PPC Is Not Enough…How I Learned to Embrace Holistic Growth Marketing at Moz and Tips to Help You Do the Same.

Justin Vanning: Customer Acquisition Manager

Search Exchange – July 29, 2013

@justinvanning

Let’s start with a story…My story

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I’ve been doing performance marketing since 2003

2003

• Search Marketing Specialist• At a small company

2005

• Consumer and Online Marketing Manager• Rodale Publishing

2007

• Media Specialist• Microsoft - AdCenter Client Services Team

2010

• Display Advertising PM• Microsoft – MSN Premier Media Group

2011

• Performance Marketing Strategist• Moz

@justinvanning

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I considered myself a performance/paid marketer through and through

My LinkedIn profile when I started working at Moz

I viewed customer acquisition and paid media as mutually exclusive and didn’t consider or really pursue non-paid efforts.

But then something happened,

I started spending time with this guy…

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Rand has been leading the charge to get people to see the value of Inbound Marketing for the past several years.

@justinvanning

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I was seeing more and more research showing that the way people were searching was changing.

@justinvanning

Inbound marketing efforts are dominating how people find

websites.

PPC makes up only 10-20% of

total search clicks.

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Even with this research, I wasn’t super receptive to the message at first.

A lot of what I was good at and had been doing for years was on this side of the graph

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But then it clicked, both Paid and Inbound marketing utilize the same tactics and skills.

As paid marketers, we have the skillsets to be extremely successful at Inbound channels.

We research, we create, we test, we measure, and we refine. It’s in our DNA.

@justinvanning

While I wasn’t going to give up on paid, I needed to embrace Inbound and think differently about customer acquisition if I was going to succeed.

I no longer considered myself a “performance marketer” but rather a “growthMarketer”.

15 Holistic Customer Acquisition “Growth” Tips I’ve Learned at Moz

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1. Go beyond the click and make sure your funnel is healthy.

@justinvanning

We can test and test to increase CTR’s on paid ads, but if our site isn’t optimized we’re going to miss out on conversions.

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1. Go beyond the click and make sure your funnel is healthy.

@justinvanning

Make sure you know your funnel and each step within it. Then focus on testing big things.

HP

Products Section

Tour

Cart/Checkout Page

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2. Evoke Emotion with your Web Design.

@justinvanning

“Emotional design turns casual users into fanatics, ready to tell others about their positive experience.”

– Aarron Walter

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2. Evoke Emotion with your Web Design.

@justinvanning

Use intriguing copy and beautiful images to make an emotional connection with your audience.

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2. Evoke Emotion with your Web Design.

@justinvanning

It’s hard to evoke emotion when your landing page isn’t focused.

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2. Evoke Emotion with your Web Design.

@justinvanning

This site utilizes a simple animation of smoke in the background that makesit almost impossible to not think of BBQ.

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2. Evoke Emotion with your Web Design.

@justinvanning

This restaurant focuses on local/organic food. Unfortunately, while the copyis trying to evoke emotion, they could’ve achieved this better with photos.

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2. Evoke Emotion with your Web Design.

@justinvanning

Spotify’s use of compelling copy and imagery makes it almost impossibleto not continue exploring the site.

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2. Evoke Emotion with your Web Design.

@justinvanning

Rdio might have a great product, but there’s no emotional attachment that’s garnered with their bland copy and image of musicians.

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3. Thank your customers and utilize customer loyalty campaigns to reward customers for different actions.

@justinvanning

MailChimp does a great job of this by rewarding customers when they set up their first paid campaign.

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4. Launch a referral program

@justinvanning

Your customers are your biggest fans. Give them a reason to refer you to their friends and they’ll become your own little marketing army.

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5. Reach out to influencers, offer them something of value – your product for free or just simply introduce them to your brand.

@justinvanning

This one takes a little bit of recon, but thanks to tools like Followerwonk and Klout, it’s doable. Just search for topics and find influential people in each vertical.

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6. Utilize win-back campaigns

@justinvanning

It’s much easier to win back a past customer than to find a new one. Launch a win-back campaign to try and get past customers to come back and give you another try.

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6. Utilize win-back campaigns

@justinvanning

These 2 campaigns resulted in 1,000 new paying customers and over $300,000 in revenue!

Winback Emails sent

# Opened

Open Rate

# Clicked

CTR # Signups

Conv Rate

Version 1 36,025 10,552 29.29% 3,436 32.56% 914 26.6%

Version 2 22,684 10,585 46.66% 2,313 21.85% 1268 54.82%

Total 58,709 21,137 36% 5,749 27.20% 2,181 37.95%

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7. Create unique, compelling content that is easily shareable.

@justinvanning

Look for opportunities to create unique content that is easily shareable. Whether it’s beginner’s guides or your company’s annual report, people will share beautiful designs.

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8. Find some partnership distributions you can launch.

@justinvanning

Partnership distributions are simply where you reach out to a company who has an overlap with your target audience. See if you can partner with them to distribute a unique offer to their audience.

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9. Launch a perks store or find stores out there that you can get into.

@justinvanning

Solution partners or perks are something many websites have. They feature other companies who they think will be useful to their audience and usually offer special discounts to them.

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10. Give away some of your tools for free.

@justinvanning

This might seem counterintuitive, but utilizing one of your tools or products as a top of the funnel acquisition tool can work wonders for growth. Hubspot does this extremely well with their marketing grader.

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11. Invest in your Youtube channel.

@justinvanning

Youtube is quickly becoming one of the top search engines. Many companies have videos and don’t organize them well on their Youtube channel. Use this channel to show off your company, products, culture, and more.

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12. Show off your employees and culture

@justinvanning

When customers are considering buying your product/service, they often research your about section first to see what your company is all about. Don’t neglect this part of your site. Show off your quirks and personality.

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12. Show off your employees and culture

Utilize creative and fun copy to also help show off your team. FreakerUSA does a great job of this.

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13. Use your community to get direct feedback, talk to customers, and share this with your company.

@justinvanning

Whether you have a customer support team or you speak to customers in person, make sure your organization is sharing customer feedback. Many of our new features come directly from listening to our customers.

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14. Show off your customer’s passions and success stories.

Use your customers to help show off your product strengths through their success stories. Also, show off your customer’s passions so potential customers can see what kind of people use your products.

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15. Work with your social media marketers to make sure you’re measuring engagements and using your community for testing.

@justinvanning

Partner with your social team as much as possible. They will often know what is resonating with your community before you will. Use this partnership to ask specific things to your community and get a real-time pulse on things. Finally, use your performance marketing skills to help your social teams measure their efforts.

Over the past 2 years, I learned and embraced this more holistic approach to marketing.

Hopefully, if you’re not already, I’ve inspired you to do the same.

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Thanks for listening!

@justinvanning