The 10 Most-Read Articles of 2020
Where to start? This year was…something. Despite everything going on, we still published, and you still read—and got better at data-driven marketing.
Here are the most read articles of the year.
All Things Growth and Marketing
3 Smart, Sustainable Ways to Monitor Your Organic Search Rankings
“Why don’t we rank first for [keyword]”? Every SEO analyst gets this question. And every business investing in SEO uses keyword rankings to judge performance.
Despite the flood of “organic rankings are dead” articles in recent years, I have yet to see a single business or agency that has given up on tracking keywords.
So are all those articles wrong? Or is everyone paying attention to the wrong metric? What makes sense when it comes to rank tracking in 2021 and beyond?
A/B Testing Alternatives for Low-Traffic Websites
In a world where A/B tests are done by over 70% of online businesses, choosing not to follow a data-driven methodology to make informed decisions on website changes might seem unreasonable.
But what if your website doesn’t have enough traffic? Or if your management refuses to justify the costs of A/B testing? At Map My Growth, we often face this scenario.
You can either play a guessing game and hope that your optimization efforts will be successful, or you can use more qualitative (and often budget-friendly) methods to turn that guessing into a safer bet.
Combining All Your Funnel Data into One Sheet
Like many young SaaS startups, we had no shortage of marketing and sales data, but it wasn’t easy to comprehend. The information was there, but it was scattered all over the place.
Some bits and pieces could be found in Google Analytics, while other data was stored in BigQuery and ProfitWell. This arrangement made it challenging to give a quick answer to basic questions on user conversions or to comment on traffic rates and MRR. It wasn’t until we began creating custom dashboards to visualize our data that everything started to click.
YouTube Strategy Lessons from a Channel with 1.6 Million Subscribers
YouTube continues to be one of the best places to see organic growth, and the barrier to entry can be an advantage for companies and brands willing to put in the work. Whereas a blog post needs just a computer to type, a video requires an understanding of lighting, audio, storytelling, editing, and community building.
So, if you’re willing to fight through the learning curve and are patient enough to suffer through low viewership, you can generate significant exposure. In this article, I’ll show you how to turn YouTube into a core part of your marketing efforts.
Lies, Damned Lies, and (Some) Marketing Statistics
One of the most challenging parts of producing high-quality content is finding and sourcing accurate statistics and research. You’ll often go down the sourcing rabbit hole only to discover that a statistic is from 2012 or that the study’s sample size consisted of just a few people—and that’s only after you make an effort to dig deeper.
With many outdated and misleading statistics crowding the first page of Google, how do you know which stats are legitimate? How can you use research to strengthen your content rather than regurgitating the same old stats?
Create a “Content Playground” that’s Fun for Buyers (and Lucrative for You)
I recently faced a familiar scenario: My team wanted to buy a new SaaS tool, so my boss asked me how much budget to request. I had no idea about pricing, so I Googled around and asked for pricing tiers from several vendors in the space.
Unfortunately, I received a handful of all too common, unhelpful responses.
How to Craft (Or Pivot) Your Agency Value Proposition
Back in 2016, I read a book called Sprint by Jake Knapp, founder of Google Ventures. Knapp talks about focusing on only the essential activities for shipping new products and testing new ideas.
As advocated in the book, I felt the idea of using restraint would help me quickly execute on new ideas. And so, the concept for a digital PR service was born. The goal was simple: validate demand or move on.
Optimizing Freemium Conversions Through User Onboarding
Freemium to paid conversion rates for SaaS businesses hover around the 2% mark on a good day. That means that 98% of your free users will stay that way forever—never diving into their wallet to provide you with the MRR that will lower your CAC.
Now, there are many methods you can use to try and increase your conversion rate. You can create a sense of urgency with a well-timed offer (e.g., “Get 50% off your annual plan, this weekend only”). Or you could work on your upselling, in order to close the penny gap. And these are both effectives strategies.
How Do You Know If Your Copy Is Any Good? (My 5 Step Process For Copy Testing)
For the sake of argument, let’s say you know the basics of copywriting.
Blah blah, write a compelling headline, know your audience, be persuasive, find your unique selling proposition, keep copy clean, blah blah blah.
At one point, this advice was great. But from where you’re sitting, “write compelling headlines” isn’t helpful anymore, is it?