one of our shopify customers was focusing on creating product titles, descriptions, images and collection pages for “black panther” because the 2018 movie was approaching and they wanted people to find the store via search.

It never happened. Nor did it happen when shifting to long tail keywords like “black panther toys” or “black panther figures”. They wanted to give up on organic traffic, but then, by using Squirrly SEO for Shopify they found new opportunities for “best pokemon toys” and “rwby merchandise”. Thousands of people search for these, they are ranked high in search results and are getting more and more visitors to these products.

Without the right tools, you can miss many great opportunities to sell great products.

Don’t leave money on the table. Schedule a call with me and I’ll tell you more.

Thank you so much for all the replies regarding what you’d change about the way you publish to social media.

I can see that many of you have lots of things you’d change.

Trust me when I say: I’ve been there. I still am there: even after 10 years of being a social media manager (I had a musician brand for which I managed their MySpace page. Yeah, I’m old school like that)

The really good news is that: about 90% of the things you’ve mentioned will soon be solved. In most cases, 100% of your problems with social media will be solved.

I was super excited that you replied. Me, Ana and the rest of the team went through everything and we’re excited about our next few weeks together with you.

You see: I knew that it would be a good question to ask. 10 years of being a social media manager and there are still a lot of things that I would change about the way I do social media.

I said that you must’ve felt the same way. And most of you did.

So what did I try to do in all these years to make my social media manager life better?

1) tried all the possible platforms out there. I knew first hand when UberVU got acquired by HootSuite because I was using them both. About Buffer I’ve already written a lot. There’s so many more I’ve tried. None of them managed to work like I work, nor how our Agency’s customers want the work to be done.

2) I’ve helped finance with money from Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists some promising startups in the field of Social Media Management team.

Yes, I did go that far. I said that if I advise these teams with all my experience and all my known problems regarding Social Media, then maybe I can help them build the amazing product that I was so desperately waiting for.

At first, I’ve been a trusted adviser to one of these two companies. I really wanted to help them build the perfect product, so they can solve all of the problems I felt.

They seemed to be onto something. So, I’ve used my network and helped them raise a pre-seed round. Sadly, soon after they just enjoyed the money and the status which came with being a funded startup and they did more “conferencing” than actual work on the product. 

 Of course, I had to step out of my role as Adviser when I saw how poorly they handled things and the fact that they were turning their backs on their own dream. They no longer cared about helping small businesses be awesome at Social Media Management. They just wanted the attention, the interviews, the networking, the feeling that they were somebody.

It wasn’t the end of that story. After a while they raised a new funding round from a well known international fun.

However, this didn’t change their determination. It didn’t make them want to do better for their customers.

During all this time, I was already helping out another team with lots of advice on social media management. Now, these are guys were something else. I wished that I had just started with them. One of Squirrly’s investors saw that I liked them. He was already interested in investing.

Therefore, this was the second Social Media startup I’ve mentored and helped secure an investment.

Of course, it helped me a lot, too. I could see a lot of people expressing their concerns and trouble with these platforms.

Basically, I’ve done a lot of product development on their products, even though I didn’t get any money out of it myself. Not even shares in the companies.

WHY?

Because I only ever cared about finally getting my hands on a great social media product that would end my frustrations.

We came close with this second team, but their solution still doesn’t answer all of my concern.

It doesn’t answer your, either.

How did this journey continue?

3) I started developing this thing myself.

Yes, that’s right.

I wanted to stay away from this, because last year we launched Squirrly SEO 2017, then Squirrly SEO 2018, then Squirrly SEO 2018: Steve. I guess you can imagine how busy I already am.

Let’s not talk about ContentLook or Starbox, that were also under development.

This year, you’ve seen Briefcase and the Business Plan already. Giant upgrades to our product.

Destiny had a say in this. I met an awesome developer, a team Leader (a true Leader this time).

Together with him it was a LOT easier to work on a social media product than ever before, because we were on the same page and we focused exactly on everything that all the other platforms got wrong.

He has a very similar story to mine, when it comes to trying out all the other social media tools out there and trying to help third party companies get their products right.

We’re still ironing out the last details, after extensive testing with customers of our Agency and customers of his Agency.

This tech partnership is awesome. We’ve both learned a lot about the best ways in which we can fix all of these social media scheduling problems.

From the small concerns:

a) I publish on WordPress. now I want my post to go out to all my Social Media Profiles, without me lifting a finger.

b) Evergreen content publishing

c) make sure there’s always something going out to my accounts, without me checking in every day.

to bigger ones:

d) organizing my social media team

e) organizing all social media customers of the agency

f) creating a fully detailed social media scheduling plan, based on current events, different time slots on different social media profiles

g) curating brand new content from relevant and trust-worthy news blogs, 100% personalized for my niche.

From those small concerns to the bigger ones: Squirrly Social has it all figured out.

Steps 1 and 2 that I’ve taken were imperative to getting to where we are today.

It will soon be time for Step 4…. the one where I put this wonderful new product into your own hands.

“times they are a-changin'” -Bob Dylan

With Squirrly you can publish Excellent SEO Articles. Once they’re published, they get pinged to Search Engines via Squirrly SEO, and then scheduled to your Social Profiles via Squirrly Social.

I hope you’ll love it. Because there’s more to come, not just SEO and Social Media.

SEO is hard work. We all know that. Also, what I’ve seen is that there’s so much ground to cover and people are doing SEO on so many levels. It’s exhausting, isn’t it?

Well… I was hoping to make it a bit better. A little bit LESS exhausting.

A couple of easy steps to follow to make sure you’ll be on the right track with the way in which you’re developing your SEO Strategy.

This was no easy task. After years and years of talking to you and others from the Squirrly community, I can finally create these steps.

See the first two Steps in Getting Started with SEO.

I know, I know, you’ve already gotten started with SEO at one point. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.

But, please, indulge me.

It’s all based on things that came up over and over again, and I think there’s finally a chance to create steps that all of us should follow. Especially for new sites that we create.

Step 2 for example is really important, and I’ve seen that many people fail to do exactly the things I’ve outlined in step 2.

What do you say?

Will you give these two steps a good read?

You can reply with ideas, Yay, or nay, or meh. Me and Ana (our Chief of Customer Service) always read the replies to the emails. (yes, both of us, not just her, not just me; it’s a team effort in trying to do better for you)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cG1PTwa7wKLY-SLqPD3hyxFhNb1rMvCW

Scrie pe foaie un feature pe care il vei lansa, according to Product Roadmap si cum vei masura ca acel feature a avut impact / a adus schimbare / a facut mai buna experienta userului

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cG1PTwa7wKLY-SLqPD3hyxFhNb1rMvCW

—————————————————————–

exemplu. cum poti lucra daca nu stii ce lucrezi? 

la ce intrebare raspunde partea de metrice? de ce avem metrice? why do we need them?

cum faptul ca studiem numerele ne ajuta sa controlam ce se intampla in business / produs.

you need a system that always lets you know if the business is healthy or nto.

Phase 1 -> Phase 2 -> Phase 3

Build Product -> Phase 2 -> Make a Huge Exit / Shitloads of Money / Awesome IPO

Well what is phase 2 ? how can you navigate it? You can’t navigate it without a map? You can have good maps or bad maps. You can have maps which make no sense with you. When you’re in a car trying to get somewhere, will it help you to know the electric grid map of that place?

Cum crezi ca ai putea sa pilotezi un avion fara sa ai senzori si semnale legat de curs, viteza, altitudine, navigational system, etc.?

Scrie pe foaie un feature pe care il vei lansa, according to Product Roadmap si cum vei masura ca acel feature a avut impact / a adus schimbare / a facut mai buna experienta userului

————————————

Gather.

strange metrice. toate evenimentele. cat mai multe. sa le ai. sa poti interoga cand vrei.

simuleaza un sistem de genul care strange chestii. ca sa poti vedea lucruri pe care 100% nu le vei dori niciodata.

Act On.

Aici ai nevoie de metrice which you will always act on *currently. in the current stage of your business / product.

Report Metrics. Operational Metrics.

sa vezi ca merg sistemele tale. sa poti vedea clar cand sistemele tale dau fail.

Cohort Analysis.

sa poti vedea behaviour / usage changes over time, and especially according to communication strategy and product roadmap.

communication strategy -> why do? why important?

product roadmap -> if do changes without metrics, you do them for nothing at all.

———————————–

Metrice / Checklists.

checklists in loc de 0 1 (mai ales in conditii in care nu stii ce numar sa pui, dar ai nevoie de indicator care arata ca lucrurile se intampla?)

cooperare clara intre metrice (co-hort analysis) si product roadmap

operationale. tra sa mearga (fii sigur ca o sa chiar mearga)

youll always need to watch operationals

calitate feature (fa indici de calitate ai feature-ului)

adoptie feature nou plus teste a / b / c / d tests.

kill a feature to test reactions

measure number of incoming messages @ support. measure how angry ppl are

aarrr metrics

onboarding metrics

get qualitt of product market fit

if tomorrow exoexo didn’t exist how would it make you feel? okay, neutral, not impressed, sad, angry, reaally angry.

keep evolving and readapting in time.

your whole system should re-adapt and re-evlove in time.

version update metrics – shows if communicatiob of new releases is bad

nice to have must have

only metrics you can act now

gathering system vs actually studied weekly system

metrics you communicate to investors

metrics presented to the board

cac ltv aov churn free to pro trial to pro

saas metrics according to changes in billing system

baremetrics.io

getlatka

quora clarity haro ask do research avc bothsides of the table pattio mc kenzie software selling

do benchmarks. youre too inexperienced to understand whar those numbers mean otherwise

habit forming metrics based on a habit forming framework

cohort analysis

coreelate metrics to users according to user new account creation period

how much usgae per day in how many days since joining

common actions performed by most people who end up buying

understand usage thru clear metrics so you can do better pricing and product limits.then sell higher plans or addons

how many users ended up on pricing page

how many sent to step one step two step three.

metrics for successful finalization

which features in what part of the lifecycle

daily usage metrics

weekly usage metrics

hotjar to metrics <<– very important in product quality studies.

curs

lucru fisa de lucru

peer review

fisa delucru impartita in fc de categorii mari

print si pixuri

dimensiuni

overall, cohort, at user level.

userii care cumpara in primele 5 zile folosesc de atatea ori featureurile astea.

pe urma iti modifici onboarding ca sa ii faci pe SI mai multi dintre ei sa faca actiunile care duc la purchase

ce evaluez?

– daca stiu cand trebuie sa foloseasca overall / cohort / per user metrics si reports. << sa imi dea in scris 3 exemple la fiecare tip (descrise ca use cases)

– sa gaseasca metrice care sunt actionable. (tot ce nu e actionable si pe care nu vor lucra, nu ma intereseaza)

– sa stranga date despre cat mai multe evenimente, ca sa poata construi sistem in care sa interogheze baza de date legat de comportament cohorta / overall / user.

– Weekly / Daily / Monthly / Quarterly

– sa vad ce scriu la AARRR

– O idee de path to purchase. Cata folosinta din cate features conduce spre cumparare?

– sa studieze usage de feature per user over time. Ce feature foloseste acel user in fiecare zi, minim o data la 3 zile, minim o data pe saptamana, minim o data pe luna, minim o data pe quarter?

– fa assumptions legat de asta ^^ . pe urma cand ai produsul testeaza sa vezi daca lucrurile se intampla asa cum you assumed.

– o sa le dau un exemplu negativ la inceput. GEN: ASA NU. ca sa stie o varianta varza de reportate, lipsa de rapoarte, ce se poate intampla daca ei nu studiaza nimic.

exemplul cu text briefcase care a generat tot mega usaguel pe care il avem azi la noul feature. pana la acel text nu exista usage.

E okay. Pana la cat tine workshopul ? E doar o ora? M-ar ajuta sa stiu sa cronometrez fiecare etapa din workshop.

Voi avea nevoie de whiteboard si marker.

Le-as fi dat in mod normal cate ceva de citit, dar sunt convins ca o parte vor citi si o parte nu. Asa ca nu are sens.

Va fi nevoie de foi A4 si pixuri pentru fiecare participant: 3x A4-uri si 1x pix pentru fiecare participant.

Structura va fi in felul urmator:

• prezentare / parte de curs
• lucru
• peer review (in care isi acorda note pe ceea ce au scris pe foi)
• 3 lucrari citite si evaluate de mine la final impreuna cu ei.
• restul echipelor vor primi foile evaluate la unul dintre workshopurile viitoare.

Ar putea sa aiba fiecare badge prins de haina / sau pus pe masa? Ca sa stiu Prenume si echipa din care face parte la fiecare dintre ei.

Gen: Horatiu / Alpha Team. (just an example)

100,000 users in 6 months.

That was the goal Mint’s co-founder, Aaron Patzer, set me when I first started as Mint’s Marketing Director. I thought to myself as the nerves began to kick in.

“How am I going to achieve that?”

Fast forward 6 months and Mint had over 1 million users – 10x the target Aaron set me on my first day.

So how did that happen?

There are 2 key reasons for Mint’s success:

First, the product was awesome. Having a great product makes marketing less about “selling” and more about educating your target audience and spreading the word. Still, no matter how great your product is, if no-one knows it exists, no-one will use it.

The secret to marketing is…. Build a great product.

171 people are talking about this

Second, before Mint launched I knew we needed a growth strategy. So instead of opening up Google and doing ‘social media marketing’ or ‘growth hacking,’ I created a framework to reverse engineer our growth from zero to 100,000 users.

And that exact framework is what I’d love to share with you today. Here’s the strategy I used to grow Mint.com from zero to 1m users…It was subsequently bought for $270 million dollars by Intuit.

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Quant-based Marketing: Reverse Engineering Marketing Success

No matter what your goal, whether it’s 10 new consulting clients, 10,000 people on your mailing list or 100,000 sign up so your new app, quant-based marketing can help.

The key focal point to this strategy is to work backwards. Instead of starting with an intimidating zero playing on your mind, start at the solution and map your plan back from there.

Think of it as a road trip – you start with a set destination in mind and then plan your route there. You don’t get in your car and start driving without in the hope that you magically end up where you wanted to be.

So where should you begin?

Getting started with quant based marketing in 7 simple steps:

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Step 1: Setup your goal

Having a goal to aim for is the most important part of any marketing strategy.

Way before you start thinking about specific tactics or growth experiments you need to have a tangible and measurable goal set in stone.

There are various ways to come up with great goals, but with the quant-based marketing approach, I’d recommend working backward from your overall company goal or the amount of revenue you’re targeting.

For example, let’s say you’re selling a product at $100 per month and want to increase your monthly revenue from $0 to $10,000. The first thing you need to do is work out how many customers you need to hit the sweet spot of $10,000 per month. In this case, it’d be 100 customers paying $100 a month.

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Step 2: Choose a timeframe

Without a time frame, there’s no sense of urgency to achieve it, and it can be hard to work out whether you’re on track or lagging behind where you should be. Saying ‘we need $10,000 per month someday’ won’t work. But if you anchor it within a timeframe, like ‘in 3 months’, then you’re instantly set in motion and ready to start working towards your goal.

100 new customers in 3 months. Now that sounds like a real goal, right? You could even break it down further to ~16 new customers per week.

Once you have your goal set, the next step is to start formulating your plan.

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Step 3: Set up your spreadsheet

Now that you have a clear goal in mind you can start to building a strategy on how to achieve it.

The best way to do this is by using a quant-based marketing spreadsheet to plan, track and measure all of your marketing activity.

Here’s an example spreadsheet I used at Mint:

The spreadsheet is broken down into eight columns. Here’s how to use each column:

• Source: Where are these users coming from? This source could be a blog you’re aiming for coverage on, Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, or any marketing channel
• Traffic: How much traffic does this channel receive? Or for an ad on Facebook or AdWords, how many impressions will you make? Use your BEST GUESS. The point here is to help you prioritize the different marketing channels
• CTR (Click-through rate): How much of that traffic will click through from the source to your website?
• Conversion %: Of those who click-through to your site, what percentage of those will convert to sign ups?
• Users: How many users will this channel bring you? These are people who complete your signup process and use your product (this is your best estimate based on the numbers in the previous columns)
• Status: Where are you with this source? Is it all ready to go? Have you sent the first inquiry about the setup? Keep track of the status of each source in this column
• Confirmed: Is this happening? Yes or No
• Confirmed users: How many users did this source bring you? Confirmed users is the most critical column in the sheet. This number shows you how many users you generated from this source. Then you can re-prioritize your marketing efforts moving forward based on the results

The most important part here is putting the framework in place to enable your success.

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Step 4: Research your sources

With your spreadsheet ready to rock, it’s time to start thinking about your sources and where your users are going to come from.

There are thousands of tactics and channels you can use as a part of your marketing strategy, and this step is all about narrowing them down and choosing a number of specific sources to focus on in order to achieve your goal.

From my example spreadsheet, you can see I targeted 10 very specific sources to drive traffic to Mint.com and contribute to the goal of acquiring 100,000 users in 6 months:

As Mint was focused on personal finance, I wanted to target personal finance bloggers and tech professionals.

Who’s your target customer?

Here’s a bunch of channels you could use:

• PR: Pitching the press and bloggers in your niche to cover your story
• SEM (Search engine marketing): Paid ads on search engines like Bing and Google, so your name will appear when certain keywords are searched
• SEO (Search engine optimization): Optimizing your blog posts, landing pages and site to rank well in search engines for keywords related to your business
• Social and display ads: Targeting your audience through ads on social channels like Twitter and Facebook
• Content marketing: Creating and publishing content (blogs, podcast, video) with the goal of generating interest in your product/service
• Direct sales: Directly speaking to potential customers. This could mean picking up the phone and calling potential customers or sending cold emails to prospects
• Target market blogs: Sponsor posts and content on popular blogs within your target market
• Influencer marketing: Identify and build relationships with individuals who have influence over your target market (e.g. high profile bloggers or Instagrammers)

1. This helps you prioritize
2. List at least 10, ideally 15
3. Point is to just think about WHERE those ideal customers are.

To prioritize which sources to run with in your quant-based marketing strategy, I’d recommend using a simple scoring system based on:

• Ease of implementation
• Potential impact

With this system, you’re looking for the sources that could have the highest impact with the easiest implementation. For example, getting featured in the NY Times could have incredible impact, but extremely hard to implement, whereas working with a couple of influencers in your niche could be highly impactful and straightforward to implement.

Take each channel and give it a score out of 5 for both ease of implementation (1 being hard, 5 being easy) and potential impact (1 being low and 5 being high) and then prioritize the sources with the highest scores. For example:

Now your high priority sources should be clear, and you can ensure you focus your time on only the maximum impact opportunities. So from the spreadsheet above I can see I should be focusing on influencer marketing, target market blogs and content marketing.

Consider your budget and timeframe

When thinking about the ease of implementation and the potential impact a source may have, it’s important for you to consider your timeframe and budget.

Timeframe:
Let’s say you’re starting at zero and trying to acquire 100 new customer in a month. Would it make sense to create a fully fledged SEO strategy?

Probably not.

Since you only have a month, it doesn’t make sense to focus on SEO as a successful SEO strategy would take a long time to implement and reap rewards from.

In contrast, with a one-month timeframe, it might make more sense to take a more direct approach to customer acquisition like emailing close contacts or picking up the phone and calling companies who may be interested in what you’re selling.

Budget:
At Mint we paid for about 40% of the traffic, we generated to grow from zero to 1 million users. When you pick your sources, keep your budget in mind and factor in costs to deciding which sources to prioritize.

If you have some budget, sources like paid sponsorships and social ads can work amazingly. With a small budget or zero budget, it could be better to focus on more organic channels like content and PR.

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Step 5: Set your targets

With your sources all in place, it’s now time to set your targets for each source.

Setting your targets is hands down one of the most important parts of your strategy. Once you’ve launched your campaign for each source, these targets will give you something to measure against and figure out what’s working, what’s not and where you need to adjust.

So, how do you go about setting targets for your sources?

When it comes to traffic, you can often find benchmarks by using tools like SimilarWeb or SEMRush. For example, here’s a SimilarWeb traffic estimate for TechCrunch:

CTR and Conversion % is a little harder to gauge. Not all publications will share CTR’s and Conversion %’s for previous advertisers publicly. The point is not about CTR / Conversion but what OUTCOME you expect to get from the source., so you may have to search for some case studies and read up about other’s experiences with each publication you’re targeting.

There are far more benchmarks out there for advertising platforms like Facebook and Google AdWords. For example, WordStream found that the average click-through rate on AdWords paid search ads is about 2%. So if AdWords is part of your strategy, you’ll likely want to aim for around 2% CTR.

When setting your targets, the trick is to use your BEST GUESS; it doesn’t have to be an exact science. It’s all to help you PRIORITIZE your marketing activities.

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Step 6: Create a timeline

Now you have all of your sources and targets set; the next step is to break down these targets into smaller, time-focused goals and create a timeline.

Recently I’ve been through this process to set targets for my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. My goal is to have 100,000 downloads per episode by December. To achieve that, I’ve broken down my goal over 12 months from January to December 2017:

No matter what time frame you’re working with, break it down into smaller, more achievable chunks. If your timeframe is three months, set monthly targets. If it’s three weeks, break it down into weekly targets.

Why should you do this?

Well, aside from making your goals feel more achievable, it’s also highly motivating to tick off the smaller goals on route to achieving your overall target.

With each of your sources, take your overall targets and break them down into more manageable chunks that fit within your timeframe.

For instance, you could breakdown a goal of 1,000 new users from Facebook Ads as follows:

• Week 1: 50 users
• Week 2: 200 users
• Week 3: 250 users
• Week 4: 500 users

With this approach, you’re not heading into week 1 thinking “I have to get 1,000 users.” You’re setting yourself a smaller goal and creating time to experiment and learn what works. After the first week, you can begin to make tweaks and start scaling as you progress and get more familiar with how to drive the best results from each source.

So apply the quant-based marketing framework to each source by working backward from your primary goal, and breaking it down into smaller weekly or monthly growth targets.

Tip: Don’t leave it to chance

Only confirmed traffic sources matter when it comes to quant-based marketing. If you want to be successful, you need to have everything set up and ready to go ahead of time. Don’t leave it up to chance and hope everything falls into place.

Get every source confirmed well before you plan on going live.

For example, if you’re sponsoring a post on a target market blog, ensure they have all the needed content resources and everything is signed off and ready to go well before it’s needed.

Bonus tip: If you are working with partners, give them a calendar invite and the scripts you want them to send. The easier you make it for them, the more likely they are to do it.

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Step 7: Track your progress

You’ve now reverse engineered your marketing strategy and should be all set to get the ball rolling. But like any form of great marketing, this isn’t something you can set and forget.

You need to always be measuring and iterating to achieve your goals.

Once you go live, some sources might work right off the bat, especially those you may be a little more experienced with. But you definitely won’t hit a homerun with every source you try, and that’s perfectly fine. I like to check back against my assumptions monthly. From there I take the ones performing and see if I can 2x them, the ones underperforming I’ll generally kill, immediately.

The most important thing to ensure you’re on track to hit your end goal.

The first couple of weeks of your strategy will likely feature a lot of experimentation and testing until you find what works (and what doesn’t).

At Mint, we tested some landing pages (6 in total) when we first started marketing the product. The data from these tests enabled us to learn more about which messaging resonated most with our target audience and helped us to refine our copy and increase our conversions.

This is why it’s key to measure your results in a spreadsheet so that you can spot where you need to adjust your plan.

If a source is underperforming, and you’ve tried multiple tests to get to the bottom of why that is, you can drop it and replace it with another source.

Likewise, if a source begins to perform exceedingly well, you should double down your resources there in order to maximize your growth.