by Omid G for marketermilk I grew a SaaS company’s SEO traffic from 25k visitors/month to 500k visitors/month from content marketing. That’s a 1,900% increase. I’m going to lay out exactly how I did it in this post so you don’t have to go through years of struggling to figure it out like I did. This will be one of those articles that you read and refer to often. We are about to go over what content to create, how to create it, how to think about distribution, how to track ROI, how to find outsourced writers, and more. I…
Help with time management?!
by LIZ CHRISTO for Dear Stage 2 DEAR STAGE 2: I was recently promoted into a sales manager role. I had a great routine when I was an AE, but am struggling to adjust to this new schedule —there are a lot more meetings and more people who need my time. I get to the end of each day and still have a full inbox and a long to do list. What advice do you have for someone making this transition? ~When do I actually do work? DEAR WHEN DO I ACTUALLY DO WORK?: Welcome to sales management! Your time is no…
Find & accelerate your marketing advantages to grow much faster
by MKT1 Newsletter A great product, team, and market have become table stakes requirements for startups to succeed. With the proliferation of B2B startups and the lower barriers to building great products, marketing is now the differentiator. To succeed at startup marketing, a company needs 3 things: Founders who approach marketing as a strategic lever, not as a service organization to sales. Founders need to value and enable marketing as they do other teams in the organization. As the company scales, it is critical that all leaders see marketing on equal footing with other teams. A team with go-to-market skillsets & storytelling ability. Early…
How one-click buy buttons boost sales
by THOMAS MCKINLAY for Aryih Almost 70% of items people place into their online carts are abandoned and never bought (according to Baymard Institute, 2022). The top reason is a long and complicated customer check-out. So what happens when you simplify it to the max? Enter: One-click buying. Here are the effects, according to scientific research from Cornell and Amazon. Previous insight: Boost conversions with more white space (more insights here) One-click buy buttons boost sales without increasing returns Channels: Ecommerce | Customer experience | Website | Customer journey | UX | UIFor: B2C. Can be tested for B2BResearch date: February 2023 📈…
We need better swag!
by LIZ CHRISTO for Dear Stage 2 A rant on SWAG: Stuff We All Get. AKA alternatives to the branded water bottle DEAR STAGE 2: I’ve been tasked with ordering new swag for our company and I want to mix it up beyond the usual t-shirts and pens. What’s the best piece of swag/collateral you have ever given or received? Any creative ideas? ~We need better swag DEAR WE NEED BETTER SWAG: I totally agree — we do need better swag! Too often the branded swag I receive just doesn’t connect and I end up donating or tossing it. What a…
Why this, why now, why me
by MARTY KASSALEN for Marty Kassalen's Substack The urgent need for B2B sales reps and leaders to adopt generative AI The Problem I don’t suspect anyone reading this lives under a rock. B2B sales is evolving and getting harder. Thanks for breaking the news, Marty. But just how bad is it getting, really? Bravado reported that 22% of sales reps hit their Q4 quota. Breaking that down: Essentially 1/5 reps were successful A minority of VPs / Directors were successful What this means: growth targets missed, higher CAC, anxious CEO, anxious BoD, frustrated reps, higher attrition, wasted recruiting & onboarding spend. Bottom…
You’re Not Alone—The “Do More With Less” Trend Has Hit Content Marketers Hard
by Jimmy Daly for superpath Between the macro economy and generative A.I., content marketers have been thrown for a real loop over the past year or so. Things changed and fast. Here’s our monthly job board revenue for the last two years. It’s a small sample size, but I believe it represents some larger trends in SaaS. Revenue—and, by proxy, the number of open roles—peaked in January 2022. Then it fell off a cliff. A historically good job market turned into a historically bad one within just a few months. Profitwell founder Patrick Campbell recently shared an analysis of the SaaS market over…
How to Use XLookup in Excel
by Lauren Farrell for HubSpot Working with large data sets is always tricky. Excel is one of the most powerful tools you can use to manipulate, format, and analyze large sets of information. Several well-known functions exist to help you look up specific matches within a dataset, like VLookup. But functions like VLookup had certain limitations, so Microsoft recently introduced the XLookup function to Excel. It provides a more robust method for finding specific values in a data set. Knowing how to use it effectively can drastically cut down the time you spend trying to analyze data in Excel. What…
How to Build a LinkedIn Strategy
by RACHEL KARTEN for Link In Bio I’ll admit it: I’ve never thought of LinkedIn as a priority platform. Likely because most of the brands I’ve worked with are consumer-facing and I’ve generally found a lot of the posts on there fairly cringe. But that’s changing. Between the reach I’ve gotten lately on personal posts promoting this newsletter and the potential demise of a not-to-be-named platform, I’m starting to see the LinkedIn light. For today’s interview, I reached out to someone who has a lot of LinkedIn knowledge and has been a believer for awhile now. Chris Kim is the Director of…
AN 8-POINT WEBSITE CHECKLIST FOR EFFECTIVE B2B CONTENT MARKETING
by Matt Bell for The Framework Your company’s website is one of its most important assets when it comes to effective content marketing. You own it. You control the content. You can direct visitors to the parts that are most relevant for them. And yet, many B2B companies still treat their website as little more than a digital catalog. Some practically reproduce the catalog format, with an index-like homepage and subpages dedicated to product lines and spec sheets. Is that what your audience wants to find? All of them, all the time? Those are rhetorical questions, of course. As I’ve…