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AS-Essential Marketing Start Guide PDF
AS-Essential Marketing Start Guide PDF
AS-Essential Marketing Start Guide PDF
Well, we looked at our calendars and realized we didn’t have enough time to offer one-
on-one consulting to every Sumo-ling...
So we wrote a digital marketing playbook instead. You know, the next best thing.
But we didn’t want to offer generic digital marketing advice. We had to select a guinea
pig business to keep all the advice focused and actionable.
Well...our business.
No, not AppSumo. We used Lewis Commercial Writing, the two-person SaaS copywriting
consultancy run by the brilliant masterminds authors behind this ebook.
Background
As a small service business, we’ve run head-first into plenty of digital marketing mistakes,
C H RIS VOSS, AUTHO R O F N E V E R S PLIT T HE D IF F E R E N C E
challenges, and frustrations over the years trying to make Lewis Commercial Writing
sustainable.
We figured our experience would be pretty relatable to many other Sumo-lings. All the
consulting advice from this book is geared toward us — but it’s meant to be widely
applicable to business owners who are so busy delivering results for their clients that
they often neglect their own marketing efforts.
So we at Lewis Commercial Writing sat down with seven members of the AppSumo
marketing team to capture the insights they’d offer to small service businesses trying to
level up their digital marketing.
17 CHAPTER 2
Social media: Make your post a scroll-stopper
30 CHAPTER 3
Email: How to publish powerful emails like Appsumo
42 CHAPTER 4
SEO: Keyword research demystified
53 CHAPTER 5
Youtube: Launching a B2B YouTube Channel
61 CHAPTER 6
Google ads: How to skip the SERPs
76 CHAPTER 7
Referrals: Building a word of mouth flywheel
CHAPTER ONE
FB ads: How the heck
do we set them up?!
Context
Here are a few tactics Lewis Commercial Writing has
tried over the years:
We set up a FB ads campaign years ago, but just got 3-4 low-quality leads. We pulled
the plug after a couple of days and haven’t tried again.
We use Facebook groups for prospecting and outreach, but haven’t had any success
with advertising.
Challenges:
Our business runs on referrals. We haven’t tried advertising very much. To be honest,
anytime we’ve tried ads out of curiosity, it’s gone really wrong. We’re not sure how to
set up campaigns or how to determine if they’re successful. Thing is, we’re just not sure
how FB marketing fits into what we’re doing.
“
According to Nick,
Facebook is a huge opportunity for
“
B2B businesses.
- Nick Christensen | Head of Customer Acquisition at AppSumo
Instead of using Facebook ads to drive immediate sales, you have to make the conversion
point something much simpler. What’s the lowest barrier to entry you can set to connect
more with potential customers?
For us, we chose to focus ads on successfully booking a free 15-minute consulting call.
One time we got an ad live — but we don’t think we did it right. We got a couple of really
low-quality leads, and no conversions.
So we roped Nick into three calls to walk us through EVERY step it takes to get a Facebook
ad off the ground. We. Finally. Made. It. Happen.
To begin, you need to figure out your offer. You want to make your campaign precise,
not generic. If you offer a B2B service like us, it’s best to start with a low-barrier offer.
You don’t want to try to convert a cold lead on a four-figure purchase. You want to just
get them to take a simple first step into your sales funnel.
In advertising, success should always be measurable. Once you have your goal, you can
turn that into an exact conversion metric. You’ll use that metric to determine your level
of success.
Next, you need to match your messaging. You’ll need three things before you start
creating ads: a landing page, a graphic, and copy for the ad. Once you have your offer,
you’ll need the copy and creative.
Make sure the landing page call-to-action and branding matches what you put in the ad
graphic. Consistency, as they say, is key.
We created our landing page in Wix. We designed our campaign creative in Crello, an
AppSumo tool we ADORE. (Sarabeth uses Crello for everything from social media graphics
to MP4 videos for YouTube intros and outros, etc.)
On images, you must follow the 10% rule for text. Facebook mandates that you can only
fill 10% of the ad image with text. If it’s more than that, Facebook will force you to upload
a different image. Fortunately, Facebook lets you test graphics in their Text Overlay Tool.
Pro tip: If you need ad creative and copywriting inspiration, keep in mind you can search
through millions of ads in the Facebook Ads Library. For instance, you can check out
AppSumo’s Facebook ads to get some inspiration!
Add your lead Pixel to the Thank You page code. This will tell Facebook that a meeting was
successfully booked and allow it to count getting to this page as a successful conversion
event. We added our Pixel to the backend of Wix.
Click the hamburger icon in the top Click “Create” to prompt a dropdown menu.
left corner of the Ads Manager. Select Select “Create Custom Conversion.”
“Events Manager.”
From the Facebook Ads Manager page, click “Create” in the top left corner.
On the next screen, name the Ad Set. Make Scroll down the page to the Audience section.
sure “Website” is selected for the type of Here’s where you target the characteristics of your
conversion. Select “Lead” when prompted ideal audience. Ask yourself;
about Optimization for Ad Delivery.
Generally, when you’re starting off, you don’t want a huge audience because you
can tear through your budget pretty quickly. It’s best to start small and focused to see
what works — after, you can expand your reach as you see what converts.
Name the Ad. Then select the type of creative you’re using. In our case, we chose
“Single Image or Video.”
Scroll down to the Media section, and click “Add Media.” Upload the graphic you
created for this ad.
Quick reminder:
Put your services into the Primary Text. Avoid clunky paragraphs. Go for short, easy-
to-read sentences that draw your eye down the ad.
You can also use emojis in this section. You might also choose to put a link to the
landing page at the bottom of the Primary Text, giving readers one more place to click.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you’ll be able to see in real-time what your ads
will look like in someone’s Facebook or Instagram newsfeed.
Now scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “Confirm.”
If you would like to run a second ad for split testing, click the checkbox beside the
campaign you just created.
Then click the third tab to the right, called “Ads for (1) Campaign.”
Even then, continue to try new iterations to keep incrementally improving the ROI of
your ad spend.
Testing is key. That’s why a lot of people fail. At AppSumo, Nick and his team test
hundres of different ads every year.
Retargeting can work if you get 5,000+ monthly visitors. Retargeting serves ads out to
warm leads. You can also use those events to double down on “look-a-like” customers
based on conversions on your website.
Over the years, we’ve been fairly active on social media. On and off, we’ve used a
combination of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Twitter helped us get a few
PR hits, but never resulted in a lead — so we stopped focusing there.
In this section, we’ll cover Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, since that’s where we’ve
received the most social media leads over the years.
Challenges:
It’s often hard to measure the ROI of social media for a service business. Most of our time on social
media feels completely wasted — like a total time suck.
We get a lot of traction from other freelancers and minimal traction from our ideal clients.
In summary: We know social media can have a massive impact, but right now it feels mostly like a
drain on our time, with occasional wins.
Here’s what Bronte has to say about organic social media for freelancers and small
agencies.
“
When it comes to professional service businesses,
the number of leads usually matters
less than the quality of leads.
“
- Bronte Mojdehi | Marketing Manager at AppSumo
You don’t have to go viral or build a massive audience to experience big wins for your
business on social media.
Big wins for freelancers and agencies can happen in the small conversations that happen
on social media: interactions in comments, DMs, and social shares that drive just a few
people to your website or profile.
Most articles about social media success talk about virality and building an audience. But
achieving success for your business — whether it’s through leads, clients, and referrals —
might come more often through personal interactions.
LinkedIn can be a goldmine for finding B2B leads for agencies and freelancers. Take one
hour weekly to plan out 2-3 posts for that week, tailored toward your ideal customer. Try
to work 2ish weeks out in advance.
Think of a few relevant keywords your target audience might be using. (If you don’t
already know some, you can skip ahead to Chapter 4 for keyword finding tips.)
Search for individual keywords and phrases in the search bar. Consider the hashtags being
used in the most popular posts. Click those hashtags to see how many people follow
them. If it’s a decent crowd, make that hashtag part of your regular posting strategy.
We’ve learned that it’s much easier to get traction providing value to other freelancers
than our core audience. The key isn’t to ignore the easy traction or to only double down
on whatever gets the most likes.
Instead, do a mix of both. If you’re posting 3 times per week, make two of those posts
tailored directly to helping your ideal customers. You can use the third post to share fun
business stories that other freelancers and agency owners can relate to, like how you
landed your first client.
What would your ideal customer post on LinkedIn if they were looking for your services?
Maybe something like…
Use the LinkedIn search bar to search these phrases. (Sort the Content category by
Latest instead of Relevance to see the most recent requests.)
As long as you’re willing to scroll through some irrelevant posts, you’ll often stumble on
businesses looking for your exact services. All you have to do is pitch them!
LinkedIn Profinder
LinkedIn also has a lesser-known service for connecting freelancers to anyone hiring
contractors.
When you sign up for LinkedIn Profinder, you’ll receive periodic notifications from
LinkedIn when someone near you is looking for your services. Profinder allows up to
five freelancers to bid on a single project — so it’s worthwhile to construct a thoughtful
pitch.
Once you’ve joined some of these groups, become an active member of the group.
When it’s natural, talk about yourself and your services. Sometimes you’ll even be able to
organically share a link to your website.
Another way to get traction on Facebook is by building a community. This contains all the
benefits of joining communities, except with a few additional privileges.
Beyond the obvious benefits, like being the moderator or setting community rules, you
also get to be seen as an authority to anyone who joins the group. It’s like the difference
between attending a big conference and speaking at a big conference. The speaker
carries more authority than random strangers you bump into in the hallway.
The biggest wins on Facebook these days come from Facebook groups. Business pages
have infamously lost a lot of their organic power over the years. If you want your followers
to see your latest post, it’s often a matter of paying-to-play.
But that doesn’t mean you should delete your Facebook business page. You’ll need that to
run Facebook ads, which we covered in Chapter 1.
Posting from your personal account might get you more traction than posting from a
business page. But you have to stop and ask yourself: Are these interactions moving my
business forward?
For us, posting on our personal Facebook pages means getting a couple of quick likes
from friends and family. It’s not ideal for reaching our target audience.
Mastering Instagram
Instagram is great for gaining brand visibility and sharing your wins.
As you’d expect, It tends to be a personal platform where everyone shares pictures from
their lives. But just because Instagram is personal doesn’t mean you should double your
personal Instagram account as your business account.
And if you’re a joint-venture like us, it makes more sense to create a shared Instagram
account to represent the business instead of just one person.
Instagram users spend most of their time watching Stories. So that’s where you want to be
posting content regularly — every day, if you can.
You can talk to the camera vlogger style, share images and graphics, or just post written
content straight to the story. Share wins, things you’re learning, discounts you’re offering,
and even your hot take on a trending topic.
Using hashtags in your stories can broadcast them to a larger audience to help you grow
your following
Instagram posts
But it can be hard to always come up with another story about yourself every time your
post. You can also infuse things like quotes or tips of the trade.
When someone lands on your Instagram feed, it’s professional to have a consistent
appearance across your posts. This can mean using the same four colors in all your
graphics, using the same font every time you post, and maybe even timing certain types
of posts to appear with calculated regularity in the feed.
Use tools like PromoRepublic to see how your grid is going to look once your scheduled
posts go live.
Instagram Reels
Instagram just launched its TikTok competitor: Reels.
Think of Reels as a mix between Instagram Stories and TikTok. Reels lives on the
Explore page for now, which means it could be a great way to get your content in front of
complete strangers — hopefully, your ideal audience.
Use Reels as a place to tell your brand story by introducing yourself, telling a bit about
what you do, providing actionable lessons, and even showcasing work.
Instagram doesn’t offer a trending hashtag section yet, but once that rolls out, it might be
worth including relevant hashtags, songs, and trends (similar to TikTok) in your posts.
If you’re already on TikTok, you can repurpose your existing videos for Instagram Reels
to get double the traction for half the work.
As you start typing broader keywords into Instagram, it provides you additional related
hashtag suggestions.
Like posting on LinkedIn, it helps to determine the best hashtags by seeing where the
engagement is happening. Where do you see people getting a lot of traction for their
hashtags? Mimic what you see working using the hashtags you see trending in your
industry.
For Bronte, content creation day is Wednesday. The exact day matters less than the
outcome: you set aside a short block of time every week to create and schedule social
media posts.
Simple interactions like these — especially on pre-viral content — can get your ideas
in front of many people, helping you reach your target audience using someone else’s
following.
Occasionally someone will come up with a couple of one-off tactics to quickly amass a
large following on social media. It’s flashy and exciting when it happens, but it’s not usually
easy to replicate.
Instead, the best way to grow an engaged following on social media is to let three words
do their honest work: time, frequency, pioneering.
As you consistently share ideas and stories, more and more people will find your content
online and follow you. You’ll also learn what types of posts resonate best with your
audience, improving engagement as you grow.
And the people most of us love to follow on social media (outside of people we know),
have another thing in common: they pioneer trends instead of just following them.
So experiment. If everyone in your industry posts the same thing, mix things up. Try
something new.
One of the hurdles of content marketing on social media is that an audience can (in
theory) disappear in a day. As you build your following on LinkedIn, Instagram, and other
social platforms, it’s worthwhile to frequently nudge followers to subscribe to an email list.
Design tools:
Canva - free version
Crello - free version
RelayThat
Pixteller
Schedulers:
We have an email capture on our website on our home page and a “Subscribe” page for
our weekly newsletter. Subscribers get a welcome email and then weekly newsletters
every Monday all about writing, freelancing, copywriting, and resources (like business
books and blogs that we love).
Challenges:
The newsletter only partially targets our ideal audience. If we had to guess, we’d say
that 75% of the people subscribed want to be freelancers or copywriters. As of now,
only 20% is our ideal audience (i.e. people who might hire us one day). The other 5% is
miscellaneous: friends, entrepreneurs looking for business inspiration, etc.
And yes, in case you’re wondering, he’s often the mastermind behind those famous
AppSumo email subject lines.
While his average email makes about $40K, he’s written Black Friday emails that have
brought in over $250K. We sat down with Chris to learn what he recommends for a
B2B service business who wants to increase the impact of their email list.
When it comes to increasing your email engagement, the key is to make sure every
email you send is worth reading. AppSumo has been able to maintain good open rates
because they’ve built a reputation for sending emails that people want to read.
By valuing your readers’ time and crafting purposeful emails, you can keep your
open rates high, increasing your chance to convert readers into buyers.
In the beginning, AppSumo only sent emails about deals that were entering or leaving
the store. But over time, they realized that constantly sending emails asking customers
to make a purchase increased churn. So they began incorporating more content-focused
emails. These emails helped build brand awareness while making it clear that AppSumo
was determined to not let it be a one-sided relationship.
If you go the newsletter route, just remember to focus on value. You want your newsletters to
be shareable so subscribers tell their network, netting you more readers. Prioritize publishing
good content, but don’t overdo it. Make life easier for yourself by picking topics you’re genuinely
excited to write about.
The key to making email work for you? Quality and consistency. Oh, and having an email list.
If you are a freelancer or agency who doesn’t have an email list, stop reading right now and
go create an email capture form on your website! This is a non-negotiable. (And if you don’t
want to read through dozens of comparison articles about which email service provider to
use, go get yourself SendFox.)
What can you really do with a newsletter? Small service companies like ours don’t have all
day to spend creating content. So how can we turn our newsletter into a money-printing tool?
Chris had a few ideas.
Focus the newsletter on easy (but natural) upsells: To use copywriting as an example,
we could send an email that teaches readers how to write content freebies to grow their
business. At the bottom of the newsletter, we could include a simple call-to-action like:
“Want us to create content freebies for you?”
This works because you’re providing value by teaching others how to do something, and
also giving people an opportunity to hire you if they’d rather let you do the heavy lifting.
Browse Abandonment Email: When someone lands on your site or navigates to a specific
page, you can choose to have your ESP automatically email them. That email can contain a
targeted message about the page they visited.
For example, if they landed on our “How to Write Press Releases” page, you can send them
an email with three additional tips not listed on that page. This tactic may be considered
advanced, but can lead to powerful retargeting results. If you have many different products
— or productized services — pages, this might be an email tactic to implement ASAP.
1. The promise
If you have a freebie like a checklist, ebook, pack of templates, white paper, or guide to entice
people on your signup page (which you should), your first email should simply deliver that
gift to the new subscriber. Don’t bury the download in a long introduction email.
Just keep it short and sweet — and deliver on what you promised.
2. The intro
Now that your new subscribers have their freebie, it’s time to introduce yourself.
Within the next couple of days, send your intro email: What do you write about? Why do you
have a newsletter? What are you passionate about? What are some fun facts about you or
your business?
This is the connection email — where you form a human bond with your latest subscriber.
Consider adding a photo of yourself or your office space. You’ve only got one chance at a
first impression, so make it count. Onboard them into your world.
3. What we offer
It’s time to get to business. Tell subscribers more about your services. While a lot of your
subscribers will never purchase from you, listing your services at least makes them aware of
what you offer. This makes it easier to refer you to people within their network, and gives
them a mental model for who you are and the services you provide.
We only have one email in our onboarding sequence right now, so we asked Chris to give his
feedback on it. Below, we included a before and after, with markups featuring his advice on
how to optimize our email. If we had additional time, we’d overhaul our sequence even more.
It would include the promised lead magnet in its own email, followed by an intro and then an
email that teases our SaaS copywriting and UX writing services.
We’ll get there one day! For now, here are the incremental improvements we’ve made:
KingSumo software giveaways definitely help attract that ideal customer, along with lead
magnets. But ultimately products and word-of-mouth are what drive the most growth for
the business. So just be patient — you’ll start to see more traffic as your brand awareness
grows.
The design and copy on your email capture form(s) or website popups should cater to
your ideal client and clearly communicate how they’ll benefit from signing up. Remember:
this is an exchange. They give you an email, you give them value.
The best example of how to optimize your email capture form, by far, comes from Harry
Dry at MarketingExamples.com.
Here are some more ideas for dialing in your email capture forms:
Tell real success stories — try emphasizing or even proving ROI to show that if they sign
up, they could get similar results.
Offer a free consultation call and put subscribers into a nurture sequence.
Turn your newsletter into actionable tips for whatever your service is. (Harry Dry’s
approach.)
One way to keep your list fresh and your open rates high is to send a “check-in” email
to anyone who hasn’t opened an email in a while. That email can be as simple as “Hey, is
everything ok? You haven’t been opening our emails recently and we want to make sure
you still want to be on our list.” This will usually either re-engage someone or have them
unsubscribe (which is okay, because they weren’t active anyway).
People really enjoy seeing how witty companies can be. So put on your thinking cap and
do your best to come up with something that will impress and pique curiosity. Just be sure
it’s relevant to the content inside.
And while it’s okay to be punchy and playful for a newsletter, read the room. Serious
emails — with important information — should be more straightforward.
Lewis Commercial Writing publishes ~1 post per month on our internal blog
We’ve recently tried more content marketing on LinkedIn, which has gotten us some
interesting leads
Challenges:
We’ve used a handful of SEO tools over the years, including SEMrush and Ahrefs. (Lately,
we’ve been using Ahrefs more.) We’ve gotten the hang of things for the most part, but
we still feel like we only use these tools to about 5% of their real capacity — at the tune
of $100+ per month.
Lewis Commercial Writing is a copywriting company. So we get paid to write for others
every day. That makes it hard to find time to write for our own blog.
“
Dean mentioned that
There are many free keyword resources out there, but understanding keyword volume and
difficulty is core to the challenge of finding keyword opportunities. Those types of details
are hard to find outside of tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush.
For this keyword research tutorial, we decided to go with the tool that Lewis Commercial
Writing and AppSumo already use for keyword research: Ahrefs.
Once you’ve answered those questions with a few words and phrases, drop those seed
keywords into Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer tool. Click the search button.
After you’ve entered your seed keyword(s) into Keyword Explorer, click the tab
“All Keyword Ideas” in the left column.
This will generate new similar keywords based on the ones you came up with.
For most agencies and freelancers, some of these keywords will be really
competitive — and therefore, hard to rank for. So our next step is to eliminate the
hard-to-rank-for keywords, so you’re just left with the simplest ones.
For this, click the dropdown menu labeled “KD” and set the maximum difficulty to 25. This
will provide you a list of high search volume keywords, with low rank difficulty.
The next task is to comb through these keywords to eliminate the ones you know are
irrelevant. In this case, we’d avoid using “mighty fine” because that’s a branded keyword
for another copywriter.
You want to save the most relevant keywords to your keyword list. Just click the checkbox
beside every keyword that sounds relevant to what you’re targeting.
Now you can investigate some of these keywords more closely. Simply click on a keyword
to open a screen with more details about it.
Scroll down to the bottom of this page to find the list of top pages for your keyword.
Even if competition is low for the keyword you’re targeting, it’s worth looking at the articles
and webpages currently on the first page for that search term. Remember: there’s a reason
Google is ranking them in the top spot. By reading each top article, you might be able to
borrow their secret sauce — and make your articles twice as good.
Title
Article structure
Headlines
Length (word count)
The more you know about search intent, the easier it is to write quality content that solves
the reader’s problem.
We Googled terms like “SaaS copywriter” and “software copywriter” to see which names
appear.
You can do the same for your business. Write down any competitors who come up again
and again.
You’ll get a long list of keywords. These include keywords your competitors are ranking
for that you should set your sights on. You can use this list to decide where there may be
opportunities to compete head-to-head.
Like we mentioned in the first keyword tutorial, the KD dropdown will help you limit
the keywords you view by their ranking difficulty. That way, you don’t waste your time
scrolling through the most challenging keyword opportunities.
The fastest way to rank high is to publish more content. It’s basic math. The more blog
posts you publish, the more keywords you naturally start ranking for.
If you write one post per month, you’ll have 12 posts that might get ranked by the end of
the year.
If you write one post per week, you’ll have 52 posts that might get ranked by the end of
the year. Basic arithmetic.
Sarabeth and I have always been pretty bad at writing for our own blog. We publish about
one article per month. Dean recommends at least one blog post every two weeks — but
ideally, we should publish once per week.
If you have a great idea for a blog post, sometimes it’s better to punch out the great post
instead of always diving into keyword research. Great ideas can spread on social media,
driving more traffic — and possibly backlinks — to your website.
In addition, unique ideas help develop thought leadership. You can add new ideas to
your larger industry conversation. Instead of simply writing about what people are already
curious about, you can give them a new framework or idea that they didn’t know they
wanted until they read about it on your blog.
Plus, you can start with writing a powerful blog post and then do keyword research to
make sure you can optimize your idea.
Facebook Medium
Twitter Hacker News
Instagram Zest.is
LinkedIn Your newsletter
Quora (answer questions and post in Spaces) Partner newsletters
Reddit
Actually...we’ve never tried using YouTube to grow our business, though we’re very
interested in starting. We’ve been on video a handful of times for interviews — plus
that one time we made a copywriting video for AppSumo. #ShoutOut
Challenges:
We’ve considered creating YouTube videos for several months. We think it’s a great
medium, and it doesn’t seem like a lot of our competitors are using it. However, it’s a
bit intimidating. We want to produce quality content, avoid coming across boring or
awkward, and not use up all of our time. In summary: we’re procrastinating like crazy.
Here’s what Brandon taught us about launching an entertaining and educational YouTube
channel.
Brandon Wells
- Content Producer at AppSumo
Choose a topic
You want to be passionate about the things you’re talking about. Make sure you’re always
interested in the things you want to make videos about.
Research: Certain keywords get searched a lot more than others. You can use tools
like Ahrefs to find high volume keywords. Take a notepad and write down the topics or
keywords you’d be excited to cover.
Don’t film with bright lights behind you. Balance light, so you’re not backlit.
Avoid noisy areas, so audio is nice and crisp.
Too much echo? Look at the floor and ceiling in your room — you could be sitting in an
echo chamber. Try putting carpet down as a solution.
Remove any dead space in your videos. When Brandon is editing videos, he splices
separate takes together so they feel just like one sentence. This helps you get to the point
of your video faster.
Posting frequency
The unspoken rule of content marketing is that you should post as often as possible.
According to Brandon, that means at least once per week. But at the end of the day, it
depends on how personal you are with your audience, and how long or in-depth your
videos are.
Start by thinking about why someone might come to your channel. Most of the time,
it’s probably to be entertained or to learn.
If you’re creating educational content, make sure to always solve the problem you’re
addressing in the title. There’s nothing worse than sitting through a 10 minute ramble
that promises to solve a problem, only to be left with the same problem looming by the
end of the video...
P.S. don’t try to muster enthusiasm about subjects you don’t care about. You’re better
off picking topics you’re genuinely excited to discuss, so that your passion comes
through on the screen.
If you can create long videos that retain someone’s attention for 15-20 minutes, then
do it! But if you’re better at chunking content into 2-4 minute videos, then do that
instead. What matters most is that you find a flow that keeps viewers’ eyes on your
channel.
That all starts with creating the best video content that you can.
We’ve talked for months about the possibility of launching a YouTube together. Finally,
Brandon inspired us to launch a channel — with a twist.
In the spirit of following the zeitgeist (and creating videos about something we’re
excited about), we decided to create a channel that encompasses: a shared interest
we have + what people ask us about most + what we don’t see online.
And we landed on this theme: how to build a successful online business with your
partner. Within a week, we reached 110 subscribers, so I’d say we might be onto
something here.
That said, here are some tools you can use to get started creating YouTube videos
from home:
Our new channel in Tubics with all the SEO recommendations we need to implement
We’ve tried Google Ads a couple times over the years, but we never closed a new
client using it. That said, we believe Google Ads is a great way to get leads — even
though we haven’t seen it for ourselves.
We’ve done some SEO over the years (and therefore, keyword research) which has
helped us land a handful of clients, especially in the last 6 months.
Challenges:
Several weeks ago, we launched a Google search ad for our business. We let it run
for a few weeks and didn’t receive any conversions. We were a little overwhelmed by
some of the technical aspects. Once our ad was live, we couldn’t figure out how to edit
it. Basically, we were lost and needed a lot of help.
In other words, your second campaign has more options than your first. Jack wanted
to show us the better campaign creation process. So, he quickly created a dummy
campaign just to zoom past the Google Ads onboarding steps. That’s what you’ll have
to do as well if you want to get the best possible campaign set up.
To use the following tutorial, first click through the step-by-step campaign Google
walks you through. Then pause* that first campaign, so that you can start using Google
Ads to its maximum capacity.
*Pause and delete your dummy campaign immediately after you create it, so you
don’t waste your $$$.
Just as with Facebook advertising, you want your success to be measurable. That
begins by defining clear metrics for measuring success — which starts with defining a
successful campaign.
Just like with Facebook Ads, you’ll use Pixels to track success. You’ll include a pixel on
your landing page as well as your Thank You page.
Click “Website.”
Note: Even though we are “booking a call,” we still want to use the
website conversion option. Using the “phone calls” option places a
Google Voice number in the ad that people can call.
Count it “Once.”
Keep the 30 day click-through conversion window and one-day view through window
(this is the most common combination across ad networks).
Under Attribution Model, click the dropdown and change it to “Position based.”
We decided to code it ourselves. When you click “Website,” you’ll see this screen.
Simply copy the code and add it to the top of your Thank You page.
By adding the Pixel to the Thank You page, you’re telling Google that when someone
arrives on this page, there’s been a successful conversion. All of this has to be done
before you start designing a campaign.
But now that it’s out of the way, we can start creating your first Google Ad!
From the Campaign screen, click the blue Plus (+) sign. Select “New Campaign.”
Click “Leads.”
Hit “Continue.”
This deserves its own point because this step is more important than it sounds.
Think of the name as a description of the campaign that lets you easily distinguish
it from future campaigns. In our case, we called it “Search / nonbranded / UX
copywriting.”
Select languages and insert your daily budget. Under Audiences, select
“Observational.”
Under Bidding, focus on Clicks to start with. Then swap over to Conversions later on
once you have some data.
You can add callout extensions like “free consultation” or “money-back guarantee” —
any short message you might like to add.
Jack likes to think of ad groups as the variations along a certain keyword phrase.
Select a certain keyword. That keyword has to be in every keyword phrase and every
ad within that ad group. Otherwise, you’re using too broad of a search term, which can
result in a lot more unqualified leads and lower relevancy scores.
As soon as you can’t fit the keyphrase into the ad group, you create a new one. At
the end, you’ll have a pyramid. You’ll have the main core buckets (under Campaigns:
your services and the benefits you provide); beneath that, you’ll have ad groups (all
the keywords you’ll be targeting); and further below, an extensive variety of phrases
containing the target keyword.
Helpful note: As you type keywords into the box, put quotations
around them to signify that you’re going for “Phrase match.” Start with
the phrase match, then use broad match or exact match as you see
positive or negative results.
Now the part you’ve been waiting for: creating search ads.
Remember that Google works on a relevancy score. The more relevant your ad is
to the end-user, the more powerful it will be (and the better it will perform in the ad
auction). Google takes several things into consideration: the keyword you’re targeting,
your overall relevancy score, your account history, and your bid.
Google wants to find the best balance between showing the most accurate/relevant
result for the end user, while still getting the most money from advertisers.
Use the keyword phrase you’re targeting in the ad and landing page
Offer a clear call-to-action
Name the benefit(s) of using your services
We’ve been in business at Lewis Commercial Writing since 2017. Before then, Alex
freelanced under the business name Copy by Alex.
Since the beginning, we’ve relied mostly on referrals. Happy clients have regularly
rehired us or recommended us to their colleagues and friends. (Thanks, Ilona!) We
occasionally tried a few tactics to increase referrals, but for the most part we’ve kept it
organic.
Referrals are unpredictable and untargeted, but they account for a large percentage
of our business. Referrals are often lateral, but we’d like to move up to work for bigger
and bigger clients if possible.
We get a lot of leads that aren’t right for us that we end up referring out to other
freelancers. This isn’t the worst thing, because it helps us become the resource
and connector in our network. We’ve considered starting a paid outbound referral
program, but we worry that that’ll leave a bad impression. (Note: Another freelancer
recently tried this with us and admittedly it didn’t feel great.)
AppSumo insider
Meet Seann Stubbs, Growth Lead at AppSumo. Seann has been part of Sumo Group
since 2017. We jumped on a call to learn what we could do to make referrals more
predictable in our business.
Here are the ideas Seann gave us for driving more referrals.
“
referrals.
- Seann Stubbs | Growth Lead at Appsumo
Offer incentives
To start off, offering incentives in exchange for referrals is a great tactic. But Seann
recommends you keep it simple. Gift cards are nice. But instead of giving a monetary gift,
consider giving a service, upgrade, mention, or feature in a blog post.
It’s worth mentioning that compensation isn’t always the right choice. In his book Predictably
Irrational, Dan Ariely talks about social vs. economic norms. He writes about how we live
in two worlds: “one characterized by social norms and the other characterized by market
exchanges.” People don’t mix the two — they do things for free as a social gesture or they
do things to get paid for work they deliver. There’s really no overlap. In human psychology,
there’s a stark difference between these two exchanges, so keep that in mind as you plan a
program around referrals.
The big question for deciding how to set up your referral program is:
What do my best referrers care about? How can I find what motivates
them? It’s an evolving process.
Anyone using SendFox for their email marketing can use the easily built-in referral hub
tool to set up a milestone-based referral program to get more subs. This feature gives
people three different ways to share their code, and allows you to set up your own
milestones to reward referrers.
Noah’s milestones
Morning Brew’s simple yet genius program has garnered them hundreds of thousands
of subscribers. By setting up high-quality gifts like extra newsletters, stickers, mugs,
t-shirts, and beer glasses, they’ve incentivized people to share their referral code widely.
But note: this may not work as well for a service-based business that doesn’t have the
brand affinity of Morning Brew.
Seann has noticed that people have a propensity to set referral programs up and forget
them. Referral programs can work, but they’ll need some love to keep them effective. Be
sure to revisit the terms of your program and add some new flair into it from time to time.
Get people who’ve worked with you to naturally come back to you. Again, you’ll have to go
back to your ideal customer and figure out what kind of incentives work the best.
If your program isn’t working, consider revisiting it with these questions in mind:
Could you have chosen the wrong prize for your ideal customer?
Do you have the wrong framing, placement, or approach?
Perhaps it’s more of a question of messaging: have you conveyed the benefits in a
clear way at moments when clients are satisfied with the work you’ve done?
Or is it the timing? Your program doesn’t need to be in your clients’ faces all the time.
Keep in mind that the best time to ask or share about your program is after the project
is done.
Tracking referrals
You can track referrals with a link-sharing tool that provides metrics about shares, how many
people have come through that link, etc. You can also just keep a manual spreadsheet. If
you’re running ads and have the appropriate website traffic, consider retargeting people
with Facebook retargeting ads.
People tend to fear asking for referrals. But keep in mind that in making the request, you’re
just planting a seed. Rarely will someone refer a colleague right when you ask. The worst
that can happen is they’ll brush you off. While there is some pride involved in the process,
try to remember that it’s more about being tactical: if you know you did a good job, just
ask. What’s the worst that could happen?
Also, remember to use moments of feedback to segue into referrals. If someone leaves a
review, immediately explain to them how important referrals are to your business. Ask them:
“Do you have anyone in mind who might like to work with us?”
Seann helped AppSumo launch an improved altruistic model referral program using Friendbuy.
It’s really simple: if you refer a new AppSumo customer, you get $10, and they get $10.
In addition, the previous AppSumo referral program wasn’t altruistic, so new buyers weren’t
incentivized with a discount. That all started to change once he used Friendbuy.
Seann also realized the benefits of mentioning the program in more emails and post-purchase
user flows. Most notably, adding the program in the menu bar on AppSumo.com and email
footers led to a huge spike in referrals: 700 to 1,000 new buyers a month.
Friendbuy
GrowSurf
Viral Loops
Referral Rock
Referral Saasquatch
Since the beginning, Lewis Commercial Writing relied on organic “strategies,” like stumbling
upon projects in Facebook groups, getting projects out of the blue from LinkedIn and Google,
and receiving spontaneous referrals.
But that lack of predictability is dangerous for any business. At the heart of this ebook is a push
to diversify your marketing. We know you’re probably already nailing a few of the marketing
approaches mentioned throughout this ebook, but it never hurts to open up a few more
channels.
It’s time to level up your business. Hopefully, this ebook gave you the tools and tactics — and
inspiration! — you needed to make it happen.
Since the beginning, Lewis Commercial Writing relied on organic “strategies,” like stumbling upon
projects in Facebook groups, getting projects out of the blue from LinkedIn and Google, and
receiving spontaneous referrals.
But that lack of predictability is dangerous for any business. At the heart of this ebook is a push
to diversify your marketing. We know you’re probably already nailing a few of the marketing
approaches mentioned throughout this ebook, but it never hurts to open up a few more channels.
It’s time to level up your business. Hopefully, this ebook gave you the tools and tactics — and
inspiration! — you needed to reach even greater heights.
While writing this ebook, we tried to implement as many of these tactics as we could in real time.
It’s all been pretty impactful. In the weeks leading up to the publication of this ebook, we launched
a YouTube channel and have received:
In summary, we’d encourage other service business owners out there to invest in marketing your
business. Step out of working in your business to work on it. Spending the time to implement these
strategies will be well worth the effort.
Once you share your expertise with the world, your business will grow in turn.
Onwards,