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3 mistakes marketers make (FINAL)
Hey 👋
(This is a 3-part series that will go over 3 major mistakes I made as a marketer for the past decade. Two weeks ago was lesson one. Last week was lesson two. This week is lesson three.)
“Hey, can we talk?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“No, can we talk privately in the conference room?”
I felt my body instantly go cold. This was it, was my fear of getting fired finally going to be a reality?
“Our traffic isn’t growing. You’re focused on SEO, right? What’s going on?”
In a panic, I responded to my manger, “yes, I’m focused on it. It just takes time. Trust the process.”
I went back to my desk with my heart beating out of my chest. This was my dream job. I couldn’t f*ck it up.
Later that day, I did what I normally do when I’m feeling down — go to my favorite ice cream shop, Salt & Straw, in Hayes Valley, San Francisco. I sat alone in Alamo Square park staring off in the distance, chocolate dripping down the side of my hand.
I felt like an imposter. What was wrong? “I know I’m decent at creating content,” I told myself.
But I was in a new environment, surrounded by some of the smartest people in tech. And it caused me to be frozen in fear. I had an idea of what it took to grow the SEO traffic of a website, but I was afraid of failing. I was afraid of the fact that I was working with a huge brand and felt so small that whatever I did wouldn’t make an impact. So why even bother? Let’s let this fear turn into procrastination!
As I sat in the park, it hit me. This way of thinking and self loathing wasn’t going to help me. I need to get over my fear of building a team to scale our content operations. I need to get over my fear of logging into that crazy analytics dashboard and doing the hard work to uncover what direction to take.
So, in the following days, I decided to ask for help.
My manager helped me navigate Mixpanel to reveal all of our product analytics data. I was now able to see what pages on our website drove the most traffic, sign ups, and paid conversions. Better yet, I learned how to filter all the traffic by “initial referrer = Google” to look at search only traffic. But, I also knew we ran Google Ads. So I optimized the filter even more, blocking out any referring Google traffic that included a UTM parameter. This gave me a clearer view of what was happening as it pertained to Google SEO-only traffic.
I came to the conclusion that the highest converting pages where: “vs” type pages, template pages, product-led how-to posts, “alternative” blog posts, and best-type listicle posts.
Next, how to scale these types of content formats? I bought a $700 content marketing course only because there was one section that went over how to hire writers. I watched that section, took notes, and took baby steps to put it into action.
Every day, I had one goal: No matter what happens today, I have to click that publish button. Screw the meetings, random office chatter, and ping pong during lunch. Clicking “publish” was the main goal — every week day.
A year later, our non-branded SEO traffic grew by 900%. And our sign ups and conversions grew by over 20% quarter over quarter.
Woah.
The third marketing lesson I learned was this: you can’t control the outputs, but you can control the inputs. And the right inputs lead to compounding results.
This was two part: 1) I needed to figure out what the right inputs were, and 2) I needed to figure out how to scale those inputs.
It was easy to go to work and do nothing more than fill out a few reports, respond to some messages, attend some meetings, and call it a day.
But that wouldn’t serve me. I wanted to master my craft. I knew the harder I worked at this company, the better equipped I would be to do my own thing one day.
This simple lesson of focusing on inputs is what later led me to start Marketer Milk and grow it to over 100,000 visitors a month. And its what led me to go full-time self-employed helping other SaaS companies grow through organic search.
All of this because I figured out what the right input was, and then figured out how to scale that input.
As my bosses boss would have said (I know you’re reading this), this was where the rubber met the road.
As I look back, I’m glad my manager struck that fear in me. It made me realize that we’re more capable than we think we are. And a great leader helps you come to that realization. It just takes a little nudge to remind us what’s truly important and to see that fear may be an illusion after all.
With that, let's get into what we have in store this week (lots of good stuff):
Marketing news from the past week
10 inspiring product-led growth examples
9 sneaky ways to spy on competitor ads
11 SEO trends for 2024
How to differentiate your brand
Ad from the past
Website of the week
Cool marketing jobs
And much more
🗞 In the news
🚀 All things growth & product
How to win your first 10 B2B customers, why reverse trials drive growth, how Clay approaches growth, and 10 inspiring product-led growth examples.
💭 Guess the riddle
What’s the best way to market cat food?
Answer is at the bottom of this email
💌 Emails, sales, & ads
Email usage statistics in 2024, a guide to product-led onboarding, the power of interactive demos, and 9 ways to spy on your competitors’ ads.
✍️ SEO, content marketing, & copy
How to 2x your organic CTR, 11 SEO trends for 2024, and a short guide to B2B copywriting.
🤳 AI, analytics, & branding
AI workflows for marketers, how to calculate CAC payback period, and how to differentiate your brand by ignoring best practices.
🦖 Food for thought
Over-complicating everything is a sure sign that you’re stuck in your head. The mind wants to grand schemes and elaborate systems. It loves tedious itty-bitty details that end up being a distraction from the main point. But true wisdom is almost always simple & straightforward.
— David Perell (@david_perell)
1:19 PM • Apr 19, 2024
📣 Ad from the past
1982 Honda Civic “low depreciation” magazine ad
💻 Website of the week
🏝 Cool marketing jobs
Okay, that's it for now 💜. See you next Tuesday!
What did you think of this newsletter? |
“How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?” — Seth Godin
Riddle answer: Develop buyer purrr-sonas.