Instagram Growth Hacks 2018: Build Your Brand Organically
Finishing off this week with Instagram growth hacks specifically for small business owners looking to reach their target audience on Instagram — the right way. Ps, they work for big brands too.
The 5 Best Types Of Awareness Stage Content To Explode Your Lead Generation
People can’t buy your stuff if they don’t know you exist, right? But, how do you help them find you?
The high-level answer is that you help them find you through awareness stage marketing.
7 Growth Hacks You Probably Haven’t Tried Yet
Ready to incorporate more growth-oriented tactics into your marketing strategy? Here are 7 growth hacks that you probably haven’t tried yet (but probably should).
How We Created an eCommerce Buying Guide That Led to Six-Figure Sales
Buying guides are an effective lead-gen tool especially for retailers that sell complex items (or services) with a lengthy buying cycle. These guides can help the customer better understand the product while also positioning your brand as a knowledge leader in the space.
This article goes deeper than most on the topic. InFlow covers how to select a buying guide topic, and my favorite, the email nurture cycle you can use to shift customers from interested researchers to buyers.
How to Run Your Growth Team Like a Scientist
ReForge highlights ways to run your growth team rooted in the basics of scientific method. One of my favorite idea in here is to make sure you’re looking at other industries outside your own for inspiration. It’s also important to solicit feedback from stakeholders and even folks who oppose your goals and hypotheses.
We Analyzed 6,868 eCommerce Content Marketing Articles: Here’s What We Learned
The Sumo team used data to reiterate some of the content trends we’ve been seeing over the past couple years.
Successful companies are posting more content, posting more frequently, creating high-quality, long content (which attracts more backlinks), and are meticulously focused on keywords…never clickbait.
6 Paid Content Distribution Options That You Probably Haven’t Tried
When marketers head out to promote their products they often focus on the popular spots like Google AdWords, Facebook, and Affiliate Networks. However, as those channels become more saturated (and expensive) it is important to discover and test less crowded places to reach your niche.
Ben Jacobson lays out a few great option to try including Quora Ads, LinkedIn, Instagram Stories and Facebook Messenger Ads.
50+ E-Commerce New Year Strategies for 2018 to Grow Traffic, Revenue, Engagement, and ROI
The New Year is behind us, and it’s time to get back to work. Evan Weber takes us out of the clouds and into the weeds with a pile of tactics that you can sprinkle into your 2018 marketing calendar.
51 Inspired Examples of Growth Hacking Strategies & Techniques From The World’s Most Innovative Businesses
There are endless ways to scale your business. John curated an awesome list of successful companies, and the major tactic(s) they used to rapidly grow.
Growth stalwarts like Netflix, YouTube, Dollar Shave Club, Ice Bucket Challenge, and likely a whole bunch of others you haven’t heard before.
Lots of ideas here that you can apply to your business.
The Growth Experiment Management System that Tripled Our Testing Velocity
We’re kicking things off with an easy-to-digest experimentation process from the Head of Growth at Feastly. As with many things, you gain velocity through a combination of prioritization, automation, and communication.
By connecting tools like Slack (communication), Pipefy (project management), and Chartio (analytics) the Feastly team was able to scale their throughput.
How to Grow a Blog That Drives 60%+ of Your Revenue
The entire digital world has been enamored with content marketing for years, and eCommerce is no exception.
The idea is to have a blog (or other content) that your potential customers will find interesting. Pretty simple right? Sadly, I’ve witnessed firsthand my share of eCom sites attempting to blog, only to watch it fizzle out after a half dozen posts.
This podcast from Ecommerce Fuel (transcript also included) sits down with a tea retailer that gets three-fourths of their traffic from blog content…and two-thirds of their revenue. Whoa.
Some great takeaways on why you should obsess of keyword research, and how to outsource the operation from writing, content curation, and the editorial process.
Sumo Growth Study: How Amazon Generates $136 Billion In Sales
Ok, here’s the deal. I’ll stop sharing all these Sumo growth studies when they stop being amazing. This week’s growth study dives into the grand-daddy, Amazon.
While the article talks about a lot of the basics most people know (Prime program, 1-click checkout, etc.) they also talked about some of the other programs Amazon has layered on over the years. This includes their massively successful affiliate program (Amazon Associates), their charity program (Amazon Smile), the conversion boosters on their PDP’s, and their strategic email post-purchase series.
Regardless if your ecommerce site makes $136 billion or 136 dollars, there are some great ideas here.
The One Growth Metric that Moves Acquisition, Monetization, and Virality
Spoiler alert, its “retention”. Happy customers are loyal customers. By retaining your customers you’ll see increased re-purchase rates and higher ROAS (thank you free channels). This extra cash can be used to invest in further acquisition of new customers…and the cycle continues.
Happy customers are also more likely to tell their friends about you. Virality! #winwin
Brian Balfour shows how strong retention rates can feed your business and unlock huge growth.
How to Run a Profitable Giveaway
Over the years I’ve talked to plenty of retailers who have run giveaways with less than mediocre results. It is often not the giveaway itself, but the execution. This article clearly walks through the types of promotions, types of prizes that work best, best channels to run them (hint, its social), and how to CYA on the legal side.
Real World Growth Hacking: A Guide to Getting Customers for the Unfunded
59% of people buy from companies they recognize (a Nielsen stat I stole from this very article!) Brand name recognition is important. So what can smaller, lesser known, budget conscious retailers do to stand out and gain credibility? Well, a few things it seems including attaching yourself to larger brands, championing your big wins, and ramping up your social proof game.
“Fake it ’til ya make it.”