With Growth Labs I acted as an Inbound Marketing Consultant from December 2016-September 2017. In this role, I write articles on behalf of Growth Labs about content and SaaS marketing and design, as well as complete numerous other tasks related to the marketing efforts of Growth Labs and our clients. Read the full versions of my published articles by clicking the links below:
5 Ways to Save Time with an Outsourced CMO
August 2017
Watching your business organically grow is part-exhilarating and part-terrifying as you realign your team and skills to meet the demands of the Scaling Stage. You’ve got a product that works and now it’s time to go big or go home. While you can see the gold on the horizon, it’s ok to feel a bit of panic as you watch your time, resources, and knowledge start to stretch in preparation for the leap ahead. There are plenty of reasons to seek out an external marketing team at this precise moment, but saving time is number one. An outsourced CMO is your partner to take your business to the next level by attracting a larger audience, without sacrificing your attention to the product development that your current customers demand.
Marketing Tool Review: Ninja Outreach
August 2017
One of Growth Labs’ internal goals for several months has been to increase our website traffic. We aim to be a leader in the field of SaaS marketing and therefore want to grow our online presence to both grow our community and attract qualified customers to our services. We had the opportunity to try the new outreach platform, Ninja Outreach, and look forward to sharing our experience and some tips we learned with you!
Why You Need a Website Redesign Checklist
August 2017
Redesigning a website is often a more involved process than it would first seem. There are a lot of things that can go wrong or get forgotten in the long process of evaluating an existing website and deciding upon a course of action. At Growth Labs, we have built and rebuilt a number of websites for clients big and small, with a variety of challenges. Most of the insecurity and issues that companies run into during their website design process can be avoided with proper planning and sticking to that plan.
How to Spot a Bad Online Marketing Partner
July 2017
Finding the right online marketing partner might feel just as impossible as finding the perfect romantic partner. At the end of the day, a marketing agency should act in many ways like the best version of a significant other for your business: nurturing it, investing time and energy in it, adopting practices to keep it happy, clearly communicating, and even highlighting its best qualities. Although they might not be an official part of your team, the marketing agency you hire should be true partner and as a result, able to anticipate the marketing needs of your company, perhaps even before you can. Relinquishing control of some aspects of your business can be scary, but with the right partner by your side, get ready to see some amazing results when it comes to the growth and development of your business.
4 Steps to Upgrade Website Content on a Budget
July 2017
Having a website is a requirement in the Digital Age for reaching clients beyond your direct network and creating a professional presence for your company. However, if your website isn’t effectively attracting a quality audience and driving them to make a purchase, it might mean that you simply need to upgrade website content. While some companies might look at their disappointing site statistics and jump to the conclusion that they need to rebuild or redesign their website, there are several ways to quickly enhance a website when looking at content alone.
Expert Article: The #1 Metric to Measure Your SaaS Marketing ROI
July 2017
As every lean SaaS company knows, return on investment is of the utmost importance. The efforts of an experimental marketing strategy can be constantly hard to justify to an entrepreneurial, yet budget-conscious CEO. As a SaaS marketing team ventures down the paths of different campaigns of messaging and promotion channels, it’s important to not only be tracking data but to be using that data to inform and support every marketing decision.
So what is the most important metric SaaS companies should use to determine the return on investment (ROI) of their marketing efforts? We asked several SaaS leaders and marketers to share their answers as the landscape of digital and SaaS-specific marketing constantly evolves. If you’re going to start tracking data, here’s what to consider.
How Much Time Does it Take to Build a Website?
June 2017
If you’re about to embark on building your own website, take a minute to stop and assess what your goals are for the website…Here at Growth Labs, building websites is just one of the many things that we do, and while each client is different, we are always seeking to maximize our efficiency when delivering a quality site in a reasonable timeframe. Recently, we worked with one of our clients to re-build their existing website from the ground-up, without touching the content that they already had prepared on their old website.
Content Creation Tips for Independent Bloggers
April 2017
Whether you simply love to write, want to share your passions, or use blogging as a way to grow your solopreneur business, we all want the same thing: to be noticed. Creating content as an independent blogger is hard work, but you wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t rewarding, right? Although sometimes it might feel like your words are drifting into the Internet void, all it takes is a few tips to transform the impact you have on your community of website visitors and blog readers.
Case Study: How We Doubled Our Website Traffic in 4 Months
April 2017
From an inbound marketing perspective, website traffic is a key metric to determine how many people visit your site and therefore have the opportunity to begin the buyer’s journey and become a customer of your business. While there are plenty of metrics between a website visit and conversion into a paying customer, the larger the number of visitors to your website, the greater the odds that more people will reach that final step of purchasing your product or service.
The Written Art of Content Marketing
March 2017
Content is undoubtedly an integral part of any business marketing strategy– whether what you print in a brochure or post on your company Facebook page. Traditionally, content for marketing purposes was developed from the company’s point of view. The goal was to overpower competitors and stand out in front of potential customers with a writing style of flashy exclamations and exaggerated descriptions. In contrast, a new philosophy is now taking the stage to put the customer’s perspective at the center of content: inbound marketing…
…Rather than using language to stick your product or service in a contact’s face, your inbound content should express expertise, give advice, and speak to customer pain points in order to lead them through these steps and build a strong sense of trust and brand loyalty. This subtle psychology calls for a unique use of linguistic tools to achieve results with the inbound content style.
How to Create a Thank You Page
February 2017
Thank you pages are the icing on the cake that is your enticing, conversion-boosting offer. Now that your new contact has already provided their information in the form on the landing page, the thank you page is their chance to access their download, eBook, white paper, subscription, or coupon code. All that’s left then is to show them some extra love and encourage them to continue clicking around until they become a customer. While this category of webpage does not require too much when it comes to complex design, a successful thank you page remains clear, concise, and encouraging.
A Whole New World of Project Management
January 2017
Before entering the field of web design, and marketing, I held several positions in various sectors of the nonprofit world. Although time and technology have progressed rapidly in the past few years, I watched the previous organizations I worked with struggle with how to adopt and best use these new softwares and systems internally, to work more collaboratively.
Project management tools offer great potential for teams within businesses both big and small to work together to accomplish tasks efficiently. Especially when your SaaS business is spread across continents and time zones, staying organized and in sync is crucial to success. By comparing old school versions that were used and are still used and new school tools that are available today, it’s easy to see the ways in which these digital organization systems play a large role in the success of business operations.
How to Generate More Website Traffic With Your Existing Email List
January 2017
With plenty of new marketing tips, tricks, and ideas coming out all the time, email consistently persists as one of the best ways to communicate with your contacts at all stages of the inbound marketing process. The goal of any email is to get the reader to click, whether it’s to download from a landing page, to view a new product, or to RSVP to an upcoming event. Even with an email list that seems to have plateaued, there are still many reasons for these longtime subscribers to jump from their inbox to your website and boost your traffic.
10 Easy Steps to Follow When Publishing on Your SaaS Blog
January 2017
There’s no time like the present to activate your inbound marketing game plan for your SaaS business. Publishing quality content on your blog with SEO strategies in mind is one key way to grow your list of contacts. Yet, the process to produce engaging and shareable articles can be overwhelming when thinking beyond the basics of writing, editing, and pressing the “Publish” button. Use these 10 steps to convert your blog idea from plan to post and accomplish your goal of attracting quality visitors to your site.
How to Write Creative Content that Converts
December 2016
The purpose of your content is to attract visitors to your website that will convert as they follow your inbound marketing strategy. However, the leap from search engine result visitor to loyal, paying customer is no small jump. While you may view your blog or other written sections of your website as simply a means to the end of new profits and sales statistics, the creative content that you compose is what will engage those visitors, spark their interest, and keep them clicking all the way to your payment page.
SaaS Blog Topics Beyond Your Basic Sales Pitch
December 2016
As a thriving SaaS company, you’ve likely heard that a proactive way to attract visitors to your site is through the creation of a blog. However, having a blog as a main page on your site and a main part of your online marketing strategy requires constant maintenance. With the dozens of other tasks on your plate, writing even weekly or bi-weekly blog posts may feel like a daunting task that’s all set to get pushed onto the backburner. All it takes though is a little inspiration about blog posts beyond your basic service pitch to make your SaaS blog the creative centerpiece of your inbound marketing strategy.
The ABC’s of SaaS Marketing for Customer Engagement
December 2016
SaaS companies face a difficult task: marketing an intangible product to customers who can only access the service on-screen. While you might be jazzed up about your SaaS software after months (or years) of development and can’t wait to share all of its amazing features with the world, take a moment to reconsider your marketing plan from the perspective of your customer. Viable customer engagement is a key component to the sales growth and profit margins you’ve been dreaming about. By using an effective SaaS inbound marketing strategy that prioritizes people over product, you’ll increase your marketing ROI by attracting customers that will stick with your software for the long-term. Practice the ABCs of SaaS marketing to increase customer engagement for your inbound strategy.
Mariel Sporn Tavakoli 