How the Fxck SEO Podcast

Watch on YouTube. Download the Playbook. Kicking off season two with a bang, we've got Tim Soulo, CMO of Ahrefs.com. ‍ In this episode, we cover: • Growing the Ahrefs blog to 1.5 million monthly visitors • Why traffic doesn't matter (and why Ahrefs has never used Google Analytics or retargeting pixels) • How to design content that drives sign-ups (and why you shouldn't waste your time on anything else) • How to rank #1 in Google (like Ahrefs does for everything) • What type of content Ahrefs writes and why it works so well • How to make 'you' focused content that also adds a lot of value • What are the limitations to this approach? • How do Ahrefs promote their content? How do they build backlinks? • What are the six ways content marketing at Ahrefs contributes to revenue growth? • Are backlinks really important? If so, why? ‍ Join the How the Fxck community to get instant access to this episode summarised into a PDF playbook. Download here. ‍ "You can be successful with a few simple fundamentals and by getting rid of non-essential stuff. Create a product that's genuinely useful to people. Forget growth hacks, make your product indispensable."

This week's marketing leader is Andy Culligan, the CMO of LeadFeeder. ‍ Andy joined LeadFeeder in 2020 and took on the task of creating fresh pipeline and growing revenue through marketing. ‍ In this podcast, he tells the story of cutting the marketing campaign budget to a third (by reducing paid and agency fees) but still getting the same volume of leads. ‍ We learn how Andy and his team put on multiple webinars over the year that more than 15,000 people attended. ‍ Interweaved with the story of webinar success we learn: ‍ Andy's secret to success (i.e. scaling Exponia from $4m ARR to $16m ARR) Why SDRs under marketing works can be vital to growth Why you need to make sure leads actually trickle down to a sale. Matching lead gen to revenue outcomes. How to design content around your what's keeping your customers up at night How to get 1,000s of webinar attendees even if you don't have a big email list How to score your leads to only push the best ones to your sales development team Why you must immediately follow up on demo requests Advice on whether an 'eBook download' should be called immediately, nurtured or just wait for them to have higher intent How to get from SEO to a lead Why actionable content is king (or queen) Why you shouldn't overcomplicate things (which marketers so often do) ‍ Next week, I'll release a playbook. Subscribe on thefxck.com to get it.

Here's a man who needs no introduction: Eddie Shleyner. ‍ I've been wildly excited to release this episode since I recorded it over a month ago. ‍ I was hanging off of every word the first time and the second time I listened to it back during editing. ‍ Eddie displays his deep knowledge of copywriting in this episode. ‍ Having studied the greats, he seamlessly draws on their experience to deliver an explosive number of tips and tricks for anyone aspiring to copywriting excellence. ‍ Eddie's the ex-copywriting lead at G2, copywriting consultant at HelpScout and Drift, and the +7 year founder of VeryGoodCopy. ‍ VeryGoodCopy is vividly useful and educational copywriting blog, newsletter and premium community. The blog hosts more than 250 lessons and interviews and four valuable micro-courses. ‍ He brings all those years of dedicated practice to the interview in which we cover these points: ‍ (1) Eddie's copywriting journey. How can you learn and master the skill of copywriting like Eddie? (2) VeryGoodCopy's growth journey. Learn the tips & tricks Eddie used to gain 15k subscribers, making this his full-time career, and growing his LinkedIn audience to 32k+ followers. (3) Why Eddie's process for writing helps him be such a prolific high-quality content producer. (4) There are 5 elements to every email. Learn what they are and how you can leverage them to grow your business. (5) 5 high-value pieces of advice for aspiring copywriters that will either kick off your career or take all of your marketing to the next level. (6) Eddie tells us the strongest human incentive and you can use in your copywriting to consistently drive action. (7) Eddie gives me a lesson that boosted the conversion rate on my latest eBook. (8) Learn why the skill of copywriting isn't necessarily your mastery of English. Which copywriter made $200m in sales despite it being his second language. (9) Towards the very end, Eddie gives us one actionable tip to help generate creative connections that will boost your copywriting conversions. ‍ If any of this blog post convinced you to listen...that's because I've listened to the podcast TWICE. It's that valuable. ‍ Listen here.

I'm excited to welcome Danny Gavin to the podcast this week. ‍ Danny's the founder of the Optidge, the digital marketing agency based out of Texas. ‍ In this episode, we discuss Danny's expertise areas: SEO & paid social. ‍ We focus on one social media ad campaign in particular. ‍ Optidge ran an advertising campaign for Degs & Sal, the eCommerce jewellery brand available to buy D2C (a channel pivot from selling through major retailers like Nordstrom, Macy's and Bloomingdale's). ‍ Degs & Sal had one requirement: to have 2x ROAS on their Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. The Optidge took over the campaigns and these were the results: 400x increase in total revenue 130% increase in DIRECT ROAS to 2.66x 72% decrease in cost per purchase, 29% decrease in cost per add to cart 24% decrease in CPMs. Finally 278% increase in unique orders 2020 AMA Crystal Award for Best Plan B Marketing Campaign ‍ In the episode, we look at the method behind the success. ‍ You'll learn: How to build audiences that convert Why you need to design a funnel The importance of testing How much you need to spend on testing What you should test Examples of long and short-form copy used in the campaigns ‍ And all in 30 minutes. What's not to love? -- Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and podcast here. Follow us on LinkedIn for daily marketing tips.

Hello and welcome to the How the Fxck podcast, this week we have an incredible marketing leader, Kris Hughes, who I had the pleasure of grilling about content strategy. Kris has been a senior content creator and content manager for 10 years. Starting off growing a sports blog that evolved into a 15 million visitors a month network of websites, he’s since been a director of content specialising in driving traffic and generating inbound leads for a number of award-winning companies like projectmanager.com and QuickStart, Inc. He’s recently launched his own business aimed at helping solopreneurs and startup teams smash their first 120 days of content creation. In this episode, we go into How the Fxck-style detail on the first 30-60-120 days. From driving value from your first post, how to conduct in-depth research to find gaps in your competitors content, through to lead generation, Facebook Ads, guest blogging and distribution. I got excited by this one, it’s so clear and actionable. I hope you enjoy it. Follow me on LinkedIn to get the playbook.

This week, I interviewed Michael Norris, the CMO of YouTech (a Chicago marketing & design agency). He also hosts YouTalk, a podcast about business and marketing, which I was interviewed on a couple of weeks back about how I built this podcast. I can't bring myself to listen yet… This week, we focus on Michael’s work with one of his early clients, Urban Matter, which is a news and entertainment website like Time Out. He helped them grow to a large following and high volumes of monthly traffic (500,000 on one viral post!) through SEO, PPC campaigns, viral marketing and inbound marketing in general. I dig deeper into how Michael approaches SEO, what tools he uses, how he does keyword research, where he starts with clients and how to drive leads that way. If you’re looking for an SEO refresher, this is your episode. Substack link: https://howthefxck.substack.com/ Website link: https://www.thefxck.com/ Hope you enjoy this episode!

This week I chatted to Holly Enneking, the VP of Marketing at Lev. I love Lev. And I want to copy their marketing. So it was awesome to dig into the detail with Holly about their 'All You Need is Lev' brand awareness campaign, which was hugely successful and has helped solidify Lev as a leading SalesForce partner. We start off the podcast talking about channel marketing, which is Lev’s main channel, before talking through the campaign that involved adding the word Lev to song titles and sending Bluetooth speakers to people who open their email campaign.  So fun. Hope you enjoy the podcast, and if you do please leave a review and make sure you subscribe. We’ve got a ton of recordings in the backlog that I can’t wait to release. Read the full insight and more of the interview at www.thefxck.com.

This week, I interviewed Rand Fishkin. You may know him as the founder of Moz.com, a company with +$50m in annual revenue that's used by marketers worldwide. He's recently left Moz to found SparkToro so I caught him at the perfect time to ask: what marketing tactics are you using to launch your new startup? He launched earlier this year to a waiting list of 18,000...and we learn what he did to build that list. We cover: - Rand's SparkToro journey - 4 methods used to build his audience - Rand's advice to marketers just starting out - What Rand thinks is the untapped opportunity in marketing right now. Check out the full insight on www.thefxck.com

This week, we interviewed Nadya Khoja, the Chief Growth Officer at Venngage. Nadya joined Venngage when they were a small team of four with (a relatively small) 20,000 organic visitors month. 5 years later they’re a team of 50 with 1.5m monthly visitors, driving 150,000 product signups every single month. We deep dive how they achieved this success, looking at: - Tapping into trending topics to create content that goes viral - How to get high-quality backlinks that build your site's authority - Incorporating journalists into your campaign strategy - Ranking for content that converts vs branded keywords. Hope you enjoy this episode! I’m sending out a summarised playbook to everyone who’s subscribed to the email list, so if you want that please join us at www.thefxck.com. ‍

Thinking of starting a podcast for your company? This is the only podcast you'll need to get started. This week's guest is Lindsay Tjepkema, an experienced marketing leader and founder of Casted. Lindsay was VP of Content at Emarsys when she first saw the opportunity that podcasting presented in the B2B space. A podcast can be the fuel behind a powerful, focused content engine. Think about it, just one podcast recording with one of your prospective clients can be turned into: A transcript Multiple blog posts An eBook 5 audiograms to post on LinkedIn 3 audiograms your sales team can send in their outbound work Etc, etc, etc. It's rocket fuel. And for those of you still teetering on the edge of starting one yourself, this podcast is a great place to get you started. We cover everything you need to create a podcast that cuts through the noise, tackling challenges that set you as an authority in the industry.