Inbound Marketing Tactics for Startups to Earn Customers
1. Inbound Marketing for Startups How to earn your customers’ interest, rather than buying it with great content, SEO, social & conversion marketing. Rand Fishkin | CEO http://bit.ly/imforstartups
3. R 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
4. The Last 5 Years More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz Monthly Visits We took one round of financing in 2007; $1.1MM from Ignition + Curious Office
5. The Last 5 Years More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz Monthly Visits Launched our Link Graph Index
6. The Last 5 Years More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz Monthly Visits In 2009, we dropped consulting entirely
7. The Last 5 Years More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz Monthly Visits 2010 had 7,000 paying subscribers
8. The Last 5 Years Full story at http://randfishkin.com/blog/128/misadventures-venture-capital-funding Monthly Visits Failed to raise funding (despite long, nasty efforts) in 2009 and 2011
9. The Last 5 Years More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz Monthly Visits 2011 will be our first 8-figure year, with 15,000 subscribers and nearly 1.5mm visits/month
10. How Do We Get Customers? ~18% of our signups come via paid channels (in blue); the rest are via inbound channels Paid Channels Inbound
66. And Social Appears to Be Fragmenting into Multiple Large Communities (and thousands of small ones) 120mm Users: 50mm 750mm 200mm 10mm Users: 14mm Millions 14mm 6.5mm
82. R Who is Your Audience? http://xrrr-slog.blogspot.com/2007/10/corporate-demographics-2007.html
83. R 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
84. R What Content Works There? http://blog.echen.me/2011/03/14/hacker-news-analysis/
86. R How Will You Get Visitors Into Your Funnel? Multiple paths can work, so long as you segment them when tracking CR + CLTV Email Retargeting Social OAuth Phone Number Mailing Address Branding/Awareness Free Trial
87. R 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.
88. Top 10 Inbound Marketing Tactics & Examples for Startups
89. R #1: Create Sharing Incentives http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html to link to!
90. R #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.
91. R #2: Mine the Social Web for Engagement Opportunities Twitter, LinkedIn, Q+A Sites, Google+, Blog Posts and Facebook can all work
92. R #3: Create & Spread Embeddable Content http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/home is a great example
93. R #4: Make Your Data Interesting; Share It Probably the best case study around: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/
94. R #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
95. R #6: Use Social to Connect w/ Journalists + Bloggers An amazing research tool: http://followerwonk.com
96. R #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
97. R #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
98. R #9: Rel=Author & Video XML Sitemaps http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author - good how-to
99. R #9: Rel=Author & Video XML Sitemaps We use http://wistia.com to post videos that automatically send video XML Sitemaps to Google
100. R #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)
101. R Blogs + Blogging Comment Marketing News/Media/PR SEO 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 Email Local Portals Every One of These Marketing Tactics Helps Every Other One
102. I Can’t Wait to See the Awesome Things You’re Going to Build http://bit.ly/imforstartups @randfish www.seomoz.org/blog [email_address]