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Learn how Nick Bennett drove 83 G2 reviews in 1 quarter, in order to drive signups, improve retention, build social proof and tons more.

Learn how Rand Fishkin and the team at SparkToro thinks about the value of so-called "vanity metrics", and uses zero-click content to build their social following and drive signups from social.

LinksTry Benchmarks ExplorerLearn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreHow They Moved The Needle1. They boosted retention by offering a discount for the next year, and the ability to pause (vs cancel) a plan.When travel screeched to a halt and churn started to ramp up, the CEO and his team focused on retention. They prevented it in two ways:If things were going OK for customers, they could upgrade for another year at a discount. If they weren’t, rather than canceling and losing data, they could simply pause their account.This also showed customers that the company had there back, and would support them.2. She updated messaging and value props the client led with, based on customer research.The old messaging focused on value props around reliability and value. Asia did customer research to learn the “job” customers were hiring the product for, and what they valued most. In her research, she found that these value props didn’t resonate with customers like they did before.The market had changed, and so did the needs and beliefs of the customers. She found customers still wanted reliability, but they really valued things like:Innovative featuresThings they hadn’t considered beforeHelp tackling other problems their businesses facedAfter she completed the customer research, Asia crafted new value props, centered around how the product would:Work with customersHelp them growBe in their corner your cornerRelease innovative features3. She updated the Client’s Google ads campaigns to better reflect the new messaging and value props.4. She completely redesigned the Client’s website.In her research, she found customers weren’t choosing the Client because the “marketing wasn’t as pretty”. One respondent actually said, “you guys didn’t look as cool as the other options.” Other competitors looked newer, more professional looking, or more modern. It was also hard to tell the difference between the Client’s site with all the lookalike competitors, touting the same solution.Through research, they found they were often the last product people tried. And because users would try 2 or 3 competitors first, they’d often end up signing up with them instead. Asia wanted them to stand out, resonate, and be the first product they tried.So they overhauled the design, opting for a darker, bolder theme to stand out from the competition (who mostly did light, lookalike designs). This had a huge psychological effect on buyers. The Client stood out, and customers would remember the site and experience better.4. They updated the website with new messaging that showcased the new value props they discovered.The old messaging centered around being reliable, easy to use, and convenient to connect everything you needed. The new messaging centered around being a platform that would help you grow, innovate new features to solve ongoing problems, had flexible pricing, and would always be in your corner. This included updating the signup flow, pricing page, and messaging on the homepage.5. They hired an SEO agency to build organic traffic.Asia had helped build a foundation for content, so when the SEO agency came in, they started increasing 10% month over month.6. They overhauled the onboarding emails.They went through several versions of onboarding emails, with the goal of getting the customer to value realization as fast as possible.7. They helped the Client improve the signup flow to reduce friction and get users to value realization faster.Asia identified and changed steps in the signup process that were causing friction, and contributing to a lack of activation.ResultsThey increased MRR by 10x in just 2 years, organic traffic by 10-30% month over month, and doubled website conversions (largely due to the overhaul in their design and messaging).

LinksTry Benchmarks ExplorerLearn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreInsights Tim Shared1. If you aim at improving a metric, your strategy will be optimized to hit that metric. And that might not be in the best interest of your company.This often happens in marketing. Teams will hit their KPI, even if the work isn’t driving more important results down-funnel. For example, Tim said if he were charged with driving more leads ( = email addresses), CTAs and email signup forms would be everywhere across their content. He’d succeed in driving more leads and hit his KPI, but would compromise good user experience and brand in the process.2. Have values you won’t compromise on, even to hit the most important metrics.Revenue is one of the few metrics they do track and work to grow. But even that, they won’t compromise their values for. For example, they don’t believe in retargeting. They don’t want to invade users’ privacy and follow people around the web just because they’ve visited the site. Tim knows they’re leaving money on the table by refusing to do it, but it’s more important to maintain their values.3. When you lack clear data, use a “common sense” approach to marketing by observing human behavior.In the early days, Tim went to a conference wearing an Ahrefs t-shirt. A customer introduced himself, and then took Tim around talking up Ahrefs to their friends. Almost every time he introduced Tim to someone, he’d say: “their English isn’t the best, and their copy is a little rough… but they have the best data in the industry.” Tim realized the main message he needed to lead with: Ahrefs was the best because they had the best data. He came home, and immediately updated the messaging on the homepage to center around them having the best data in the industry.4. Understand your content has ripple effects you won’t be able to measure.A piece of content that gets traffic, talks about your product, and is helpful to readers, can’t not bring value. You often won’t see it drive immediate, direct signups. But behind the scenes, people are referencing it, sharing it, and coming back to it, and all of that is driving increased brand awareness, affinity, and trust. Most great content has “ripple effects” which are hard (or impossible) to measure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable.5. Much of the value of brand marketing is the “Exposure Effect”.The more people see/hear you > the more they “know” you > the more they trust you.6. Use content to reduce strain on customer support.Ahrefs serves tens of thousands of paying users, and hundreds of thousands of free ones, with a handful of support staff. How? Content.Obviously, they have a great, easy-to-use product. But they’ve also invested heavily in creating educational content (via YouTube, articles, etc.). These have worked so well, they’re able to handle 100’s of thousands of users with a dozen or so support staff.7. Measure things that will help you make actionable decisions.Many teams measure things just because they can be measured. But when looking at the data, you should ask yourself: “so what?” If a number dips, or spikes, so what? What action will it drive?8. If you decided to invest time and money in creating new features or content, you should put time and money into promoting them.“If you cannot justify spending money to promote your content, how did you justify your effort to create it in the first place?” Tim says many companies invest lots of time and money in creating new content, but then never pay to extend its reach. Often, for just a fraction more than what they invested in creating it, they could amplify it to the right audience.9. Use the “Business Potential” metric to help you determine what content you should create, and prioritize.Business Potential = a score from 0 to 3, which gauges how easy it would be to promote a product, naturally & helpfully, in a piece of content. Here’s how to use it…3 = your product is an irreplaceable solution to solve this problem (topic of “backlink research” for Ahrefs)2 = your product helps a lot, but isn’t essential1 = you can mention the product, but it’s not related to solving the issue0 = no way to squeeze in a mentionFor every idea in your “potential content” list, grade each one from 0 to 3.10. Make sure your content creators are excited to tackle a topic.Tim doesn’t want to force topics on writers. Most anyone can tackle a given topic, but they have to be genuinely excited to write about it. This results in better content, and happier creators.11. Embrace holistic keyword research.For Ahrefs, every piece of content still starts with keyword research to ensure they’re writing about a topic people engage with. But keyword research can mean a lot more than using a tool:Holistic keyword research includes:talking to peerslistening to sales callsreading questions on socialscanning RedditResultsWhile Ahrefs may not measure a bunch of metrics or KPIs, there’s one they do measure: revenue. They just crossed $100m in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

LinksTry Benchmarks ExplorerLearn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreAt the time, Gremlin had raised a great Series B and was growing significantly. They had product-market fit, and were looking to scale. Their goal was to make the sales and marketing funnel more efficient, so they decided to test an account-based (ABM) approach.Where many companies go wrong here, is only focusing on target account engagement: blasting targeted accounts with ads, and seeing “impressions” going up. But Peter wanted a metric that would be a leading indicator that what they were doing would pay off. So he and the team designed an engagement score metric that combined quantity and quality.The metric produced a cumulative total “engagement score” based on all contacts’ lead score, impressions, and engagement. For example, they could have 1 contact at Nike who loved them (browsed the site, downloaded content, etc.) w/ a lead score of 100. So their avg. lead score per contact and total “engagement score” would be 100. But if they attracted 9 other contacts from Nike who didn’t engage with their content, and had a lower lead score, it would bring the overall engagement score down.This provided a number of benefits. If they had content that played well among other highly engaged accounts, and it wasn’t playing well for a new target, they’d know that account might be less likely to close. Or if they found an account that had lower cumulative lead scores, they might pump the brakes and serve up more top-of-funnel content and slow down their approach.And it didn’t merely serve as an early performance indicator. They could also use their cumulative engagement score to test different channels or content that might drive all target accounts higher across the board.ResultsBy using a more holistic, custom metric to measure their ABM strategy, they saw a 50% increase in engagement among targeted accounts in just 1 quarter. They also added a few points to the marketing qualified lead (MQL) to qualified opportunity rate.

LinksTry Benchmarks ExplorerLearn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreHow They Improved It1. He hosts a weekly meeting with sales to review conversion and lead health.AJ hosts a weekly meeting with sales to get continual feedback on lead quality, and to learn how many marketing-driven leads are either becoming opportunities or leading to pipeline revenue.This helps him:make sure marketing and sales are rowing in the same directionrefine their ICP over timeunderstand which campaigns are most effective, in real timeFor example:Sales may share that prospective healthcare clients will be facing open enrollment in a few months, and need to scale their SDR team. So AJ might decide to run a special seasonal campaign to support sales efforts.2. He made a big investment in building brand trust and awareness.AJ’s goal is establishing demandDrive’s name in the outsourced sales space, growing awareness and trust through valuable content. This contributed to a 3x increase in overall inbound leads: people that have consumed their content, but haven’t said they’d like to learn more about the service/offering (yet). They’d learn about demandDrive, but weren’t ready to learn more.3. Created a marketing automation system to nurture inbound leads, and help more of them convert to MQLs.As inbound grew, AJ realized he had a big opportunity to keep these people engaged until they decided they wanted to learn more or might be a good fit for demandDrive. Since it was primarily valuable, organic content that grabbed the prospect’s attention in the first place, AJ served them up more of the same in the nurture phase.This meant that most of the messaging they’d receive from demandDrive was just valuable content. If a prospect consumed a large amount of content (e.g. read blog posts dozens of times), or raised their hand and said they wanted to learn more, they’d be moved into the MQL stage.4. He crafted more effective sales-driven emails by studying the most effective outbound messages.Once in the “nurture” stage, prospects were mostly sent valuable content. But once in a while, they’d receive a more sales-oriented message. To make the sales-oriented messaging more impactful, AJ would find messaging that was resonating well in outbound campaigns, and adapt talking points to fit his needs in marketing.5. He started manually evaluating lead quality, and handpicking the best leads to make sure they went to sales more quickly.He’ll send those directly to sales because they look like companies that have had a lot of success with demandDrive in the past.6. He started ungating most content.AJ found that the gated content just didn’t perform better than any ungated content they’d release, so they’ve been moving to ungate just about everything. This likely contributed to the 3x increase in inbound leads they’ve seen.7. He baked in more CTAs to talk to sales, or opt-in to the marketing automation system in content.If a reader wanted to learn more, they could either opt in and join the nurture campaign (marketing automation), or get in touch directly with the sales team.ResultsAs a result, they grew Inbound Lead to MQL conversion from 40% to 60%, and MQL to SAO conversion from 52% to 73%. And in May 2022, they did more business (total new logos & revenue) than all of 2020 combined.