Lincoln Murphy presents... Traffic Hacking 43 Growth Hacking tacitcs to get quality prospects to your B2B SaaS site Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved Five Rules Before We Get Started 1. Know what your audience is looking for, what problems they have or what opportunities they want to take advantage 2. Talk to your audience, not about your product... at least at first... WIIFT! 3. Know how your audience ‘consumes marketing’ and where they are on the awareness ladder 4. Know where your audience hangs out online, what publications/blogs they read, who they listen to and trust, etc. 5. Know the goal for the traffic you're getting! Traffic doesn't matter - customers matter. So get 'em to take action when they get to your site. Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. Awareness Ladder Buy Now! 5. Convinced! 4. Benefits of Your Solution Free Trial 3. Your Solution 2. Solutions Exist Indoctrination 1. Problem 0. No Problem Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. Traffic Hacking 43 Growth Hacking tacitcs to get quality prospects to your B2B SaaS site Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. This is from an 85-minute presentation I did in 2012... if you’d like to watch the video of that presentation, you can here: http://sixteenventures.com/traffic-hacking Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. Realistic Traffic Boost from These Tactics Do the Thing Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com Potential Growth from these Tactics* Do the Thing Do the Thing Do the Thing Do the Do the Thing Thing *if you do things right and the stars align in your favor Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com SNT = Super Ninja Tactic Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #1 - SEO If they don't search for info, all the SEO in the world won't matter SEO = Hope... Hope is a bad strategy! Know your audience and what they're looking for/the terms they use (use Google AdWords Keyword Tool... at least) and build your marketing site around that If you have an audience that is low on the awareness ladder, they aren't going to search you out... you need to go out to where they are and get them to come back to your site Oh, yeah... and putting all of your eggs in the Google basket might be a bad idea... you never know how Google will change it's algorithms next and cause your site to be ranked lower... even if you aren't doing anything "black hat"... Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #2 - Content Marketing Create compelling content that search engines like, but that your market likes (and shares) even more Contrary to popular belief, you don't create content just to attract people to your site (see #1 above)... you create it to engage with people, to get them to stick around, to know, like, and trust you and eventually use it to convince them to sign-up for your stuff. The higher-up on the awareness ladder people are, the less you have to do to convince them and the more actively they'll seek you out. Buy Content here: http://www.textbroker.com/ https://www.elance.com/ https://www.odesk.com/ Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com SEO & Content Marketing is where most people stop... and it's why most people wish they had more traffic! Here are 41 other ways to generate traffic in no particular order... and this list is far from exhaustive! Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #3 - Email List You should be building an email list before you launch and maintain lists of future/past and current customers; and market to them appropriately. If you aren't doing this, you're missing out. Period. This is a traffic source that you build organically and from swaps, customers, etc. Think about your mailing list like a bank account that you can reach into and pull traffic - and money - from on demand Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #4 - Alternative Products iPhone / Android Apps Kindle e-Books Installed Apps Stand-alone MVP Web Apps If it resonates with your audience and gets your name/link into their hands and doesn't cannibalize revenue streams... do it! Not necessarily FREE... apply a price, discount it 100%, drive up ratings, take off discount for public, offer discounts to select groups Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #5 - Video Marketing Google ❤ Youtube (also #3 search engine itself) Don’t have video ideas? Do a video overview for every blog post you write Put your URL as the first part of the description Use the keywords you want to rank for You can use other video platforms for hosting quality video - like VSLs - Wistia is who I use - on marketing pages, but also put those on Youtube for SEM Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #6 - Webinars Has that "live event" feel that people will work their schedule around to attend People know that they have to register and are OK with that You can even do automated ones - http://www.stealthseminar.com/, http://webinaragogo.com/ Market these independent of your product and use to convert to buyers/trials Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #7 - Swaps You do something for someone, they do something for you... in this case you each send each other traffic Get an industry pro to do a Webinar with you. They market the webinar to their list (another validation of their expertise) and you market to your list (you’re educating/indoctrinating/piggy- backing on their trust) and you each get a list of participants who you can send to your site. Unbounce and KISSMetrics did a great swap in late 2012 Get someone to email out to their list about you; you do the same for them... share sign-up/opt-in lists with each other On your Post-Signup/Thank You page send traffic to them; they do the same... Get an extra month FREE when you sign- up for XYZ product! Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #8 - Write Guest Blog Posts/Articles Write articles in the publications or on the blogs that your audience reads Think about adjacent products that your customers already use and write for them Including offline industry rags Get a byline (with a CTA) and/or include links in your post and you’ll get traffic from their readers Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #9 - Host Guest Blogs/Articles Get people to guest blog for you Everyone wants exposure If they have an audience, you just tapped into it! KISSMetrics has built a significant revenue stream using their blog - with tons of guest posts - to drive traffic into the top of the funnel http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-neil-patel-method/ SEOMoz touts “1,634 Community Written Blog Posts” in their latest funding deck... they tap their community for content (and those posts are super-deep and ultra- informative)... and those people go on Twitter, Facebook, their blogs, etc. and promote their work... and their community friends do, too! HUGE! Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #10 - Industry Expert Interviews Do interviews with industry experts and post on your blog/ site industry experts bring credibility and a built-in audience (an “expert” will waste no time in promoting their interview to their audience!) make someone from your team (CEO/leader ideally) available to be interviewed AS an industry expert leverage the idea in the second point above to promote your own expertise Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #11 - Interviews Outside your Industry Get Andrew Warner of Mixergy to interview you He'll write copy about you and give you a link to go along with the interview Or maybe you look to “tech” industry outlets Software CEO, Sandhill.com, Softletter, Think Strategies, etc. Extra-industry publicity can sometimes add to credibility But don't spend too much time outside your industry... do a few of these Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #12 - Infiltrate Online Communities Forums, LinkedIn Groups, etc. that are specific to your industry Get to know the moderator/owner so they'll help promote what you have to offer (but be prepared to play politics with some of the biggest egos online!) Find people in your industry on LinkedIn, see what groups they belong to, and join those http://www.postloop.com/ <== forum owners pay you to post content (either use that service or use as a guide) http://rankings.big-boards.com/ <== huge list of top forums Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #13 - Create Online Communities Create a forum Start a discussion list (put your URL in the sig) Create a LinkedIn Group SNT: Find people in your industry on LinkedIn, see what groups they belong to, join those, then create yours, and promote it to the other members of the group you’re in! Facebook Group Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com #14 - Get Quality Backlinks Not just to boost SE rank - which may or may not work at any given time - this is to get TRAFFIC Go where your customers are and give them something to link to... don’t just ask random bloggers to link to your main page Give them a blog post or whitepaper (reverse squeeze!) to link to For SEM purposes, get some high-quality, contextual links by joining organizations - even locally - like the Chamber of Commerce Google’s always changing, but context will always rule(?) Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy.