (22:58): Semrush.com Semrush. Do. Yeah, I can’t. Yeah. So I, I would that’s as simple as it can be.

John Jantsch (23:03): Yeah, absolutely. Well, hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road. In fact, the end of this week, I’m gonna be in Austin. Oh,

Andrew Warden (23:10): Great. Stop by. Yeah.

John Jantsch (23:11): Which I know you are

Andrew Warden (23:12): For, for a drink. Cool. All right. Thanks for having me. Cheers.

John Jantsch (23:15): Appreciate it. Hey, and one final thing before you go, you know how I talk about marketing strategy strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the marketing strategy assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co I’d. Love to chat with you about the results that you get.


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This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network and Semrush.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.

Everybody’s online, but are they finding your website? Grab the online spotlight and your customers’ attention with Semrush. From Content and SEO to ads and social media, Semrush is your one-stop-shop for online marketing. Build, manage, and measure campaigns —across all channels — faster and easier. Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Get seen. Get Semrush. Visit semrush.com/go to try it free for 7 days.

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