Dave Shanley on Content Creation and SEO for Growth Marketing (Full Interview)
Summary
TLDRIn this insightful discussion, Dave, the founder of Content Camel, shares his journey from developer to marketing expert and emphasizes the transformative power of sales and marketing strategies. He highlights the importance of understanding the holistic business environment and the role of content in driving organic growth. Dave discusses the challenges of starting from scratch and the potential of AI-generated content, while offering practical advice on leveraging SEO and backlinks to enhance domain authority and organic reach. His experiences underscore the value of strategic content creation and the need for businesses to focus on delivering high-value content that resonates with their target audience.
Takeaways
- π Dave's transition from developer to marketing expert was sparked by his company's acquisition and the realization of the power of sales and marketing.
- π The growth of the company post-acquisition, from $2.5 million to over $60 million in revenue, highlighted the effectiveness of a strong sales and marketing engine.
- π‘ Engineers want to build products that are used and valued, which aligns with the goal of creating content and marketing strategies that resonate and drive results.
- π The importance of understanding the holistic business environment and the role of SEO and content strategy in driving organic growth was emphasized.
- π Dave's experience suggests that starting from scratch is challenging but not impossible, and leveraging content and SEO can lead to significant growth over time.
- π The discussion touched on the explosion of content and the temporary grace period for AI-generated content, with an expectation that search engines will adapt to filter out low-quality content.
- π± The importance of focusing on organic traffic and building up 'organic muscle' through content strategy was stressed, as it is key to long-term success.
- π Backlinks remain a crucial component of SEO, and strategies for acquiring high-value backlinks, such as guest posting and leveraging PR, were discussed.
- π― Keyword research and targeting high search volume keywords were highlighted as essential for improving organic search rankings.
- π The value of creating high-value content that converts, especially focusing on high intent keywords and understanding the audience, was emphasized.
- π Dave's company, Content Camel, exemplifies the practical application of these strategies, starting from scratch and steadily growing its domain authority and organic reach.
Q & A
What led Dave to transition from being a developer to focusing on marketing and digital strategies?
-Dave's transition began when he started a company that was successful and eventually acquired by a larger company. As the CTO of the new company, he realized the power of a sales and marketing engine, as they scaled from $2.5 million to $25 million in revenue, and continued to grow beyond $60 million after his departure.
What is Dave's perspective on the importance of building products that are used by people?
-Dave believes that engineers want to build products that are utilized by people, not just sitting on the shelf. He sees a combination of ego and altruism in this desire, where creators want to make a positive impact and ensure their work is used effectively.
How does Dave approach the challenge of enabling sales and marketing teams to be successful?
-Dave emphasizes the importance of understanding the holistic business environment and partnering with the sales and marketing team. He believes that anything that can be done to support and enable their success will ultimately lead to the product reaching a wider audience.
What is Dave's prediction for the future of content creation and AI-generated content?
-Dave predicts a temporary grace period for AI-generated content, where people might get away with using it. However, he believes that platforms like Google are working on tools to account for this, as low-quality, fast-food content doesn't provide long-term value to users.
What are Dave's thoughts on organic traffic and its role in a company's go-to-market strategy?
-Dave considers organic traffic as key to any go-to-market strategy. He believes that focusing on long-term owned media that drives leads is crucial and that neglecting to leverage search intent leads to missing out on a significant opportunity.
How does Dave recommend approaching content strategy and keyword research?
-Dave suggests pausing to research the topics you're writing about, targeting high search volume keywords, and not spreading yourself too thin. He recommends focusing on less but more focused content, building out clusters of topics, and systematically improving rankings over time.
What is the significance of backlinks in SEO according to Dave's experience?
-Backlinks remain important in SEO. Dave believes that high-value backlinks can boost domain authority, which speeds up the time to rank for targeted keywords. He suggests focusing on getting backlinks to the main domain and using various strategies to drive these links.
How does Dave feel about the use of gray hat or black hat tactics for link building?
-Dave advises against gray hat or black hat tactics for link building, as they can be risky. Instead, he recommends focusing on high-value insights, guest posting, and leveraging PR to obtain valuable backlinks.
What strategies did Dave and his team use to build backlinks for Content Camel?
-Dave's team used a variety of strategies including press releases, offering high-value content, leveraging startup directories, purchasing expired domains with pre-existing backlinks, and running a guest post hustle.
How does Dave approach keyword research and understanding the audience?
-Dave emphasizes the importance of understanding the audience by putting yourself in their shoes and thinking about their needs and goals. He suggests researching competitors, identifying high-volume keywords, and thinking outside the box to find relevant topics that the audience is interested in.
What advice does Dave have for companies regarding the investment in SEO and content strategy?
-Dave advises companies to view SEO and content strategy as a long-term investment. He suggests starting incrementally, focusing on understanding the audience and buyer personas, and systematically using tools to track and optimize content efforts.
Outlines
π From Developer to Marketing Expert
Shaylee interviews Dave, a developer turned marketing expert, who is the founder, CEO, and CTO of Content Camel, a company focused on sales enablement and copywriting. Dave shares his journey from being a developer at the University of Michigan to realizing the power of sales and marketing after his company was acquired. He emphasizes the importance of building products that people use and the eye-opening experience of seeing his company's revenue skyrocket from $2.5 million to over $60 million. Dave discusses the need for engineers to understand the holistic business environment and the value of building things that help people.
π Strategies for Content Success
Dave shares his insights on content strategy, emphasizing the importance of grinding and focusing on high search volume keywords. He advises against spreading efforts too thin and recommends concentrating on specific topics to improve search rankings over time. Dave also talks about the use of tools like Ahrefs for research and the strategy of targeting organic branded keywords. He suggests that leveraging PR and guest posting can boost domain authority and speed up the time to rank for desired keywords.
π The Importance of Backlinks
Dave discusses the significance of backlinks in SEO, especially for new sites without a strong domain authority. He explains that high-value backlinks can boost domain authority and speed up the ranking process. Dave shares his experience of buying a domain with existing backlinks and the various strategies he used to build backlinks, including press releases, guest posts, and leveraging PR. He warns against risky link trading practices and emphasizes the value of high-value content and collaborations.
π― Identifying and Understanding Your Audience
Dave talks about the importance of understanding the target audience and buyer personas. He suggests using Google Analytics and usability testing to get into the mindset of the customer. Dave emphasizes the need to research competitors and identify high-volume keywords that can be targeted. He also discusses the potential of tapping into popular topics like Discord and crypto to reach a wider audience, even if they are not directly related to the product or service being offered.
π Evaluating Content Strategy and SEO
Dave shares his approach to content strategy and SEO, highlighting the need for systematic research and planning. He advises starting with small, manageable chunks and having a documented understanding of the audience and buyer personas. Dave emphasizes the importance of testing hypotheses, focusing on execution, and understanding which segments of the audience are converting well. He also discusses the challenges of measuring content effectiveness and the need for a strategic approach to content creation and distribution.
π‘ Investing in SEO and Content
Dave addresses the common complaint about the time it takes to see results from SEO and content efforts. He explains that while it does take time, it's a necessary investment that should not be neglected. Dave shares his experience of achieving page one rankings for branded and organic keywords within a year and emphasizes the importance of planning for a long-term content strategy. He also discusses the role of Content Camel in helping teams organize and track the effectiveness of their content, enabling both marketers and sales teams to maximize the use of content assets.
π The Future of Content and SEO
In closing, Dave reiterates the importance of content in all marketing efforts and the need to be equipped to take advantage of it. He encourages the audience to deliver value through content, reuse assets effectively, and understand their audience well. Dave's final message is one of optimism for the future, emphasizing the potential of content to drive success in the market.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘SEO
π‘Content Marketing
π‘Sales Enablement
π‘AI-Generated Content
π‘Backlinks
π‘Domain Authority
π‘Organic Traffic
π‘Marketing Engine
π‘Technical Founder
π‘Content Strategy
Highlights
Shaylee interviews Dave, a developer turned marketing expert and founder of Content Camel, a company focusing on sales enablement and sales copy enablement.
Dave shares his journey from being a developer at the University of Michigan to realizing the power of sales and marketing after his company was acquired.
Content Camel was started from scratch and has made significant progress in a year, emphasizing the importance of focusing on high-value content and keywords.
Dave discusses the importance of understanding the holistic business environment and the need for engineers to build products that are used and not just shelved.
The interview highlights the temporary grace period for AI-generated content and the need for Google and others to develop tools to account for it.
Organic traffic is key for a go-to-market strategy, and businesses should focus on building up their organic 'muscle' for long-term success.
Dave emphasizes the importance of grinding and focusing on specific topics to improve search rankings and drive organic traffic.
Content Camel's strategy involves leveraging high-value backlinks and domain authority to increase the speed of ranking for targeted keywords.
Dave shares practical tips for backlink building, including press releases, guest posting, and purchasing expired domains with pre-existing backlinks.
Understanding the audience and buyer personas is crucial for effective content strategy and SEO.
Dave recommends starting with high-intent, down-funnel content and working backwards to cover all bases content-wise.
Content Camel helps teams get organized and understand what content is converting by generating smart short links for marketers and salespeople.
Dave advises on the importance of reusing content assets effectively and delivering value to the audience.
For businesses, especially B2B SaaS, a significant portion of the revenue should be invested in content and SEO as they are highly profitable channels.
Content Camel enables salespeople to create personalized resource pages and share them efficiently, streamlining the sales process.
Dave's final message emphasizes the dominance of content in all go-to-market efforts and the need to be equipped to take advantage of it.
Transcripts
[Music]
so with us
shaylee he's an amazing guy like seo a
contact expert he comes
on as like a founder ceo and cto of
content camel which is an amazing
company that makes like sales enablement
sales copy enablement uh which we'll
talk about this uh during this tutorial
and
what personally excites me the most
about dave is that he's like a developer
converted into marketing so i just want
to start there dave i mean university of
michigan in the development um what led
you into marketing and digital per se
yeah i mean the short version is um
i started a company and we were
successful
and then we were bought by a much bigger
company
and
i was a cto of that company and the
original founder and i realized that
like oh my gosh
what a sales and marketing engine can
accomplish right like we went from
two and a half million in revenue to
25
and after i left i mean they continued
to skyrocket to
like beyond 60.
um
and that was just my my company like my
slice of it my product line
and so
that was like that was definitely
eye-opening
and i fundamentally believe that
engineers you know they want to build
stuff that people use
they don't want to build stuff that just
sits on the shelf right and doesn't
doesn't get used right it is about i
mean i don't know if there's like an ego
aspect or just
but because i just wanted to say that
like you need to be humble and just like
understand the holistic business
environment that you're in sure i mean
but it's like i i think there's also
altruism there where people want to
build stuff that helps people or you
know it definitely like what you don't
want to build stuff that doesn't get
used the more people that use it the
more awesome
it is and so how do you how do you make
that happen
go to market right like you have to be
able to figure out how to get stuff into
market and as an engineer even inside of
a company
how can you enable the sales and
marketing team to be successful
anything that you can do to partner and
make that happen is going to
get your stuff more out into the world
and so that's i don't know that's how i
think about it as a technical founder
oh that's one hello winning attitude
love it thanks for sharing you do with
us so what do you think will happen like
in 2022
i know that you don't have the crystal
ball right there but uh based on your
experience experience
maybe experience
it's still like if you're starting from
scratch it's still really hard
um it's as hard as it ever has been just
i think to start from scratch there's
ways that you can hack it and ways that
you can insert yourself into
conversations and things like that but i
think yeah recognizing that it's hard i
think also there's
you know 21 2021 this last year
obviously moving forward we're seeing an
explosion of content
a lot of people are turning to like the
ai generated content and things like
that and i think there's going to be
this
like sort of uh
temporary grace period where that works
or people kind of get away with that but
you know i'm sure that google
and the other folks are working on
tooling to account for that because
kind of the fast food version of content
that doesn't really help people in the
long run i don't think
does much good um for your prospective
customer base
all righty what do you think will happen
with organic and just like
allegedly free traffic that we could be
attracting to our website what are your
thoughts on that
i mean i think the or organic is key i
mean content's going to drive your go to
market regardless of what what you're
doing organic i think people are missing
a huge opportunity if they're just doing
direct sales and if they're you know and
if they're just doing paid
and kind of
again sort of not investing and
long-term owned
you know media that's driving leads
right like you want to be able to own
that um
that those channels and have long-term
kind of evergreen
right performance off of those channels
and really the only way to one of the
only ways to do that is
is build up your organic kind of muscle
right like systematize that and like
really figure out how to how to make
that work for you
um
yeah so i think that's
it's a huge no matter how how you're
going to market even if it's like a
direct sales team everything like that
if you're not leveraging
people's search intent
you are missing out on a huge
opportunity
totally profitable one that is so we are
all on our tipitos here how do you make
it happen how do you leverage this
content strategy what are your best
secrets to do that yeah i mean
it's there's a lot of the grind i mean
there are some like kind of like hacks
or things that you need to pay attention
to
a lot of it is grinding it does take
time
um
where people i think where people miss
the most that i see is they just they
think it's like a lot of stuff all
spread out all over the place
right like they start generating content
they're like we're going to publish
something every day or we're going to
try or like to publish to publish two
things a week or whatever but they don't
have a like a strategy
they're not thinking about it in terms
of topics
what they really need to do is like hit
pause
are you researching
the things that you're writing about
because like from an organic
standpoint you want to hit like high
search volume
right keywords and you want to make sure
you're targeting those and it doesn't
have to be like some complicated or
exhaustive research but
look if you're writing for something
that has no search intent right like
there's no volume like nobody's going to
show up because you're only going to
capture a percentage of that so like
you know 10 of 0 is still zero
um and so
so like what are you doing to to put the
effort in a little bit and there's lots
of tools right there's ahrefs and some
russian all those
use those do the research ahead of time
and then and then focus
right like don't
spread yourself like super thin i i
would
i would recommend doing less
that's more focused than more that's not
focused
right so it means topics like build out
your clusters like basically go after
topics and keep
keep working on those topics
um
[Music]
until they until you get to the point
where you start to
you know move up in the rankings because
going after everything all at once
you're gonna you're basically achieve
very little but going after these
certain sets of topics where you can
boost that over time
um
is gonna make a big difference
gotcha hey um i just kind of remembered
that is there any opportunity any
possibility that you would just like
screen share for a little bit like
simrash or whatever tool you are using
and just like provide us with an example
of whatever you're maybe thinking next
for the
content camel or something like that is
there any opportunity that we could
screen share for a sec so that our
students would really get the best value
out of it and that's completely off
script i love it
yeah no sure sure i could do that let me
oh my gosh let me clean up my screen
because it's like
crazy yeah i'm literally embarrassed uh
to the guts
the whenever i do that so oh no that's
nice that's nice that's a drifting car
sales boat that's a decent i know
all right let's see what we got here so
we we use
um
i prefer hrefs um
and
i'm gonna go in
to content camel and we started from
scratch like just perfect to give you
perspective like we started from scratch
just under
a year ago like almost exactly a year
ago is is when we started really going
to market so we don't have a lot of
of like honestly anything like traffic
or backlinks really at this point but
starting from scratch like you can see
like did i just uh see the number 1000
backlinks and you said nothing
yeah i mean there's
there's a lot of other folks that are a
lot more successful um but we're still i
think we're doing pretty well like the
the big thing is like the main authority
or demo domain rating
um
you're gonna start literally at zero
probably right unless you buy into a
domain that already exists and so
we've spent a lot of time
uh focusing on like high value content
keywords
and and and actually building out some
backlinks and so
[Music]
that's i mean you can see the progress
has been awesome you know
looks like explanation that growth to me
yeah and we've been able to there's some
stepwise functions here but it was
grinding it out for a while um
but this you know the the the better
your domain rating
right you can think of it as
in the sense it's going to speed your
time to ranking for for the things
you're going after
so
i think it is again
maybe a lot of people don't understand
when they're coming at this fresh
that when you when you don't have any
authority
right like th you're not going to get
ranked as quickly
for the things that you're going after
which again is why it's super important
to focus
focus on certain keywords and really go
after those
um
[Music]
and
yeah and put your energy into those and
we actually we did we
we got onto page one we got onto page
one for some things like pretty quickly
um
the
and then like the strategy here we went
after we went after the
organic branded keywords because in our
space
there's
the
the easy stuff like at the surface
there's actually not a lot of volume
against
our like the pure search for the thing
that people call our thing right like so
we do sales enablement um and so it's
like sales content management and it can
mean different things to other people
and there's not a lot of people actually
like searching for that and so you have
to think a little bit more outside the
box but the slam dunk stuff is is that
we're going after some enterprise folks
that are already
in the market
and
people know them and search for them and
so we've been able to capitalize on that
fact to capture some
um
some value there
right so middle final bottom of the
funnel and as we are like checking this
out
um my main question is like you
immediately mentioned practice right are
backlinks uh still like the name of the
game when it comes to seo or not
necessarily what matters these days what
would you as uh experience and also
technical founder focus on
uh i think
yeah
one is like it is it is definitely like
we talked about
uh the
proliferation of like ai content right
and so
i still think it's really important to
write high value content that is going
to convert
i would start with content that is down
funnel first like high intent right like
people searching for our competitors
they want to solve a problem
right
and so that's that they're primed and so
we're working backwards moving up funnel
and covering our bases content-wise
there
then on top of that when you think about
like domain authority anything that you
can do to get
backlinks and especially like high value
backlinks
um is going to boost that domain
authority which is going to increase the
speed for you to rank for the things you
want to rank for
so it is important
if you if you don't come
with a bunch of backlinks already to
your site and you don't have like a very
strong domain authority you know i would
say like above 20 for example
then it's worth
putting effort into
um
driving up the domain authority so that
that starts with like backlinks to your
main domain like the root domain so in
our case it's content camel
so
you know what can you do to
to drive um
backlinks to that root domain and then
as as you boost your domain authority
then you start targeting
uh like specific those specific topics
that you're writing about
and so
we did a combination of i mean it's also
we did a bunch of different things and
it's gonna be
anything that you can do if you can
leverage like pr leverage pr like if you
can get people to talk about you if you
have an audience like say you're really
popular with a specific group right
in some in some respects like whether or
not that's like specifically in the
domain of what you're offering
leverage that and and ask people and try
to get those links back to you right
um
there are people there's sort of like
the the
gray hat or black hat version of like
you know trading links and things like
that
um
would you recommend that or not really
it's it's it's like it's potentially
risky but it's also
possible for like for like the
kind of like kg kg founder um
you know so i think there's
again if you can find a stream
of people to work with that can offer
like high value insights that will do
guest posting or anything like that
do it and try to leverage that as much
as possible there is also the outreach
strategy um
there's like the you can go
all the listicles that exist in your
space like could we maybe check out like
in f traps like the backlinks for
content camel i think that's what you're
sure really interesting at this point
sorry i'm getting it out a little bit
but yeah that would be awesome
yeah i mean there's um nice
there's a bunch so there's we've done
some backlink building um
there is
we actually did a press release people
will say that it doesn't work anymore um
people
will say maybe it does work
and so
we actually one of the first things we
did is we actually did do a press
release um just to get some
[Music]
like legit backlinks going to the site
and again like we were starting from
zero zero like zero nothing
um
we
offered some high value content and so
we have this like product messaging
template that's high value content
that's gotten picked up um
also all of like the the
basic directories like you could see
like crunchbase like crunchbase github
i'm generally impressed by this like
these are huge publications
yeah like any any place that you can go
and there's like those like startup
directories you know those are just like
obvious like
get all of those right um i actually
found this is kind of crazy this is like
not something that's necessarily
repeatable but i found a company that
was like went on a business that was in
our space and their domain was up for
sale
i noticed this because i went on i was
looking for backlinks and i noticed um
i can't remember like on our topic some
people were ranking and it went to like
medium
it was basically okay so this is what i
was doing i was going after and looking
at like the listicles right like people
like top 10 sales enablement software
and then they would list it and there
were some dead ends on
on on a medium article
and i realized like oh my gosh like
there was this company that existed in
our space
and they built up a
a you know a a chunk of backlinks
because they were going to market for
like a year or two they were funded
um
and then they went on a business and
then there nobody bought their domain or
someone bought their domain and then
they and then they dropped the domain
and so i just went and bought the domain
because we got the backlinks
that's spectacular love it
it's not necessarily repeatable but then
you know no but like having your skin in
the game right paying attention not like
to
leave this to the coincidence but having
like a firm strategy around it because
this channel like organic traffic will
be increasingly important as so more so
as the traffic is getting more expensive
yes
um and then and then we just we ran like
a guest post hustle and so you can see
you know like tech times and things like
that we basically
we ran a program to do like to
offer value in
in getting guest posts um
that covered you know the
in where there were people that
matched our audience um and that wanted
to
you know include content camel and so
that's
we put some money and resources against
that um but not the insane like 200 per
link sort of thing that you hear thrown
around
so
it all it all adds up it's not there's
no
you know buying the domain was the
buying like buying the drop domain
wasn't
it didn't like boost us from like a
domain authority of like five to fifteen
right it but it everything helped it did
move it up
running the guest post hustle did does
move it up
um
grinding away great content
and trying to get that out to our
audience does move it up so
fantastic love it sorry i interrupted
you a little bit before but could we
dive in back into like the keywords if
there is any maybe opportunity that you
would see from checking out like the
keywords that you would maybe be
inclined towards pursuing in the q4 2021
do you see anything interesting for you
here
um this is stuff that we already rank
for i think what we're doing
what we're
what you want to do is really think um
out of the box in the sense of
it starts with identifying who your
audience is like if you the better you
know your audience
i i mean i always like to think of it
like people like real people real
individual folks are showing up
right
on your blog post and on your landing
page and on your home page and i mean
that's like somebody it's a very you
know it's like a very specific person
and the more that you can put your mind
into the into that state of mind
of the person showing up and like what
they want to
accomplish how would we discover that
sorry uh how would you discover that
would you go and search for it in google
analytics would you like to usability
test how would you get
into the skin of the regular customer of
yours
you talk to them and you go you hit them
up on you hit them up on linkedin oh you
said you said the ugly answer i thought
yeah
i mean there's there's you can see what
your competitors are doing so like the
interesting thing is you know you can
the nice thing is is i would do
exhaustive research
on competitors
right
because it gives you a sense of like
what is going on so that's all branded
search that's the truth
of their
exactly yeah yeah there's lots of
misspellings which are easy to go after
things like that
you can go
um
you know sort this by volume
and look at position right and you can
do you can do do filters
right from
one to like i don't know maybe
40 for opportunities
right and so you're gonna see the stuff
that like maybe your competitors rank
for
and and it's gonna you're gonna see
things like pop up
um
like sales coach right like there's a
lot of people apparently searching for
sales coach yay yeah
you know and and they have you can see
that they have a dedicated page and
they're on and they rank uh
fifth for that that's not something that
i
that's not what's that yeah that's not
something like
i would have necessarily thought
um would be something to go after that
you know we deal with sales enablement
we honestly like sell to the marketer
um but they're able to but they're
ranking organically for sales coach
and it's got quite a bit of volume
against it so there that's more of like
a top-up funnel awareness strategy but
it's great
and so
doing the research against the
competitors i think comes first
some of your competitors may not be
doing that well
right organically so there's obviously
opportunity to undermine them
organically but it gives you ideas
and you could again like think out of
the box around like where your audience
is showing up like anything that's
relevant to them i i saw one
i was doing analysis for um
a company that i advise and
they
they were thinking kind of like a more
consumer
like b2c approach
and we were looking at some of the folks
in the space that were successful
just in the general space you know
around what we were talking about and i
noticed like by doing coming in here and
looking at the keywords and what they
rank for you could clearly see that
um
this company that was going to market in
kind of like the file sharing space
their their their highest volume
keywords and the most traction was
around talking about like discord
servers and like discord
bots and things like that that's
unbelievable what a story
in the whole discord community right and
it's like completely
you can think like i mean it's
completely off topic from like i'm
trying to sell you file sharing software
but at the same time there's
that's the audience
like they're driving a high volume b2c
game
there's a lot of people talking about
discord
right and so there's especially in the
gaming community i mean it's the name of
the game right now
yeah
and exactly crypto is very important as
well and and and businesses that are
jumping on and running their community
really i didn't know that what kind of
business
i don't know maybe tech enabled their
tech oriented business a lot of them are
running their community they've set up a
discord you know server
for their for doing their community i
mean so
you know you and i are probably members
of like slack communities and slack
channels but i think
i think that a lot of folks are turning
into discord kind of for kind of for the
actual like i'm sorry dave did you just
call us old
no no
i did not call this old i'm definitely
not old
um
but uh
but yeah i mean i think yeah i think the
kind of evolution of like where do you
where do you take where you go for
community or where you take your
community
um
i see more and more businesses kind of
leveraging it it's not necessarily like
anyway whatever so
it's again it's just an example of
topics if you can find high volume
topics that people are talking about
then
go go in on that and like i said before
how much time are you spending in this
research sorry to bother you but like it
seems a lot to process so like if you
had to
evaluate like how
much time a week or a month are you
spending doing this like investigating
these opportunities what would your take
on it
uh in the beginning i spent a lot of
time
in the beginning i spent a lot of time
trying to figure out like what the
angles were
and so it was a lot of sort of
you know
sort of at the end of the day after
hours i would like
come in and like do a lot of research
you know what i mean like brainstorm
ideas like brainstorm topics do the
keyword research
look at the competitors and try to try
to create like a map of that
um
and that was like a lot of upfront a
front work and then once
once you you start operating like once
you're kind of into more
like kind of a systemized version of
this
then you can
you can kind of do your like quarterly
planning like these are the topics we're
going after
and this is how we're going to show up
right and it's like kind of the whole
thing it's like what posts are you doing
what are the landing what landing pages
are there
what are next steps
um
as they take action and like making sure
that it resonates with like the buyer
that you've identified because you know
at first we didn't even know that
for sure
that really the marketers were our only
buyer i mean we obviously we knew that
marketers were going to be our buyer
but we didn't know that it was someone
like primarily on the marketing side i
don't i don't think people in this space
have like really cracked the code on
tapping into
sales like vp director of sales as as
buyers
and so
you know so those are things we tested
like you know
could
could we go after sales right it was
like a hypothesis
um and we ended up
mostly just really
stepping away from that and focusing
more on the marketing side
um yeah this happens a lot
um dave is there anything else that you
would like to say and wait for this um
mispronunciation of the tool ahrefs
other than that do we still need the
screen share is there anything else
that's interesting that is hiding here
or do we go and continue the interview
uh side by side i mean i would look
they've got good help content i mean i
would look i would look at
what they showcase in their help content
because it is there are there are things
like you can go
and see
what the like say top pages are
from your from your competitors right so
you can go go in and look at that you
can also sales coaching there it is
there it is number five
yeah you can go and see
you can you don't have to you you can go
and look at this by keyword right like
by parent keyword and drill down and see
what the top ranking pages are
for content
um
you can go in and look at what domains
are linking to them so you can kind of
do the analysis
from a bunch of different angles
it's all in there in like the
hrefs in the semrush
content it's worth reading through
um
i think over the long run as you build
up your organization
i this is technical enough that i like
recommend
offloading this
to a contract to someone who who is good
i was waiting for it i was waiting for
it because like these tools alone can
cost you a mini fortune when you're
starting out yeah if you add up all of
these you can get a lot
yeah i think i think you can get a lot
of traction
it's worth investing in one of these
right
and a bunch of other folks
are like kind of scraping data like this
um
and so
it almost doesn't matter what you pick
as long as it's like halfway decent and
it gives you like directional it's
directionally correct meaning you know
is is the volume 4 800 or is it 5200 or
is it 3 000 like it doesn't really
matter
right it's just directionally correct
um
and so in that sense
it's worth like using something to get
started
but
as you grow
it's definitely like it is valuable to
engage
a consultant i i've been in
organizations like i've run a team where
we have this embedded internally
um
and i think it's great to have someone
on board that that owns a relationship
you know with an outside contractor but
i would contract this out
fair and square fair and square yeah
people are making uh decent livings out
of this and of course like it's not a
full-time job as you are starting out
and of course it takes a habit right
because that's the first thing that i
would like to double down on so it
doesn't matter how many tools do you buy
what matters is how systematic using do
you use them exactly exactly so so when
we're talking about monies uh let's say
that like a lot of people are
complaining about seo and content that
it takes like half a year or god knows
what that they would see valuable
results of it uh what's your take on it
what are you telling to those people who
are complaining about
this uh i think it takes it takes time
it takes time
so it's like yes or no it takes time to
to get to probably where you really
really want to get to
um
you know we've been in market for like
about a year and so you can see we've i
think we've done pretty well
um it's definitely like you know
generating leads and things like that
for us
um
we got on to page one
with you know for for some of those like
branded or organic keywords
and
like not our brand for our competitors
brand
um nobody's searching for our brand and
uh and and that was fast like that was
you know and we did it through high
value like we have
like a high value comparison landing
page that is
pretty detailed and
you know we we made the moves to make
that highlighted on our site
and so
you know
it worked like it's it's so it's not
like it's definitely not impossible and
that's a great place to start and i you
know
that starts returning leads
you know the minute it's on page one or
two
so
yeah i think
plan for
taking time it's not instant
but look you're gonna be doing it anyway
if you're running a good process you're
going to be doing this anyway so like
why not get good at it as fast as you
can
totally totally and as we established
before like i mean paid traffic was such
a nightmare this year that like whatever
comes in organically and fire branded
search or something like that these are
like very worthy investments so we
shouldn't be the neglecting content and
seo as a channel so when we're talking
about this um
like when you are advising companies
maybe you could just like highlight um
what can possibly go wrong or what are
some of the best practices so when you
say like content strategy and seo like
for the majority of people their mind
would just blow up right and so they
don't understand they just like see a
lot of work and uh maybe a result in six
months but how to make it more
structured and i would love if you could
kind of suggest how content camel can
help us with that
yeah so
there's a couple things one
you you know it's always start
incrementally and and chip off like the
the chunks right do it in kind of small
increments to make it manageable
one do you have a kind of a documented
understanding of who the audience is
and the buyer like ideally your
prospective buyers like i would assume
you're going after an audience that are
prospective buyers um
yeah
i mean do you have that like documented
because there's a lot of stuff in
people's heads you know on the team
and some of its
knowledge and some of its
guesses right and so are you capturing
what's known and what's a guess
and then
translate that into like focus tests
right like i mentioned sorry to
interrupt for a sec but i just like saw
the greatest persona that i've ever seen
today so their persona was female from
15 to 50
interested in dogs
sure
and they were trying me to solve this
idea that like they're
is anywhere from like 15 to 50.
i mean i would focus
more
if you if because there's probably some
sub segment in there that converts right
always
and it's like it's like okay if you're
that broad to begin with
but are you running the test and really
understanding like what like
who actually signs up like maybe it's
the you know
the people that are engaging with you
are the people that are
twenty to thirty five yeah
so you should reverse engineer whatever
is converting well for your thing
yeah cause like go go to market go to
market is like
you think about it as two sides right
it's
who you want to show up and then who
actually shows up
because like your execution is gonna
dictate
who actually shows up i mean you can go
after
you know the world sort of thing some
sub-segment of that is going to show up
and be activated
right like they're gonna they're gonna
you know so so
no one can tell you this is why this
makes this stuff hard and also why i
think it's technical
and that's kind of brings up my engineer
brain
is because you know because it's like
it is the combination of like the
universe of possibilities
and then how you show up
right
um
yeah so and just focus right like have
your tests have your hypotheses
document your facts
and then focus don't try to do
everything all at once like really try
to
focus
execute on those topics interlink your
content
use it in the market what do people say
about it does it resonate
and grow from there
other interesting because i'm just like
playing with the answers on the last
questions that you provided to us and
i'm kind of comprehending in my head
whether like how much
should the company be invested in
content in seo so we all know that
especially now in q4 like people are
pouring millions into paid but when it
comes to like seo and content people are
like just neglecting these channels no
other ways to describe it but
nearly as much as money is getting spent
there so
what would be reasonable how much of
your budget slash assets should you be
investing in those highly profitable
channels
uh i mean i think i think i think a lot
i mean i think it's you know
the
if you look at the numbers
i mean it depends obviously on what kind
of business you're running like but my
my experience is like b2b sas right so
you're going to be at around
probably 100 to 125
of
revenue
in sales and marketing
right and then if you think about like
what drives
everything forward it's like some form
of content
right if you've got it like if you've
got a direct sales team
what are they fueled by like they're
triggering
prospects
to convert
there it's like hand-to-hand interfacing
like but they're using sales decks they
are
sending follow-ups white papers screen
recordings
you know tutorial videos whatever i mean
that's where content camel comes into
play because we help bundle that up and
make that more personalized
but
you know they're engaging that way
you're investing in that content and
those resources anyway
make sure that
you ca strategically you can go after
and get leverage out of all that stuff
to reuse it across
your on your organic side right
so rather than just writing up like the
technical help article
which is obviously like super helpful
for you know customers and prospects
evaluating whatever make sure that you
understand that like that technical help
article could also be a landing page for
someone that's not a customer yet that's
evaluating your solution
make sure you have a call to action
there you know make sure it like can
speak to those the two audiences the
ones that aren't activated and then the
ones that are
i love it so how exactly can content
camel help us i still don't know that
uh i mean we help teams get organized so
for like it's really interesting like
for the for the marketers
for the marketers out there i think it
you know
regardless of the sales team
it's really interesting because
understanding what content is actually
converting is really tricky
right when you're using hubspot or
marketo or
like
any of the things that like maybe you're
going to do your nurture sequences or
your email blasts or newsletter like
whatever you're doing to communicate
with your audience
um
it's really hard like all you get is
like click through and open rate kind of
stats
you don't actually know you won't get at
this with the new ios change right so
this is getting messier
right you so
what we do is i think of it as like the
last mile like as a marketer i want to
look back and see
what what was used over the last quarter
right what was used over the last six
months and also look at it by funnel so
that i understand like you know all we
did was put all we did was build you
know top of funnel assets
and we barely used any of them or or we
used you know or we said we were going
to do mid funnel assets we did mid
funnel assets and we deployed them that
was great
and so content kimmel by generating like
these sort of smart short links and
allowing you to insert that as a
marketer into your flow you're going to
actually be able to look back and see
what was used
right
and how it converted
exactly and so and so for the sales
people
now you've got the marketers enabling
sales
it's all about like sharing those assets
making it personalized bundling it up
um we allow what people really use it
for on the sales side is to like build a
resource page like the sales person can
literally like
put the resource page together and then
share that out
right so now it's taking the content
that's like all of your content and even
if you just have like 30 assets
you're not going to unload 30 assets
onto a prospect like you're going to
give them three or four
right if like these are the next steps
this is what you need to make your
evaluation
content camel really enables the sales
person to go and put that together
fantastic sounds much better than making
an individual utm link for each person
that you are sending stuff to
yeah yeah
that's amazing awesome so let's let's
wrap this out by maybe just some of your
thoughts of what is going on in 2022 or
how does the future look like any final
messages that you might have for our
students
uh i mean i think i think the content
still dominates right it's the it's the
fuel for all of your go to market
efforts i mean it really is when you
break it down
contents everywhere i mean it's not just
pdfs and presentations like the the
content is your videos it's
you know a twitter post that goes that
good does really well it's you know all
of that you want to track and organize
um so that you can get the most out of
it and deploy it and so
you know are you equipped to kind of
take advantage of that and reuse
everything that you've got
so to make assets to make assets that
you can be reusing in your process again
and again
absolutely and deliver value to your
audience like if you know your audience
you can deliver value to them like
you're smart enough and capable enough
and i'm sure you've got like
like domain expertise that you can bring
and help and help people um
and so it's like the more you get out
there and help people and have that all
documented and reusable the better
you're gonna be
in terms of content which is the queen
or the king yes so that's brilliant love
how you close this one up uh thank you
so much there for taking the time all
the links will be under these lessons um
i i love following you like you have
been such an incredible person in the
ecosystem so good luck with everything
and hope to talk to you next year
thanks
likewise
cheers
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