The beauty of content marketing is the foundational role it plays across all other marketing efforts. B2B SaaS content expert Adrienne Barnes joins us today to tell us all about that and:

• Writing your best hook
• How your customers' language should kick off your keyword strategy
• Reaching out to your greatest enemies for feedback

Show Notes:

5:21 - A quick detour: Prioritizing physical and mental health.

8:45 - Adrienne shares her new writing habits.

11:52 - Writing process for clients vs. personal writing process.

16:43 - Where is it best to place your hook, the beginning or end of the writing piece?

20:28 - Why B2B SaaS.

22:52 - You can better serve others when you deeply understand their needs.

24:42 - Content marketing is multi-tiered: engagement, brand awareness, product marketing.

27:38 - How both "relational analysis keywords" and SEO keywords fit together.

31:39 - Building buyer personas.

35:33 - Strategies to approaching your greatest enemies to get feedback.

37:41 - Content marketing and retention.

42:18 - Create a solution for your customers before they face that given problem.

42:51 - KPIs and measuring success should be driven by your goals.

Links:

Atomic Habits (0:55)

Oura Ring (6:15)

750 Words (10:45)

Buffer (32:08)

Monday (38:42)

Adrienne's Website (45:01)

Adrienne's Twitter (45:07)

Best Buyer Persona

Connect with Adrienne Barnes:

https://twitter.com/adriennenakohl

https://www.adriennenakohl.com/

https://bestbuyerpersona.com/

Growth Machine & Amanda Natividad:

https://growthmachine.com/

https://www.growthmachine.com/contact

https://twitter.com/growthmachine__

https://twitter.com/amandanat

It's hard to start a website from scratch. And one of our clients wanted to break 100,000 monthly visitors as soon as possible. In this 7-minute audio case study, "How a Gig Economy Website Hit 100,000 Monthly Visitors in 6 Months," Amanda Natividad, Head of Marketing for Growth Machine, breaks down how.

If you want to learn even more about this informational site case study, be sure to check out our interview episode with Growth Machine CEO Nora Schlesinger.

Show Notes:

1:05 - We focused on SEO optimization from day one

2:09 - We planned and created a ton of content prior to launch

3:35 - "Scorching the earth" paid off

4:52 - We co-created milestones of success

5:50 - It wasn't "set it and forget it"

6:28 - Outcomes and next steps

Links:

How a Gig Economy Website Hit 100,000 Monthly Visitors in 6 Months

Our podcast episode on this case study (1:01)

The Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Your Blog Up for SEO Success (2:06)

How to Find Great Target Keywords for Your Content (4:48)

Check out our free 7-part series (7:22)

Contact Growth Machine (7:31)

Find us on Twitter:

Amanda: @amandanat

Growth Machine: @growthmachine__

When it comes to organic growth and customer retention, Kristen LaFrance, Head of Resilient Retail for Shopify, is one of the best and brightest. Today, we talk about:

• Nailing all those customer touchpoints
• The one huge advantage brick and mortar stores have over ecommerce
• And what ecommerce touchpoint has a 100% open rate

Show Notes:

1:07 - One channel vs. many in organic growth.

4:38 - How Kristen went from total introvert to all-in podcast host.

7:56 - The story behind the Resilient Retail podcast.

13:17 - The meaning of resilience — told through 2 local businesses' Covid struggles

20:44 - How communities rallied around to save small businesses.

23:25 - What is micro retail and what insights can it provide to ecommerce-only brands?

30:01 - Retention marketing strategies.

32:47 - Subscription businesses. How can you make it more valuable to the customer than just the product they're subscribing for?

36:39 - Now more than ever, consumers are looking for a true experience.

40:05 - Content is the vehicle for customer engagement, and engagement drives retention.

42:20 - The advantage in-store retailers have over ecommerce stores.

45:31 - The advantage ecommerce stores have over in-store retailers who are moving online.

48:06 - It's not fluff: why you need a brand declaration

Links:

Resilient Retail (4:08)

Churn Buster (4:46)

Playing for Keeps Podcast (4:48)

TC Running Company (16:26)

Great Lakes Brewery (18:08)

Shopify (23:32)

Customer Acquisition vs. Retention: A battle for DTC Brand Focus (30:45)

BarkBox (35:07)

BarkBox Instagram (42:17)

Universal Standard (43:34)

Connect with Kristen LaFrance:

https://twitter.com/kdlafrance

https://www.kristenlafrance.com/

Growth Machine & Amanda Natividad:

https://growthmachine.com/

https://www.growthmachine.com/contact

https://twitter.com/growthmachine__

https://twitter.com/amandanat

A style guide isn't just for design or brand teams to ensure consistency. It can apply to other teams too — especially content marketing teams, where there are various creative stakeholders involved. In this 13-minute audio version of our blog post, "From Grammar Tips to Business Goals: How to Make a Content Style Guide," Amanda Natividad, Head of Marketing for Growth Machine, walks you through the most useful elements of a style guide. Plus, you can even use our template as your starting point.

Show Notes:

1:48 - Define best practices for SEO and blog post structure

7:57 - Nip common mistakes in the bud with grammar guidance

9:37 - Be specific about your unique style principles

10:25 - Explain how your content ties to your business goals

12:48 - Use our style guide template

Links:

From Grammar Tips to Business Goals: How to Make a Content Style Guide

How We Hire Great Writers at Growth Machine (0:30)

How We Run Growth Machine (0:33)

Notion (1:15)

How to Find 100+ Great Keywords in Less than 1 Hour (2:48)

Google's reference page (5:35)

Active vs. Passive Voice (6:40)

U.S. literacy rate (6:55)

Hemingway (7:12)

Readable (7:24)

Grammarly (7:43)

Cheat sheet to AP Style (8:37)

How a Gig Economy Website Hit 100,000 Monthly Visitors in 6 Months (9:05)

Find us on Twitter:

Amanda: @amandanat

Growth Machine: @growthmachine__

This isn't a salesy episode. But it kind of is. Growth Machine's Head of Sales & New Client Strategy, Nathan Daly, joins the show to talk about FAQs from our clients and gives advice for how you can vet the agencies you hire. We also talk about how content marketing should fit into your overall business strategy.

Show Notes:

1:04 - Nathan shares how he prepares for client calls.

3:37 - What types of businesses contact Growth Machine?

8:00 - Indicators of a successful prospect call.

9:20 - Guidance for people in vetting agencies.

11:25 - The role content plays in multi-step conversions.

16:27 - Content should never be a "Hail Mary" or a "silver bullet".

19:50 - First-touch, last-touch, and multi-touch attribution.

22:46 - In speed round style, Nathan answers Growth Machine sales FAQs.

28:56 - Amanda asks Nathan the questions he wishes he heard more often.

32:02 - Why investing in high-quality content is better in the long run for your business.

Links:

Ahrefs (1:25)

Moz (1:29)

6 Red Flags to Look for When Hiring a Content or Marketing Agency (9:31)

The Writer Finder (24:59)

How We Hire Great Writers at Growth Machine (27:10)

Contact Growth Machine

Growth Machine:

https://growthmachine.com/

https://www.growthmachine.com/contact

https://twitter.com/growthmachine__

https://twitter.com/amandanat

Here's the problem with most buyer personas: they're too general to actually be useful to individuals on your marketing team. In this 11-minute audio version of our blog post, "Unlocking Great Content: How to Create a Content Marketing Persona," Amanda Natividad, Head of Marketing for Growth Machine, walks you through creating a persona that works best for your content creation efforts.

Show Notes:

2:03 - What You Need in a Content Marketing Persona

6:38 - Create Your Content Marketing Persona

10:05 - Summary: What are the steps in building your content marketing persona?

Links:

Buyer persona (0:37)

Increase conversions (2:22)

Zapier's blog (3:17)

Viewers vs. customers (5:57)

Contact Growth Machine (11:07)

Find us on Twitter:

Amanda: @amandanat

Growth Machine: @growthmachine__

This episode is all about marketing automation and operations. So we talked to the best of the best: Darrell Alfonso, who runs the show at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Show Notes:

1:10 - Darrell shares what marketing looks like in his role at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

3:52 - Honing a skill set in marketing automation.

9:50 - How marketing operations is different across businesses.

15:42 - Automation tools at AWS and other large companies, and how smaller companies can get the most out of their marketing automation and CRM platforms.

19:32 - You don't need the newest tools and tech to personalize your messaging.

24:04 - One thing you need for segmentation and personalization.

25:56 - When one thing is broken in your system, how can you respond?

30:31 - Creating content on LinkedIn.

39:38 - Darrell's advice for staying sharp and growing your marketing skills.

Links:

Amazon Web Services (1:20)

Marketo (2:25)

HubSpot (8:25)

Pardot (8:27)

Asana (15:58)

Zapier (16:00)

Airtable (16:05)

Darrell's Linkedin (30:31)

Connect with Darrell Alfonso:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellalfonso

https://twitter.com/DemandDarrell

Growth Machine & Amanda Natividad:

https://growthmachine.com/

https://www.growthmachine.com/contact

https://twitter.com/growthmachine__

https://twitter.com/amandanat

It all started in a pub.

Last summer, Christina Pashialis organized a casual meetup for UK-based content marketers.

She mobilized the group on Twitter and LinkedIn, and as followup, she set up a Slack community for everyone to stay in touch.

That group evolved into the ContentUK community, which Christina now manages full time.

Today, she talks with us about community engagement and retention, and how content and community can and should feed into each other to create a virtuous cycle.

Show Notes:

0:50 - The understated advantages to webinars over podcasts.

3:56 - How can content support community building?

9:21 - Being specific with your niche.

10:10 - Do things that don't scale: community engagement, retention, and growth.

14:12 - How to track success and engagement metrics in your community.

17:32 - Monetizing your community.

19:55 - Rules and guidelines within the community.

24:06 - Advice on content distribution.

30:29 - The value you get from free and paid communities.

Connect with Christina Pashialis: https://twitter.com/christina_p https://www.christina-pashialis.com/ https://www.contentuk.co/

Growth Machine & Amanda Natividad: https://growthmachine.com/ https://www.growthmachine.com/contact https://twitter.com/growthmachine__ https://twitter.com/amandanat

Full show notes on the Growth Machine Marketing Podcast page (https://www.growthmachine.com/podcast).

Sometimes we see immediate results with our clients. For a direct-to-consumer beverage company, we started ranking for keywords right away. By Month 3, we grew organic traffic to 8,000 monthly visitors — up 4x from 2,000.

And we're able to attribute over $1,000 per month from a single blog post.

In this 8-minute audio version of our case study, "How a D2C Beverage Company Grew 4x in Search Traffic in 3 Months," Amanda Natividad, Head of Marketing for Growth Machine, gives you the full story.

Show Notes:

1:30 Pinpointing a Niche to Unlock SEO Success

4:07 Creating Evergreen Content — in a Timely Way

5:43 Content Marketing as One Piece in the Sales Puzzle

6:40 A Two-Pronged Approach: Bringing in Leads and Converting Them Into Customers

8:00 What Can This Mean for You?

Links:

Original article: How a D2C Beverage Company Grew 4x in Search Traffic in 3 Months

How We Run Growth Machine (1:47)

Creating the Content (1:55)

Critical Authority Threshold (3:00)

Nielson Report (4:22)

Conversion-focused Keywords (7:05)

Contact Growth Machine (8:32)

Find us on Twitter:

Amanda: @amandanat

Growth Machine: @growthmachine__

What does it mean to be a more prolific marketer?

It means creating a marketing flywheel for yourself — so you can work smarter, not harder.

When Corey Haines took on the Head of Growth role at Baremetrics, he spent the first two months digging into customer research. Gaining a deep understanding of his customers meant he didn't have to guess what they wanted. Customer research as the foundation of his marketing flywheel.

In today's episode, Corey also talks about creating Swipe Files, the curated library of detailed marketing examples and membership-based community for marketers.

Good news for you: Growth Machine fans get 50% off Swipe Files memberships! Simply sign up on SwipeFiles.co, reply to the Welcome email mentioning this special offer, and Corey will process your discount.

Show Notes:

6:01 - How can you apply the 'Briefcase Technique' when looking for a marketing job?

12:04 - Customer marketing, retention, and understanding customer pain points.

15:06 - Customer research as a marketing flywheel.

28:06 - The origin story of Swipe Files.

36:13 - Everything is Marketing: Corey's new podcast!

41:18 - Podcast teardown. What are Corey and Amanda's current favorite podcasts?

Connect with Corey Haines:

https://www.coreyhaines.co/

https://www.swipefiles.co/

https://twitter.com/coreyhainesco

Growth Machine & Amanda Natividad:

https://growthmachine.com/

https://www.growthmachine.com/contact

https://twitter.com/growthmachine__

https://twitter.com/amandanat

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Full show notes on the Growth Machine Marketing Podcast page (https://www.growthmachine.com/podcast).

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Get 50% off your Swipe Files membership: Sign up on SwipeFiles.co, reply to the Welcome email mentioning this special offer, and Corey will process your discount.