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OPEN SOURCE
MARKETING: HOW
WE DO MARKETING
AT IACQUIRE

The reason why you know who we are is due to the efforts of the
people in this presentation

@iPullRank
DOWNLOAD THIS DECK
http://iacq.co/how-we-market

@iPullRank
How marketing was born at iacquire

YEAR ONE: BRAND AWARENESS

@iPullRank
WHEN I
ARRIVED AT
IACQUIRE
APRIL 2012…
Nobody knew what it was, when I
showed people the website they
thought it was a software
company. They purposely obscured
their messaging.

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Brand reputation was meh

Iacquire.com

Those that did know iAcquire know it for the bad reputation largely inherited from the acquisition of Conductor’s Paid
Link practice and one of the co-founders having been involved with Text Link Ads.

@iACQUIRE
This isn’t an excuse, it’s just me
explaining that I didn’t understand the
magnitude of the paid link building until I
did the quantifying outreach study which
was literally days before my official start
date.
In hindsight… me to act as a figurehead showing
I realize that iAcquire hired
their “commitment” to thought leadership and being a white hat
SEO company.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
OF COURSE
MY FRIENDS
SHOWED
SUPPORT…

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Site traffic 3/30/11 – 3/29/12

Sorry for the Clicky screenshots. iAcquire was still very tinfoil hat about Google Analytics at this point,
but this was their site traffic for the entire year before I joined.
iacquire.com
@iPullRank
Site traffic 3/30/12 – 5/10/12

In the 6 weeks since I’d started I’d gotten iAcquire double the traffic they had the entire previous year.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
How did I do that?

Iacquire.com

I posted the Noob Guide to Link Building as a compainion piece to Oli Gardner from @Unbounce’s Noob Guide to
Online Marketing and linked back to downloadable PDFs on iAcquire.com.

@iACQUIRE
SURPRISE, SURPRISE!
WE DO INBOUND MARKETING.
To be clear I don’t develop marketing plans, I develop a quarterly content strategy and we execute
against that with regard to iacquire’s business goals..

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
The numbers behind the strategy

Iacquire.com

To date that post on Moz drove 1,211 newsletter signups and 451 tweets which helped increase brand awareness
and build a brand asset in the mailing list.

@iACQUIRE
Paywithatweet.com a message. Make
This is one of my favorite tools for spreading
users tweet about your content to get it. Make sure the content is
worth tweeting for though.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
TWEETS

ADS

BLOGS

VIDEO

UGC
COMICS

PLUGINS

PRODUCTS

COMMENTS

INFOGRAPHICS

UI ELEMENTS

Diversify content types

PHOTOS

SERVICES
PHYSICAL SPACE

ANIMATIONS

PRINT MATERIAL

SLIDE DECKS

PRESS

DATA
APIS
iacquire.com

TOOLS

EVENTS
PLATFORMS

PDFS
@iPullRank
GARY & cOGSWELL

Iacquire.com

I dreamed up a two robot characters based loosely on iAcquire’s co-founders called Gary & Cogswell and built a
comic strip series with illustration done by Kyle Bastian.

@iACQUIRE
IN KANSAS
Reinclusion Afterlife Presentation:
http://bit.ly/reinclusion-afterlife
This was great for me. I
actually got the chance to do
to affect change right away.
The reality of it is iAcquire had an offering that I didn’t actually believe in. They
sold me on joining by offering me the power to build an SEO capability the way I
believed it should be. I don’t believe that’s what they actually expected to let me to
do that, but the brand crisis left me in a position to do so which effectively made it
possible to build offerings that I did actually believe in and make the marketing
that much more effective.

@iPullRank
Hired megan & Norris

Iacquire.com

I hired Megan Brown (@thatgirlmegan) as our Social Media Strategist to help manage our growing community and
Norris Rowley as our Manager of Market Research & Analytics to help make our offering unique.

@iACQUIRE
I spoke a lot

Iacquire.com

Between this year and last I have spoken at dozens of conferences on behalf of iAcquire to let people know that we
exist and are on the cutting edge of Search.

@iACQUIRE
I brought on Josh Giardino

Iacquire.com

I hired Joshua Giardino (@techarity) so he could do Research and Development so we could stay on the cutting edge
with ideas for marketing and build tools. We built Authora & Broken Link Index from the Common Crawl

@iACQUIRE
Closed awas a knowledge gap around howa keep your post
$240k deal with to guest
I realized there
social shares after a 301. I wrote a post on SEW, someone saw it
and it ultimately generated $240K of new business for us.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Hired tom

Iacquire.com

Selling on-page SEO projects made for products I could really believe in and enough revenue to hire someone to run
it. So Tom (@tomharari) joined the team as our SEO Manager.

@iACQUIRE
Tom guest posted too

Iacquire.com

Almost right away Tom found his stride and started contributing not only to our own blog, but on Moz as a thought
leader.

@iACQUIRE
Videostarted doing video content to showcase the iAcquire
content
We also
culture, spread brand awareness, educate and entertain. Our video
content doesn’t perform that well.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
12 days of linkmas

Iacquire.com

I had thought leaders put together link building tips in the form of Christmas cards in the 12 Days of Linkmas
campaign. 51 Links from 16 LRDs for free. 5199 Pageviews. 107% traffic growth from Twitter. Coverage on SEW.

@iACQUIRE
12 days of linkmas Social activity

Iacquire.com

Almost right away Tom found his stride and started contributing not only to our own blog, but on Moz as a thought
leader.

@iACQUIRE
There was no end to end
measurement plan at this
point
Sure we measured traffic and conversions per channel, but never rankings. We
didn’t really have any way to tie site traffic to how much business we were driving.
At this point it was far more about how do we get more eyeballs on iAcquire. And
yes, we did that.

@iPullRank
Primetime lead generation

YEAR TWO: DIRECT RESPONSE

@iPullRank
Goals (finally),
Generate 15 leads per quarter
Build brand awareness
Launch new website
Develop Editorial Calendar
Promote Content via Social Media
Reach more Directors, VPs, and C-Suite Execs
Launch Co-marketing efforts
Develop email marketing / lead nurturing
campaigns
Create 3 case studies per quarter

Limitations,
No defined budget
Lack of communication on resource requests
Not enough staff
Non self-sufficient team

@iPullRank
@iPullRank
We started the year strong with 5
http://www.iacquire.com/blog/how-the-mad-men-of-iacquireperformed-in-2012-and-what-to-expect-in-2013/
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Redeveloped our target personas

Iacquire.com

Norris rebuilt our personas using data from Simmons Connect and we’ve since used those to develop Content
Strategies that have been incredibly effective in lead generation.

@iACQUIRE
OUR CORE STRATEGY
Our core strategy is to produce
entertaining and/or educational
content with the goal of
positioning iAcquire as the global
leader in inbound marketing.

@iPullRank
The iAcquire brand
voice is that of a
savvy yet
trustworthy friend.,

It is authentic, authoritative and
friendly. The voice exudes confidence but does
not foster alienation. iAcquire speaks the same
language as its audience and while we are
experts we are not wizards. No buzzwords…

Tone
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Authentic but not Brash
Fun but not Silly
Direct but not Uninitiated
Authoritative but not Persnickety
Questioning but not Rebellious
Informal but not Unprofessional
Cool but not Unapproachable
Effective but not Complicated

@iPullRank
Developed a slogan and philosophy

Iacquire.com

Unfortunately the CRAFT philosophy never caught on internally. Even in video interviews on the site with the
executive team some of them couldn’t tell you what it stood for.

@iACQUIRE
Developed a search-driven information architecture

Iacquire.com

Despite the fact that we are doing marketing across multiple channels we developed a site architecture based on the
things that people are searching for to make sure it performs well Organically.

@iACQUIRE
Updated the branding

Iacquire.com

Our Creative Director Robb Dorr and I worked to refresh the brand and make it look at cooler.

@iACQUIRE
Developed the wireframes

Iacquire.com

Robb and I developed wireframes to help us all stay on the same page with the content that we’d need to create for
this new site.

@iACQUIRE
Hired devin

Iacquire.com

I hired Devin Asaro (@copydev) as our lead Content Strategist to own the Content Strategy for the website in addition
to developing the copy.

@iACQUIRE
Homepage before and after

Iacquire.com

…

@iACQUIRE
Hired jenn

Iacquire.com

I hired Jenn Sager (@jennsager) to give us Creative firepower in NYC. She helped speed up the site launch working
on icons, case studies and other site content. She stayed until 10pm on her first day. She builds marketing materials.

@iACQUIRE
Offering clarity

Iacquire.com

One of the main goals of the new site was to showcase our expanded offerings with a lot of clarity to completely offset
the obscured messaging of the previous iteration of the site,

@iACQUIRE
The industry took notice.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
More importantly the metrics took notice

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Organic search traffic increased

We saw an immediate uplift in traffic from the Organic Search
channel.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Mom organic search traffic

Our Organic Search Traffic has continued to substantially increase
MoM since the launch of the new website.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Our best referral lead source

Having a mention on Moz’s recommended list has been our single
most consistent lead source. It cost us $0.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Moz referrals by the numbers

Iacquire.com

To date being on the Moz Recommended list has sent us 72 leads, most of which have been qualified.

@iACQUIRE
Established a content calendar
We’d had a content calendar in the past, but until now we hadn’t
been able to sufficiently stick to it. With more staff we’ve gotten
better at it.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Hired Konner

Iacquire.com

Konner (@konnersmith) is our resident Video Producer. He came in and helped us streamline our video work and
improve its quality. Up until then I was shooting and editing all the video.

@iACQUIRE
WE blew out our promotions of the video content,
video content
We haven’t put enough efforts in
so the views are low, but they look great! However people often
comment to us in person on the content they’ve seen.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Hired j-li

Iacquire.com

Jiafeng Li (@jli_jiafengli) came on to our Strategy team and made us a much stronger team from a quantitative
analysis standpoint. We leverage her Excel skills to make sure all of our data is strong.

@iACQUIRE
Iacquire got a lot easier to market

MARKET RESEARCH

DIGITAL STRATEGY

COMPETITIVE Analysis

Content Strategy

IN-HOUSE EXPERTISE

CAPABILITIES

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

SEO

CONTENT MARKETING

Social Media

measurement
& optimization

DATA & TECHNOLOGY

IRANK
Iacquire.com

Data Partnerships

Now that I had a strong team of badass digital marketers and new cutting edge offerings it became much easier to
market something we could believe in.

@iACQUIRE
Experian webinar

Iacquire.com

We did a co-branded webinar with SurveyMonkey

@iACQUIRE
Surveymonkey co-marketing

Iacquire.com

We did content with SurveyMonkey

@iACQUIRE
Meetups first meetup in partnership with Zemanta and Distilled
for brand awareness
We launched our
and it was a smashing success with 50 in attendance. We’ve continued
to grow them and have over 100 people attend each time.

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
The single best traffic driving piece of content on the site

Iacquire.com

My post on 18 Meta Tags Every Webpage Should Have in 2013 has driven over 70k visits and 61k unique pageiews
in 8 months making it our best traffic driver. That traffic is 100% organic.

@iACQUIRE
MAKE DEFINITIVE TACTICAL
GUIDES AND GET REWARDED
WITH TRAFFIC.
But not conversions if your content is too high funnel.

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Hired amanda

Iacquire.com

Amanda (@agalluch) was one of our all-star interns the previous year who had continued to contribute to our blog so I
brought her on as an Associate Content Strategist. She owns our blog, email marketing and landing page creation.

@iACQUIRE
Unbounce shredded our landing page

Iacquire.com

The guys at Unbounce tore apart our landing page and at the 0.20% conversion rate they are absolutely right.

@iACQUIRE
SO WE STEP
OUR GAME UP
IMMEDIATELY

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Hired sasha

Iacquire.com

We hired Sasha (@galkinator) who primarily works on the Strategy side as a Copywriter, but also frees up Devin to
do more Marketing work.

@iACQUIRE
How we affected the business

AN EXAMPLE OF HOW THE TEAM
WORKS
Date

@iPullRank
I challengedthe thought withnew data that Google
lead the SEO industry to leverage the this
I
has given us rather than complain about the data they have taken
away.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
THE CONVO
AROUND IT
GAVE US AN
IDEA

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Then devin made this

Devin talked about how (not provided) moves us away from
keyword stuffing back into marketing and telling good stories.
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
WHICH MADE
US REALIZE
THIS…

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
AND THE
AUDIENCE
REJOICED

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
AMANDA AND
DEVIN MADE
THIS
With help from our creative
director @usethedorr. Signup:
http://landing.iacquire.com/sol
ving-not-provided/

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
We ran twitter ads targeting seos

Iacquire.com

Our Twitter ads have resulted in 524 clicks to the landing page at a spend of $283.

@iACQUIRE
We a/b test to get the most out

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
SO FAR WE
HAVE 90
SIGNUPS
Not bad for a few hours work.

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
How we affected the business

METRICS AND MEASUREMENT

Date

@iPullRank
We don’t build links, they just come

We have over 11k links from 1.3K domains without ever sending a single outreach email. Marketing > Link Building.

iacquire.com

@iPullRank
traffic

Iacquire.com

Traffic in general is up 172.74% YoY and Organic Search traffic specifically is up 1323.50%. Our content strategy and
site relaunch paid off.

@iACQUIRE
conversions

Iacquire.com

Conversions are up 65.16% across the board and while the conversions we tracked last year are down substantially
the new ones that we truly care about (Site Contact Form Submit) are up.

@iACQUIRE
Helloooooo conversions

That’s 283 leads
in 3 quarters
vs. the 45 we’re
supposed to get
Iacquire.com

Safe to say we crushed that.

@iACQUIRE
iacquire.com

@iPullRank
Cost Per Acquisition

Iacquire.com

Based on the numbers at my disposal which may not be a complete picture of the cost of the sales and marketing
teams our CPA is $3,756.

@iACQUIRE
CPA:LTV Ratio

1:14
Iacquire.com

Our SalesForce setup is not entirely accurate, but based on the numbers that have been recorded our average
lifetime value per customer is $53,502 which makes our CPA:LTV ratio 1:14. (1:3-5 is considered good).

@iACQUIRE
Things we never quite executed on

FAILURES

@iPullRank
Outbrain doesn’t help us meet business goals

Iacquire.com

Only the most off-topic articles generate traffic for us through Outbrain and that traffic is largely unqualified.

@iACQUIRE
USER
GENERATED
COMICS
We never launched this project. The
interactive developer who was working on it
completely disappeared and the project died.

@iPullRank
REPUTATION
TRACKER
We never launched Reputation
Tracker. The co-founders of iAcquire
announced they didn’t want me
making tools when I was in the middle
of it.

@iPullRank
AUTHORA
Josh and I were ahead of our time
with trying to open source the Author
Graph. iAcquire didn’t believe in it at
the time and stopped putting
resources into it. Now they are
revisiting the idea as the basis of
ClearVoice’s author ranking system
VoiceGraph and VoiceRank

@iPullRank
BROKEN LINK
INDEX
The Outreach team wasn’t able to
properly implement the broken link
building as a viable method of building
links so iAcquire decided to stop
funding this project as well.

@iPullRank
NEVER LAUNCHED

IACQUIRETESTS.COM
We announced that we would we start making our seo tests
public. The project never happened.

@iPullRank
What you should implement right now

KEY TAKEAWAYS

@iPullRank
Understand your audience

Iacquire.com

This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.

@iACQUIRE
Identify knowledge gaps that set you apart

Iacquire.com

We tend to b blog about things it no one else seems to be thinking about. It’s very effective in establishing us as
thought leaders.

@iACQUIRE
Focus on content strategy

Iacquire.com

This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.

@iACQUIRE
Have channel owners

Social Media Owner

Iacquire.com

Blog, Email Owner

Our efforts became substantially more effective once we had someone to own each channel.

@iACQUIRE
Over communicate

Iacquire.com

Meetings, emails, phone calls, Google+ Hangouts. I don’t care how you do it, just communicate what you’re doing.

@iACQUIRE
Track everything

Iacquire.com

This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.

@iACQUIRE
What you should implement right now

TOOLS WE USE

@iPullRank
hootsuite

Iacquire.com

This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.

@iACQUIRE
mailchimp

Iacquire.com

This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.

@iACQUIRE
Experian simmons

Iacquire.com

This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.

@iACQUIRE
moz

Iacquire.com

This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.

@iACQUIRE
sysomos

Iacquire.com

This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.

@iACQUIRE
15five

Iacquire.com

This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.

@iACQUIRE
trello

Iacquire.com

This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.

@iACQUIRE
Google analytics

Iacquire.com

Google Analytics is of course how we measure all the things. http://www.google.com/analytics

@iACQUIRE
feedburner

Iacquire.com

This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot
from my friends in the industry.

@iACQUIRE
Sharedby.co

Iacquire.com

We add our branding to the URLs and the top of every page that we share to easily drive people back to us.
http://www.sharedby.co

@iACQUIRE
Bit.ly

Iacquire.com

We have our own URL shortener via Bit.ly for iacq.co. http://www.bitly.com

@iACQUIRE
Ga url builder

Iacquire.com

For measurement purposes we need to tag our URLs with the right parameters. This tool makes it easy
http://gaconfig.com/google-analytics-url-builder/

@iACQUIRE
unbounce

Iacquire.com

Unbounce is a WYSIWYG tool for building landing pages and running A/B tests. We don’t run enough A/B tests.
http://www.unbounce.com

@iACQUIRE
eventbrite

Iacquire.com

We use Eventbrite for tickets to our meetups. It provides metrics and Google Analytics integration
http://www.eventbrite.com

@iACQUIRE
wistia

Iacquire.com

We use Wistia as our video hosting platform so we can get visits directly to our site from Organic Search.
http://www.wistia.com

@iACQUIRE
speechpad

Iacquire.com

We use Speechpad to transcribe our videos so we can place the copy on the page and better improve its visibility in
Organic Search. http://www.speechpad.com

@iACQUIRE
@iPullRank
wwww.iacquire.com

Thank you
Michael King
Director of Inbound Marketing
@iPullRank

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How We Do Marketing At iAcquire

  • 1. OPEN SOURCE MARKETING: HOW WE DO MARKETING AT IACQUIRE The reason why you know who we are is due to the efforts of the people in this presentation @iPullRank
  • 3. How marketing was born at iacquire YEAR ONE: BRAND AWARENESS @iPullRank
  • 4. WHEN I ARRIVED AT IACQUIRE APRIL 2012… Nobody knew what it was, when I showed people the website they thought it was a software company. They purposely obscured their messaging. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 5. Brand reputation was meh Iacquire.com Those that did know iAcquire know it for the bad reputation largely inherited from the acquisition of Conductor’s Paid Link practice and one of the co-founders having been involved with Text Link Ads. @iACQUIRE
  • 6. This isn’t an excuse, it’s just me explaining that I didn’t understand the magnitude of the paid link building until I did the quantifying outreach study which was literally days before my official start date.
  • 7. In hindsight… me to act as a figurehead showing I realize that iAcquire hired their “commitment” to thought leadership and being a white hat SEO company. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 9. Site traffic 3/30/11 – 3/29/12 Sorry for the Clicky screenshots. iAcquire was still very tinfoil hat about Google Analytics at this point, but this was their site traffic for the entire year before I joined. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 10. Site traffic 3/30/12 – 5/10/12 In the 6 weeks since I’d started I’d gotten iAcquire double the traffic they had the entire previous year. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 11. How did I do that? Iacquire.com I posted the Noob Guide to Link Building as a compainion piece to Oli Gardner from @Unbounce’s Noob Guide to Online Marketing and linked back to downloadable PDFs on iAcquire.com. @iACQUIRE
  • 12. SURPRISE, SURPRISE! WE DO INBOUND MARKETING. To be clear I don’t develop marketing plans, I develop a quarterly content strategy and we execute against that with regard to iacquire’s business goals.. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 13. The numbers behind the strategy Iacquire.com To date that post on Moz drove 1,211 newsletter signups and 451 tweets which helped increase brand awareness and build a brand asset in the mailing list. @iACQUIRE
  • 14. Paywithatweet.com a message. Make This is one of my favorite tools for spreading users tweet about your content to get it. Make sure the content is worth tweeting for though. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 15. TWEETS ADS BLOGS VIDEO UGC COMICS PLUGINS PRODUCTS COMMENTS INFOGRAPHICS UI ELEMENTS Diversify content types PHOTOS SERVICES PHYSICAL SPACE ANIMATIONS PRINT MATERIAL SLIDE DECKS PRESS DATA APIS iacquire.com TOOLS EVENTS PLATFORMS PDFS @iPullRank
  • 16. GARY & cOGSWELL Iacquire.com I dreamed up a two robot characters based loosely on iAcquire’s co-founders called Gary & Cogswell and built a comic strip series with illustration done by Kyle Bastian. @iACQUIRE
  • 17. IN KANSAS Reinclusion Afterlife Presentation: http://bit.ly/reinclusion-afterlife
  • 18. This was great for me. I actually got the chance to do to affect change right away. The reality of it is iAcquire had an offering that I didn’t actually believe in. They sold me on joining by offering me the power to build an SEO capability the way I believed it should be. I don’t believe that’s what they actually expected to let me to do that, but the brand crisis left me in a position to do so which effectively made it possible to build offerings that I did actually believe in and make the marketing that much more effective. @iPullRank
  • 19. Hired megan & Norris Iacquire.com I hired Megan Brown (@thatgirlmegan) as our Social Media Strategist to help manage our growing community and Norris Rowley as our Manager of Market Research & Analytics to help make our offering unique. @iACQUIRE
  • 20. I spoke a lot Iacquire.com Between this year and last I have spoken at dozens of conferences on behalf of iAcquire to let people know that we exist and are on the cutting edge of Search. @iACQUIRE
  • 21. I brought on Josh Giardino Iacquire.com I hired Joshua Giardino (@techarity) so he could do Research and Development so we could stay on the cutting edge with ideas for marketing and build tools. We built Authora & Broken Link Index from the Common Crawl @iACQUIRE
  • 22. Closed awas a knowledge gap around howa keep your post $240k deal with to guest I realized there social shares after a 301. I wrote a post on SEW, someone saw it and it ultimately generated $240K of new business for us. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 23. Hired tom Iacquire.com Selling on-page SEO projects made for products I could really believe in and enough revenue to hire someone to run it. So Tom (@tomharari) joined the team as our SEO Manager. @iACQUIRE
  • 24. Tom guest posted too Iacquire.com Almost right away Tom found his stride and started contributing not only to our own blog, but on Moz as a thought leader. @iACQUIRE
  • 25. Videostarted doing video content to showcase the iAcquire content We also culture, spread brand awareness, educate and entertain. Our video content doesn’t perform that well. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 26. 12 days of linkmas Iacquire.com I had thought leaders put together link building tips in the form of Christmas cards in the 12 Days of Linkmas campaign. 51 Links from 16 LRDs for free. 5199 Pageviews. 107% traffic growth from Twitter. Coverage on SEW. @iACQUIRE
  • 27. 12 days of linkmas Social activity Iacquire.com Almost right away Tom found his stride and started contributing not only to our own blog, but on Moz as a thought leader. @iACQUIRE
  • 28. There was no end to end measurement plan at this point Sure we measured traffic and conversions per channel, but never rankings. We didn’t really have any way to tie site traffic to how much business we were driving. At this point it was far more about how do we get more eyeballs on iAcquire. And yes, we did that. @iPullRank
  • 29. Primetime lead generation YEAR TWO: DIRECT RESPONSE @iPullRank
  • 30. Goals (finally), Generate 15 leads per quarter Build brand awareness Launch new website Develop Editorial Calendar Promote Content via Social Media Reach more Directors, VPs, and C-Suite Execs Launch Co-marketing efforts Develop email marketing / lead nurturing campaigns Create 3 case studies per quarter Limitations, No defined budget Lack of communication on resource requests Not enough staff Non self-sufficient team @iPullRank
  • 32. We started the year strong with 5 http://www.iacquire.com/blog/how-the-mad-men-of-iacquireperformed-in-2012-and-what-to-expect-in-2013/ iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 33. Redeveloped our target personas Iacquire.com Norris rebuilt our personas using data from Simmons Connect and we’ve since used those to develop Content Strategies that have been incredibly effective in lead generation. @iACQUIRE
  • 34. OUR CORE STRATEGY Our core strategy is to produce entertaining and/or educational content with the goal of positioning iAcquire as the global leader in inbound marketing. @iPullRank
  • 35. The iAcquire brand voice is that of a savvy yet trustworthy friend., It is authentic, authoritative and friendly. The voice exudes confidence but does not foster alienation. iAcquire speaks the same language as its audience and while we are experts we are not wizards. No buzzwords… Tone • • • • • • • • Authentic but not Brash Fun but not Silly Direct but not Uninitiated Authoritative but not Persnickety Questioning but not Rebellious Informal but not Unprofessional Cool but not Unapproachable Effective but not Complicated @iPullRank
  • 36. Developed a slogan and philosophy Iacquire.com Unfortunately the CRAFT philosophy never caught on internally. Even in video interviews on the site with the executive team some of them couldn’t tell you what it stood for. @iACQUIRE
  • 37. Developed a search-driven information architecture Iacquire.com Despite the fact that we are doing marketing across multiple channels we developed a site architecture based on the things that people are searching for to make sure it performs well Organically. @iACQUIRE
  • 38. Updated the branding Iacquire.com Our Creative Director Robb Dorr and I worked to refresh the brand and make it look at cooler. @iACQUIRE
  • 39. Developed the wireframes Iacquire.com Robb and I developed wireframes to help us all stay on the same page with the content that we’d need to create for this new site. @iACQUIRE
  • 40. Hired devin Iacquire.com I hired Devin Asaro (@copydev) as our lead Content Strategist to own the Content Strategy for the website in addition to developing the copy. @iACQUIRE
  • 41. Homepage before and after Iacquire.com … @iACQUIRE
  • 42. Hired jenn Iacquire.com I hired Jenn Sager (@jennsager) to give us Creative firepower in NYC. She helped speed up the site launch working on icons, case studies and other site content. She stayed until 10pm on her first day. She builds marketing materials. @iACQUIRE
  • 43. Offering clarity Iacquire.com One of the main goals of the new site was to showcase our expanded offerings with a lot of clarity to completely offset the obscured messaging of the previous iteration of the site, @iACQUIRE
  • 44. The industry took notice. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 45. More importantly the metrics took notice iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 46. Organic search traffic increased We saw an immediate uplift in traffic from the Organic Search channel. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 47. Mom organic search traffic Our Organic Search Traffic has continued to substantially increase MoM since the launch of the new website. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 48. Our best referral lead source Having a mention on Moz’s recommended list has been our single most consistent lead source. It cost us $0. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 49. Moz referrals by the numbers Iacquire.com To date being on the Moz Recommended list has sent us 72 leads, most of which have been qualified. @iACQUIRE
  • 50. Established a content calendar We’d had a content calendar in the past, but until now we hadn’t been able to sufficiently stick to it. With more staff we’ve gotten better at it. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 51. Hired Konner Iacquire.com Konner (@konnersmith) is our resident Video Producer. He came in and helped us streamline our video work and improve its quality. Up until then I was shooting and editing all the video. @iACQUIRE
  • 52. WE blew out our promotions of the video content, video content We haven’t put enough efforts in so the views are low, but they look great! However people often comment to us in person on the content they’ve seen. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 53. Hired j-li Iacquire.com Jiafeng Li (@jli_jiafengli) came on to our Strategy team and made us a much stronger team from a quantitative analysis standpoint. We leverage her Excel skills to make sure all of our data is strong. @iACQUIRE
  • 54. Iacquire got a lot easier to market MARKET RESEARCH DIGITAL STRATEGY COMPETITIVE Analysis Content Strategy IN-HOUSE EXPERTISE CAPABILITIES REPUTATION MANAGEMENT SEO CONTENT MARKETING Social Media measurement & optimization DATA & TECHNOLOGY IRANK Iacquire.com Data Partnerships Now that I had a strong team of badass digital marketers and new cutting edge offerings it became much easier to market something we could believe in. @iACQUIRE
  • 55. Experian webinar Iacquire.com We did a co-branded webinar with SurveyMonkey @iACQUIRE
  • 56. Surveymonkey co-marketing Iacquire.com We did content with SurveyMonkey @iACQUIRE
  • 57. Meetups first meetup in partnership with Zemanta and Distilled for brand awareness We launched our and it was a smashing success with 50 in attendance. We’ve continued to grow them and have over 100 people attend each time. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 58. The single best traffic driving piece of content on the site Iacquire.com My post on 18 Meta Tags Every Webpage Should Have in 2013 has driven over 70k visits and 61k unique pageiews in 8 months making it our best traffic driver. That traffic is 100% organic. @iACQUIRE
  • 59. MAKE DEFINITIVE TACTICAL GUIDES AND GET REWARDED WITH TRAFFIC. But not conversions if your content is too high funnel. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 60. Hired amanda Iacquire.com Amanda (@agalluch) was one of our all-star interns the previous year who had continued to contribute to our blog so I brought her on as an Associate Content Strategist. She owns our blog, email marketing and landing page creation. @iACQUIRE
  • 61. Unbounce shredded our landing page Iacquire.com The guys at Unbounce tore apart our landing page and at the 0.20% conversion rate they are absolutely right. @iACQUIRE
  • 62. SO WE STEP OUR GAME UP IMMEDIATELY iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 63. Hired sasha Iacquire.com We hired Sasha (@galkinator) who primarily works on the Strategy side as a Copywriter, but also frees up Devin to do more Marketing work. @iACQUIRE
  • 64. How we affected the business AN EXAMPLE OF HOW THE TEAM WORKS Date @iPullRank
  • 65. I challengedthe thought withnew data that Google lead the SEO industry to leverage the this I has given us rather than complain about the data they have taken away. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 66. THE CONVO AROUND IT GAVE US AN IDEA iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 67. Then devin made this Devin talked about how (not provided) moves us away from keyword stuffing back into marketing and telling good stories. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 70. AMANDA AND DEVIN MADE THIS With help from our creative director @usethedorr. Signup: http://landing.iacquire.com/sol ving-not-provided/ iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 71. We ran twitter ads targeting seos Iacquire.com Our Twitter ads have resulted in 524 clicks to the landing page at a spend of $283. @iACQUIRE
  • 72. We a/b test to get the most out iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 73. SO FAR WE HAVE 90 SIGNUPS Not bad for a few hours work. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 74. How we affected the business METRICS AND MEASUREMENT Date @iPullRank
  • 75. We don’t build links, they just come We have over 11k links from 1.3K domains without ever sending a single outreach email. Marketing > Link Building. iacquire.com @iPullRank
  • 76. traffic Iacquire.com Traffic in general is up 172.74% YoY and Organic Search traffic specifically is up 1323.50%. Our content strategy and site relaunch paid off. @iACQUIRE
  • 77. conversions Iacquire.com Conversions are up 65.16% across the board and while the conversions we tracked last year are down substantially the new ones that we truly care about (Site Contact Form Submit) are up. @iACQUIRE
  • 78. Helloooooo conversions That’s 283 leads in 3 quarters vs. the 45 we’re supposed to get Iacquire.com Safe to say we crushed that. @iACQUIRE
  • 80. Cost Per Acquisition Iacquire.com Based on the numbers at my disposal which may not be a complete picture of the cost of the sales and marketing teams our CPA is $3,756. @iACQUIRE
  • 81. CPA:LTV Ratio 1:14 Iacquire.com Our SalesForce setup is not entirely accurate, but based on the numbers that have been recorded our average lifetime value per customer is $53,502 which makes our CPA:LTV ratio 1:14. (1:3-5 is considered good). @iACQUIRE
  • 82. Things we never quite executed on FAILURES @iPullRank
  • 83. Outbrain doesn’t help us meet business goals Iacquire.com Only the most off-topic articles generate traffic for us through Outbrain and that traffic is largely unqualified. @iACQUIRE
  • 84. USER GENERATED COMICS We never launched this project. The interactive developer who was working on it completely disappeared and the project died. @iPullRank
  • 85. REPUTATION TRACKER We never launched Reputation Tracker. The co-founders of iAcquire announced they didn’t want me making tools when I was in the middle of it. @iPullRank
  • 86. AUTHORA Josh and I were ahead of our time with trying to open source the Author Graph. iAcquire didn’t believe in it at the time and stopped putting resources into it. Now they are revisiting the idea as the basis of ClearVoice’s author ranking system VoiceGraph and VoiceRank @iPullRank
  • 87. BROKEN LINK INDEX The Outreach team wasn’t able to properly implement the broken link building as a viable method of building links so iAcquire decided to stop funding this project as well. @iPullRank
  • 88. NEVER LAUNCHED IACQUIRETESTS.COM We announced that we would we start making our seo tests public. The project never happened. @iPullRank
  • 89. What you should implement right now KEY TAKEAWAYS @iPullRank
  • 90. Understand your audience Iacquire.com This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot from my friends in the industry. @iACQUIRE
  • 91. Identify knowledge gaps that set you apart Iacquire.com We tend to b blog about things it no one else seems to be thinking about. It’s very effective in establishing us as thought leaders. @iACQUIRE
  • 92. Focus on content strategy Iacquire.com This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot from my friends in the industry. @iACQUIRE
  • 93. Have channel owners Social Media Owner Iacquire.com Blog, Email Owner Our efforts became substantially more effective once we had someone to own each channel. @iACQUIRE
  • 94. Over communicate Iacquire.com Meetings, emails, phone calls, Google+ Hangouts. I don’t care how you do it, just communicate what you’re doing. @iACQUIRE
  • 95. Track everything Iacquire.com This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot from my friends in the industry. @iACQUIRE
  • 96. What you should implement right now TOOLS WE USE @iPullRank
  • 97. hootsuite Iacquire.com This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot from my friends in the industry. @iACQUIRE
  • 98. mailchimp Iacquire.com This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot from my friends in the industry. @iACQUIRE
  • 99. Experian simmons Iacquire.com This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot from my friends in the industry. @iACQUIRE
  • 100. moz Iacquire.com This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot from my friends in the industry. @iACQUIRE
  • 101. sysomos Iacquire.com This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot from my friends in the industry. @iACQUIRE
  • 102. 15five Iacquire.com This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot from my friends in the industry. @iACQUIRE
  • 103. trello Iacquire.com This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot from my friends in the industry. @iACQUIRE
  • 104. Google analytics Iacquire.com Google Analytics is of course how we measure all the things. http://www.google.com/analytics @iACQUIRE
  • 105. feedburner Iacquire.com This is an actual email I got from someone who was actually considering our services. This is something I hear a lot from my friends in the industry. @iACQUIRE
  • 106. Sharedby.co Iacquire.com We add our branding to the URLs and the top of every page that we share to easily drive people back to us. http://www.sharedby.co @iACQUIRE
  • 107. Bit.ly Iacquire.com We have our own URL shortener via Bit.ly for iacq.co. http://www.bitly.com @iACQUIRE
  • 108. Ga url builder Iacquire.com For measurement purposes we need to tag our URLs with the right parameters. This tool makes it easy http://gaconfig.com/google-analytics-url-builder/ @iACQUIRE
  • 109. unbounce Iacquire.com Unbounce is a WYSIWYG tool for building landing pages and running A/B tests. We don’t run enough A/B tests. http://www.unbounce.com @iACQUIRE
  • 110. eventbrite Iacquire.com We use Eventbrite for tickets to our meetups. It provides metrics and Google Analytics integration http://www.eventbrite.com @iACQUIRE
  • 111. wistia Iacquire.com We use Wistia as our video hosting platform so we can get visits directly to our site from Organic Search. http://www.wistia.com @iACQUIRE
  • 112. speechpad Iacquire.com We use Speechpad to transcribe our videos so we can place the copy on the page and better improve its visibility in Organic Search. http://www.speechpad.com @iACQUIRE
  • 114. wwww.iacquire.com Thank you Michael King Director of Inbound Marketing @iPullRank