Move The Needle - Real strategies. Data-driven growth. B2B results that move the needle.

Learn how Casey Hill, Head of Growth at Bonjorno, used personalized video to 2x trial conversion signup.

Learn how Dee Acosta sourced 50% of all his deals via outbound, and his approach to differentiation, cold outreach, and more.

Learn how Nick Bennett drove 83 G2 reviews in 1 quarter, in order to drive signups, improve retention, build social proof and tons more.

Learn how Rand Fishkin and the team at SparkToro thinks about the value of so-called "vanity metrics", and uses zero-click content to build their social following and drive signups from social.

Databox is an easy-to-use Analytics Platform for growing businesses. We make it easy to centralize and view your entire company's marketing, sales, revenue, and product data in one place, so you always know how you're performing. Learn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreHow They Moved The Needle1. They boosted retention by offering a discount for the next year, and the ability to pause (vs cancel) a plan.When travel screeched to a halt and churn started to ramp up, the CEO and his team focused on retention. They prevented it in two ways:If things were going OK for customers, they could upgrade for another year at a discount. If they weren’t, rather than canceling and losing data, they could simply pause their account.This also showed customers that the company had there back, and would support them.2. She updated messaging and value props the client led with, based on customer research.The old messaging focused on value props around reliability and value. Asia did customer research to learn the “job” customers were hiring the product for, and what they valued most. In her research, she found that these value props didn’t resonate with customers like they did before.The market had changed, and so did the needs and beliefs of the customers. She found customers still wanted reliability, but they really valued things like:Innovative featuresThings they hadn’t considered beforeHelp tackling other problems their businesses facedAfter she completed the customer research, Asia crafted new value props, centered around how the product would:Work with customersHelp them growBe in their corner your cornerRelease innovative features3. She updated the Client’s Google ads campaigns to better reflect the new messaging and value props.4. She completely redesigned the Client’s website.In her research, she found customers weren’t choosing the Client because the “marketing wasn’t as pretty”. One respondent actually said, “you guys didn’t look as cool as the other options.” Other competitors looked newer, more professional looking, or more modern. It was also hard to tell the difference between the Client’s site with all the lookalike competitors, touting the same solution.Through research, they found they were often the last product people tried. And because users would try 2 or 3 competitors first, they’d often end up signing up with them instead. Asia wanted them to stand out, resonate, and be the first product they tried.So they overhauled the design, opting for a darker, bolder theme to stand out from the competition (who mostly did light, lookalike designs). This had a huge psychological effect on buyers. The Client stood out, and customers would remember the site and experience better.4. They updated the website with new messaging that showcased the new value props they discovered.The old messaging centered around being reliable, easy to use, and convenient to connect everything you needed. The new messaging centered around being a platform that would help you grow, innovate new features to solve ongoing problems, had flexible pricing, and would always be in your corner. This included updating the signup flow, pricing page, and messaging on the homepage.5. They hired an SEO agency to build organic traffic.Asia had helped build a foundation for content, so when the SEO agency came in, they started increasing 10% month over month.6. They overhauled the onboarding emails.They went through several versions of onboarding emails, with the goal of getting the customer to value realization as fast as possible.7. They helped the Client improve the signup flow to reduce friction and get users to value realization faster.Asia identified and changed steps in the signup process that were causing friction, and contributing to a lack of activation.ResultsThey increased MRR by 10x in just 2 years, organic traffic by 10-30% month over month, and doubled website conversions (largely due to the overhaul in their design and messaging).

Databox is an easy-to-use Analytics Platform for growing businesses. We make it easy to centralize and view your entire company's marketing, sales, revenue, and product data in one place, so you always know how you're performing. Learn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreInsights Tim Shared1. If you aim at improving a metric, your strategy will be optimized to hit that metric. And that might not be in the best interest of your company.This often happens in marketing. Teams will hit their KPI, even if the work isn’t driving more important results down-funnel. For example, Tim said if he were charged with driving more leads ( = email addresses), CTAs and email signup forms would be everywhere across their content. He’d succeed in driving more leads and hit his KPI, but would compromise good user experience and brand in the process.2. Have values you won’t compromise on, even to hit the most important metrics.Revenue is one of the few metrics they do track and work to grow. But even that, they won’t compromise their values for. For example, they don’t believe in retargeting. They don’t want to invade users’ privacy and follow people around the web just because they’ve visited the site. Tim knows they’re leaving money on the table by refusing to do it, but it’s more important to maintain their values.3. When you lack clear data, use a “common sense” approach to marketing by observing human behavior.In the early days, Tim went to a conference wearing an Ahrefs t-shirt. A customer introduced himself, and then took Tim around talking up Ahrefs to their friends. Almost every time he introduced Tim to someone, he’d say: “their English isn’t the best, and their copy is a little rough… but they have the best data in the industry.” Tim realized the main message he needed to lead with: Ahrefs was the best because they had the best data. He came home, and immediately updated the messaging on the homepage to center around them having the best data in the industry.4. Understand your content has ripple effects you won’t be able to measure.A piece of content that gets traffic, talks about your product, and is helpful to readers, can’t not bring value. You often won’t see it drive immediate, direct signups. But behind the scenes, people are referencing it, sharing it, and coming back to it, and all of that is driving increased brand awareness, affinity, and trust. Most great content has “ripple effects” which are hard (or impossible) to measure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable.5. Much of the value of brand marketing is the “Exposure Effect”.The more people see/hear you > the more they “know” you > the more they trust you.6. Use content to reduce strain on customer support.Ahrefs serves tens of thousands of paying users, and hundreds of thousands of free ones, with a handful of support staff. How? Content.Obviously, they have a great, easy-to-use product. But they’ve also invested heavily in creating educational content (via YouTube, articles, etc.). These have worked so well, they’re able to handle 100’s of thousands of users with a dozen or so support staff.7. Measure things that will help you make actionable decisions.Many teams measure things just because they can be measured. But when looking at the data, you should ask yourself: “so what?” If a number dips, or spikes, so what? What action will it drive?8. If you decided to invest time and money in creating new features or content, you should put time and money into promoting them.“If you cannot justify spending money to promote your content, how did you justify your effort to create it in the first place?” Tim says many companies invest lots of time and money in creating new content, but then never pay to extend its reach. Often, for just a fraction more than what they invested in creating it, they could amplify it to the right audience.9. Use the “Business Potential” metric to help you determine what content you should create, and prioritize.Business Potential = a score from 0 to 3, which gauges how easy it would be to promote a product, naturally & helpfully, in a piece of content. Here’s how to use it…3 = your product is an irreplaceable solution to solve this problem (topic of “backlink research” for Ahrefs)2 = your product helps a lot, but isn’t essential1 = you can mention the product, but it’s not related to solving the issue0 = no way to squeeze in a mentionFor every idea in your “potential content” list, grade each one from 0 to 3.10. Make sure your content creators are excited to tackle a topic.Tim doesn’t want to force topics on writers. Most anyone can tackle a given topic, but they have to be genuinely excited to write about it. This results in better content, and happier creators.11. Embrace holistic keyword research.For Ahrefs, every piece of content still starts with keyword research to ensure they’re writing about a topic people engage with. But keyword research can mean a lot more than using a tool:Holistic keyword research includes:talking to peerslistening to sales callsreading questions on socialscanning RedditResultsWhile Ahrefs may not measure a bunch of metrics or KPIs, there’s one they do measure: revenue. They just crossed $100m in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

Databox is an easy-to-use Analytics Platform for growing businesses. We make it easy to centralize and view your entire company's marketing, sales, revenue, and product data in one place, so you always know how you're performing. Learn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreAt the time, Gremlin had raised a great Series B and was growing significantly. They had product-market fit, and were looking to scale. Their goal was to make the sales and marketing funnel more efficient, so they decided to test an account-based (ABM) approach.Where many companies go wrong here, is only focusing on target account engagement: blasting targeted accounts with ads, and seeing “impressions” going up. But Peter wanted a metric that would be a leading indicator that what they were doing would pay off. So he and the team designed an engagement score metric that combined quantity and quality.The metric produced a cumulative total “engagement score” based on all contacts’ lead score, impressions, and engagement. For example, they could have 1 contact at Nike who loved them (browsed the site, downloaded content, etc.) w/ a lead score of 100. So their avg. lead score per contact and total “engagement score” would be 100. But if they attracted 9 other contacts from Nike who didn’t engage with their content, and had a lower lead score, it would bring the overall engagement score down.This provided a number of benefits. If they had content that played well among other highly engaged accounts, and it wasn’t playing well for a new target, they’d know that account might be less likely to close. Or if they found an account that had lower cumulative lead scores, they might pump the brakes and serve up more top-of-funnel content and slow down their approach.And it didn’t merely serve as an early performance indicator. They could also use their cumulative engagement score to test different channels or content that might drive all target accounts higher across the board.ResultsBy using a more holistic, custom metric to measure their ABM strategy, they saw a 50% increase in engagement among targeted accounts in just 1 quarter. They also added a few points to the marketing qualified lead (MQL) to qualified opportunity rate.

Databox is an easy-to-use Analytics Platform for growing businesses. We make it easy to centralize and view your entire company's marketing, sales, revenue, and product data in one place, so you always know how you're performing. Learn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreHow They Improved It1. He hosts a weekly meeting with sales to review conversion and lead health.AJ hosts a weekly meeting with sales to get continual feedback on lead quality, and to learn how many marketing-driven leads are either becoming opportunities or leading to pipeline revenue.This helps him:make sure marketing and sales are rowing in the same directionrefine their ICP over timeunderstand which campaigns are most effective, in real timeFor example:Sales may share that prospective healthcare clients will be facing open enrollment in a few months, and need to scale their SDR team. So AJ might decide to run a special seasonal campaign to support sales efforts.2. He made a big investment in building brand trust and awareness.AJ’s goal is establishing demandDrive’s name in the outsourced sales space, growing awareness and trust through valuable content. This contributed to a 3x increase in overall inbound leads: people that have consumed their content, but haven’t said they’d like to learn more about the service/offering (yet). They’d learn about demandDrive, but weren’t ready to learn more.3. Created a marketing automation system to nurture inbound leads, and help more of them convert to MQLs.As inbound grew, AJ realized he had a big opportunity to keep these people engaged until they decided they wanted to learn more or might be a good fit for demandDrive. Since it was primarily valuable, organic content that grabbed the prospect’s attention in the first place, AJ served them up more of the same in the nurture phase.This meant that most of the messaging they’d receive from demandDrive was just valuable content. If a prospect consumed a large amount of content (e.g. read blog posts dozens of times), or raised their hand and said they wanted to learn more, they’d be moved into the MQL stage.4. He crafted more effective sales-driven emails by studying the most effective outbound messages.Once in the “nurture” stage, prospects were mostly sent valuable content. But once in a while, they’d receive a more sales-oriented message. To make the sales-oriented messaging more impactful, AJ would find messaging that was resonating well in outbound campaigns, and adapt talking points to fit his needs in marketing.5. He started manually evaluating lead quality, and handpicking the best leads to make sure they went to sales more quickly.He’ll send those directly to sales because they look like companies that have had a lot of success with demandDrive in the past.6. He started ungating most content.AJ found that the gated content just didn’t perform better than any ungated content they’d release, so they’ve been moving to ungate just about everything. This likely contributed to the 3x increase in inbound leads they’ve seen.7. He baked in more CTAs to talk to sales, or opt-in to the marketing automation system in content.If a reader wanted to learn more, they could either opt in and join the nurture campaign (marketing automation), or get in touch directly with the sales team.ResultsAs a result, they grew Inbound Lead to MQL conversion from 40% to 60%, and MQL to SAO conversion from 52% to 73%. And in May 2022, they did more business (total new logos & revenue) than all of 2020 combined.

Databox is an easy-to-use Analytics Platform for growing businesses. We make it easy to centralize and view your entire company's marketing, sales, revenue, and product data in one place, so you always know how you're performing. Learn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreGoing All-In on OrganicIn the first year, Emilia was the only marketer at Userpilot.They tested just about every channel to try and get early traction: paid, webinars, events… they tried everything. But she was spread thin, and attribution was hard with so many experiments. The company was growing, but she needed to focus.She joined our very own John Bonini’s content marketing community, where she got advice to just focus on what she knew was working. And what was working, was organic traffic. It drove 70% of signups at the time. So in 2021, they went all-in on organic content.How They Improved ItShe set a goal of 10x’ing article output: from publishing 4 articles per month to 40. After setting the goal, it was time to define topics and the scope of the content. By this time, they had 2 years’ worth of content, so she began to identify what was working, and what wasn’t.She divided their blog topics into content clusters, and then assigned those clusters as “bottom of funnel” (BOFU), “middle of funnel” (MOFU), or “top of funnel” (TOFU) content. She also focused on what Grow And Convert calls “Pain Point SEO”: focusing their content around the pains their customers felt, and the solutions the product provided.To help identify topics, they interviewed customers, found derivative keywords, performed a content gap analysis, and identified topics that relevant Slack groups were talking about.Then came the hard part: finding writers. They initially tried to use freelancers to handle research, writing, and a tie-in to the product. But they found it incredibly difficult since the product was fairly sophisticated.So Emilia started looking for unicorn content writers: People who wanted to work in-house, were familiar with the industry, had experience working with product teams, and were amazing writers. She eventually found them and built a small team.But after a number of months, just about all of them had left, because they wanted to grow beyond the role. They were talented, smart, and ambitious, and over time – they became burned out with only writing SEO-focused articles. Emilia concluded she needed to build a better system rather than relying on better people. This meant going back to freelancers, but this time with a new system.She built a small internal team of content editors. These in-house pros would create detailed briefs, which included the outline (links, headings, subheadings, images) and talking points (what to say, in what order, goes in each paragraph), along with additional resources. This way, freelance writers could just focus on writing, and the in-house pros could focus more on high-level strategy, and lean into their product expertise. This system allowed them to increase output to 50 high-quality articles per month.Each main topic would become a “milestone” in Asana, and each blog post would become a task. When each contributor was finished with their stage of work, they’d pass each piece of content “down” to the next stakeholder, using a kanban board. She also focused on building the most high-quality links she could, until they reached a domain authority (DA) of 70.At that point, they performed tests and found that after 15~ links to any single piece of content, there were no significant increases in search engine rankings. So rather than spend more time and money on link building to the highest domain authority sites they could find, they focused more on links from domain-relevant sites. She also started measuring which keywords were driving the most conversions.She created a few dashboards. One listed all articles and was sorted by the highest conversion rate. Another showed each article and the top keywords that the article was ranking for. And another which consolidated data of “top converting keywords”. These visuals also gave them a better of why signups might be spiking or dipping any given month.Finally, she compared how BOFU content compared to TOFU content when it came to driving conversions and found something interesting. She found if a user consumed one BOFU article and converted, they didn’t retain as well as the ones who would start at TOFU content and consume multiple pieces of content. Visitors who started on 1 piece of BOFU content typically only had 1 use case or pain they wanted to solve. This meant it was harder for them to see why they should pay a premium to buy into a platform that offers a myriad of tools to solve a myriad of problems.On the flip side, if a visitor consumed multiple pieces of MOFU or TOFU content, and converted later, they had a higher retention rate. This indicated they were likely looking to solve many problems and could make full use of the entire product.ResultsAbout 18 months after making the commitment to go all-in on high-quality, organic content, they saw exponential growth. Organic visitors grew by 299%, and conversions from organic search went up by 59%.

Databox is an easy-to-use Analytics Platform for growing businesses. We make it easy to centralize and view your entire company's marketing, sales, revenue, and product data in one place, so you always know how you're performing. Learn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreWhy a Virtual Event?The event is called IG Summit. The website is beautiful (it actually won some awards) – https://igsummit.com/. But what made Anna believe this was a bet worth making? Or put differently, how could you know if a play like this would work for you?It started by analyzing their Net Revenue Retention (NRR). They found that users who signs up via educational channels or who were looking to solve problems related to Facebook or Instagram retained at a higher rate.They also stood to get the most value out of the product. So when they set a goal to drive new signups and paid accounts, they knew that using educational content around Facebook or Instagram would be successful.Besides that, they had experience with doing events in the past, though nothing to the size they were about to aim for. May 2021 they launched Instagram Automation, and were working on a go-to-market strategy to promote it. The plan was to use paid ads. But for reasons outside their control, they didn’t perform well (like the rollout for Facebook Automation had), so they needed a new plan.So Anna and the team made a quick pivot, and a big bet. The goal was to put on the biggest virtual IG summit in the world, securing 25k registrants, and 1k new paid accounts. In the end, they ended up surpassing these goals.How They Improved It1. They figured out what content resonated with their ideal customer persona (ICP) and tried to create the best content possible for that audience.They surveyed their Facebook community of existing customers, to learn what content would be the most valuable. Then they performed research to know what topics were trending, what the market was interested in learning, and what existing content was already out there.From there, they defined 3 “levels” of content the summit would include:High-level: over-arching business lessonsMid-level: more practical applicationBottom level: ManyChat experts showing how to grow business with ManyChat toolsFinally, they set the niche categories they thought would resonate best, and then found speakers who could best speak to those topics. Each speaker had the freedom to formulate their talk however they wanted but was asked to stay within the topic range they had been given.2. They asked all the speakers promote the event.They encouraged all the speakers to promote the event (though not all did), and every time a speaker joined they made a series of content they’d promote across various channels.3. They used existing, and new influencers to help promote.They had some influencers they worked with before the summit, who they partnered with to promote the product. But they also brought in new ones who they hired to specifically promote the event. Generally, they found that the existing influencers (who had already promoted the product to their audience) performed better. They also found that all the influencers got better engagement by promoting the educational event, over the product directly.4. They ran paid ads, and honed in one which drove $3 registrants 🤯Initially, they ran ads on Facebook, Instagram, and paid search. They quickly found FB ads that used the native lead form vastly outperformed the others.How well? $3 for every registrant.The results were so good, Anna had the team check for errors – thinking they might be spam emails. But after analyzing the emails against signups from other channels, along with the summit email open and readthrough rates, they found the results were truly that good. But these results didn’t come easily. They involved lots of great design and creative, and lots of tests.They also continually changed up the ads with new content every time they landed a new speaker.5. They heavily nurtured the list of registrants.They maintained constant communication with registrants the entire time leading up to the event. If they didn’t, Anna doesn’t think they would’ve seen the same results. Each registrant was sent a series of emails leading up to summit.And if they ended up registering with the product right away (as a result of seeing the marketing or ads), they were sent various In-app messages about the summit. And throughout the summit, they sent a regular volume of relevant messages to the attendees. This included messaging which emphasized, “here’s the content you’re about to consume, if you sign up for the product, you’ll be able to better take action on what you learn.”6. They tracked registrations all the way through to product signups.They had tracking in place (which users could opt out of) If that was the case, they had the registration email they could match to an account in signup. Influencers had their own campaign funnel, so they could track those referrals separately. They used an attribution model where they attributed 40% to the first touch, 40% to the last touch, and 20% to the channel they interacted with in betweenResults26k registrants and 3,500 actually paying accounts (not free trials) – 91% of whom were new to ManyChat.