Hi, I'm Hari. I'm a proud inbound marketer.
Have you ever been spam emailed or cold-called by a marketer, trying to sell you his new company’s new product or sign you up for his company’s new service? Of course-- it’s a familiar experience for all of us (that’s why we have a junk email section and a “block caller” phone capability).
But that form of traditional "outbound" marketing is getting outdated. It’s not very effective, and it gets on the nerves of the customer. The new form of marketing is known as inbound marketing-- that is, getting the customers to come to you willingly rather than getting in their faces with your new product. Inbound marketers help customers rather than annoy them. (Yazamo works in the field of digital inbound marketing.)
The primary purpose of my work is to drive traffic to our website and help increase our sales. The product which Yazamo currently markets and sells is LeadQuizzes, a software which we recently launched to help small to mid-sized businesses efficiently generate leads and boost sales. Our clients can come in and build their own quizzes, which are then marketed to the public via social media advertisements. Here’s what the software looks like on the inside.
During the first week of my project I worked with my supervisor to outline general goals for myself, which we broke down into three major categories:
- Revamp the Yazamo/LeadQuizzes blog (SEO included)
- Work on PR to increase our exposure and drive traffic to our website
- Start guest blogging and promote our content
I started working with Yazamo about a year ago, so I already have an adequate understanding of how things work. In order to achieve a deeper understanding of each aspect of the company which helps us function day-to-day, however, I’m going through detailed training in a few core areas-- beginning with Facebook Ad Management.
I’ve started working toward all three of my goals in the past week, but the primary focus has been on the first two. We’ve been following Neil Patel’s blog challenge over the past few months, in which he aims to generate $100k in monthly revenue within the first year of starting a new blog from scratch. Neil’s challenge has been going for ten months now, and he’s very close to meeting his goal. Hopefully we’ll be able to see similar results with the Yazamo blog.
In order to generate blog traffic, two factors are key: consistency and optimization. This means posting as many times as possible, preferably 5-7 times per week. And this is no easy task when each article is targeted to be 1500+ words (that’s the optimal length for shareability and search rankings). If you don’t believe me, take a look at SerpIQ’s research-based chart below.
In order to stay on top of the consistency area, we may look to hire additional writers to help us out with the content creation process. I’m going to be the one managing, optimizing, promoting, and writing whenever possible for the blog. I’ll go into more detail on the SEO process in a later post.
On the PR side, I’m trying to get Yazamo and LeadQuizzes as much publicity as possible, and this role goes more into sales than marketing. I’ve started tracking down journalists and reporters, sending out emails pitching potential stories about our company. We’ll wait to see the results roll in, but I’m already learning a lot. For example, here’s a critical tip from Cameron Herald’s book Double Double: don’t contact editors. They’re usually the ones waiting to reject new stories each morning, whereas writers and producers are better targets.
I’m not going to start guest blogging for other business sites or promoting our content until I can fully launch the blog and get it rolling. In the meantime, I’ll continue with the PR work and start on the Facebook Ads course. The company blog will take some patience, however, as SEO and blogging usually only provide results in the long game.
Do you think I’ll be able to start bringing in traffic and generating sales for the company? What’s your impression of marketing as a whole? Let me know in the comment section below.
Hi Hari!
ReplyDeleteI know many people (including myself) know how much it gets on our nerves when we are cold-called by a marketer, especially when we may not even have the patience to listen to them. Could posting too much lead to diminishing returns? What I'm trying to ask is, is there a point where the amount you post doesn't really return the amount of benefit that you would get?
Hi Hari!
ReplyDeleteI know many people (including myself) know how much it gets on our nerves when we are cold-called by a marketer, especially when we may not even have the patience to listen to them. Could posting too much lead to diminishing returns? What I'm trying to ask is, is there a point where the amount you post doesn't really return the amount of benefit that you would get?
Hi Ani, thanks for the comment! I would say there's definitely a point where posting too much isn't in your best interests (in regards to managing your own tie/resources), but that's usually not something most people need to worry about. Also, as opposed to cold-calling, blog posts are usually optional to read unless you're sending out email updates every time. Rather than producing diminishing returns, my guess is that posting too much would be more similar to logistic growth, growing traffic quickly at first and then gradually slowing down in effect. For a blog of small-moderate size, it's great to aim for about 5-7 long blog posts per week, and even this is a pretty tough goal to hit. It's also important that the content is high in quality, more importantly than just quantity. Producing high quality work is what will ultimately generate a loyal readership and help grow the blog.
DeleteHey Hari,
ReplyDeleteI am so happy for you. This SRP sounds so cool! you said that you joined this company last year, but how did you find it? Did it start out as a internship program, or was it a "job" from the start? Also how are you dealing with all the phone calls and emails? I am constantly contacting people but I am not getting the greatest results. Have you been encountering similar results?
Hi Jared, thanks for the read! I agree that it's pretty cool (but usually super busy too!) working in a startup environment alongside other young and like-minded people. Last year, I reached out to about a dozen local startups asking if I'd be able to work with them. I interviewed with Yazamo and got the internship position (they seemed to be targeting ASU students), and my role has been constantly growing and evolving since then. Regarding the calling and emailing, I've been trying to get a story into some of these big business magazines about our company, and it's been somewhat challenging so far. I think it's a bit easier to get on smaller sites and local papers (http://kjzz.org/content/251610/tech-companies-millennials-head-downtown-phoenix) but I'm going to be trying some new strategies to reach my goal. I'll cover more on that in my next post.
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