Building 7-Figure Companies With SEO

Learn how founders, CEOs, execs and thought leaders use SEO and Content Marketing to grow B2B, SaaS, technology and startup companies from zero to 7 and 8-figure revenue.

How Incapsula Doubles Their Business Year Over Year With SEO, Content Marketing and CRO

Content Marketing and SEO are the main customer acquisition channels that helped Incapsula achieve:

• Market Capitalization: $1.5 billion
• Protects: 5,000,000+ websites
• #1 customer acquisition channel: Content Marketing and SEO
• Year over year growth: 100%

Learn more

How Content Marketing and SEO Helped BuildFire Become a 7-Figure ARR SaaS Company

Content marketing, the first page rankings on Google and SEO helped BuildFire to grow to where they are at right now:

• Revenue: 7 Figure Company
• Customers: 1000, Powering over 10,000+ apps in the App Store
• Main customer acquisition channel: organic SEO
• Organic Traffic: 140,000 visitors/month

Learn more

How SEO Helped Time Doctor Become a 7 Figure SaaS Company and Generate 20,000 Trials Per Month

SEO and content marketing are the only lead generation channels for Time Doctor and helped them to generate:

• Revenue: 7 Figure Company
• Customer Acquisition: 20,000 trials/month, 7000 customers/month
• Main customer acquisition channel: organic SEO
• Revenue growth: 10% MoM

Learn more

A recent Fronetics survey in 2017 found that 62% of B2B buyers relied on the internet as a core resource when searching for new business solutions. A good digital marketing plan links your clients to your offering through social media, blogs, your websites, forums, and mobile communications. Are you doing enough to get your products and brand out there? If not, you can bet your bottom dollar that you’re competitors are.

In this article, we’re highlighting 7 of the most effective digital marketing strategies that software companies need to adapt to maximize their online presence. Let’s start with the most effective one:

1. Invest in SEO

Most tech experts understand the technicalities of putting a usable website together but creating pages that attract good traffic and perform as a refined sales process is a completely different ball game. And it’s a game where the rules are constantly changing. Google releases updates to its search algorithm every day. The best SEO experts will be those with years of experience but are also constantly up to date with the latest changes to Google’s search brain.

The trick with SEO is to focus your efforts on pursuits that’ll yield the greatest gains. The best places to pour most of your long-term attention are:

• Technical and on-page SEO to enhance your website relevance to target keywords
• Creating 4-10 quality backlinks per month
• Content marketing to spread awareness (we’ll get into this more below).
• On-site blog posting at least once a week.

One of the most crucial steps in SEO is getting a first page ranking on search engine results for terms (keywords) that your customers are using to find solutions like yours. Here’s a good list of the best keyword research tools available right now. Once you’ve identified the keywords that are gaining traffic, you can create optimized landing pages, 5-10 quality blogs related to these search phrases, and add links with keywords reach anchor text in your content that point traffic toward your main landing/product pages. This is the main strategy to achieving higher ranks in Google.

2. Paid advertising

In 2016, Google released a report showing us that 28% of online searches convert into a sale. People use Google to search for things they’re ready to buy and paid ads to put your pages at the top of search results. Paid advertising has become the second-best performing lead generation channel for most software and SaaS businesses after organic search and SEO.

Why is it so popular? Paid advertising is scalable, very measurable which makes it predictable, and provides a proven ROI if handled correctly. Google Ads are a great place to start your first campaigns. Besides the standard text ads you’ve no doubt seen at the top of nearly every search you’ve ever conducted, you can also access more advanced retargeting strategies. These features allow you to advertise to users who’ve already visited sites relative to your market or have searched for your specific keywords in the past.

Exploit multiple social channels

Choosing the right social platforms is vital. Here are the world’s largest social networks and what each is good for:

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is highly relevant if your software is primed for the B2B space. Users on LinkedIn are looking for business solutions. A 2017 report by LinkedIn suggested that 80% of B2B marketing leads from social media come through the LinkedIn network.

Facebook and Twitter

These platforms are great for engaging with your target audience and promoting your content. They both offer powerful paid remarketing systems that allow you to grow a following quickly.

YouTube

Youtube has become the second largest search engine after Google so it’s the best place to post video tutorials for your software, webinars, and entertainment content. Video demos and pre roll ad campaign will give people insight into your solution while also actively driving traffic to your website.

4. Outreach and quality link building

Guest blogging is about creating content for other websites that are already receiving large volumes of traffic. You can provide help and guidance on topics within your expertise or offer a new angle on topics that are related to your product. Do it often enough and your posts will expose your brand to large audiences within the software development space. You’ll also have the chance to place a link to your pages from an authority website which is great for SEO.

Landing a guest post on one of the biggest tech blogs out there is a tall order, but there are multiple levels of influential sites you can work with. You can also contribute to different groups on social media platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook. Aim for groups related to the software industry and you could be reaching thousands of potential users that you know are likely to have an interest in your product. This tactic can also be executed by SaaS, software, IT and tech digital marketing consultants who have more experience of doing it the right way. Marketers are facing rising expectations for personalisation and are expected to use at least 18 data sources when building their brand. It can help your audience gain additional context to your work if you include a diverse range of sources when building links. This increases your brand’s credibility and makes your data more authoritative.

5. Create tutorials and guides

Creating content that aims to help people solve problems is a powerful weapon that software development experts can certainly jump on. “How to” tutorials and best practice guides are a must if your solution is complex or tackles a unique problem. Companies look to invest in new software products because they want a means to step ahead of the competition. For companies without in-house development capacity, software development outsourcing offers a way to access specialized expertise while maintaining focus on core business objectives. Whether building from scratch or scaling existing products, partnering with external development teams like Netguru can accelerate time to market. The more you try to position your brand as the answer to their concerns, the more signups you’ll see.

Not only is helpful content great for exposure and awareness, it’s a great way to collect the email addresses of leads. Email marketing is the perfect way to develop deeper connections with your customers. Mailchimp is the largest email marketing platform in the world so it’s a great place to launch your first nurture campaign. You can also check Mailchimp alternatives if you are looking for other features or more affordable pricing.

6. Differentiate your software to others using comparison guides

Developed a product that has a leg up on an existing market leader? Create a webpage comparing your solution to your competitors and optimize that page to rank on the first page of Google and attract search traffic for your competitors brand searches. You’ll feed off the mass of users searching for their brand while exposing the advantages of your new solution as an alternative.

Avoid being too pushy and aim to provide a balanced review to help the reader evaluate the comparison with clarity. Make it obvious that you’re overly biased and you’ll turn people away quickly.

7. Build impactful reviews

You can solicit independent third-party review sites as well as work to increase the level of reviews you gain from users. Search for “software directories” or review sites and add and verify your profile there. Websites with a good number of user reviews will usually rank on the first page of Google because of their affiliation with these giant software companies and their domain authority.. These sites will provide good exposure and increase the credibility of your offering.

Use your content marketing channels to build reviews from real customers. Leverage your social media accounts to actively t ask happy users to review you on certain platforms. You should also be doing this with outbound methods. For example, using your CRM database to build a targeted list of customers, then sending a tailored batch of emails asking your users to leave you a review. Offer incentives like prize draws to increase the number of recipients that bite while ensuring the reviews remain unbiased.

That’s our 7! We hope this list of effective digital marketing strategies for software companies has helped spark a few light bulbs for you. It’s now more important than ever for software companies of all sizes to stand out by upping their digital efforts or working with growth marketing agencies like Northpeak. Knowing your options is half the battle, the other half is actively chasing the ideas on this list!

The post 7 Effective Digital Marketing Strategies for Software Companies appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

However, email marketing is also a highly competitive field. The average person can receive hundreds of emails in a single day, so a proper execution is necessary to capture your audience’s attention.

Fortunately, there are various email marketing tools that can help you in planning, executing, and automating your email marketing, where you’ll need all the advantages you can get.

Yet, with all the different options available, it can be confusing to choose the right email marketing tool with the right price and the features you actually need.

With that being said, here are our recommendations for  5 of the best email marketing tools, a brief overview about the, and their pros and cons.

Top 5 Email Marketing Tools

1. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the oldest email marketing tools ever invented, and is still the industry leader even with the arrival of newer competitors with new technologies.

One of the key reasons for that, is the fact that Mailchimp was one of the very first user-friendly email scheduler, offering various templates and a visual builder to build your email with a drag and drop approach.

So, the key highlight of MailChimp is its ease of use. However, Mailchimp also offers a fairly well-rounded set of features to cover all your email marketing needs.

Also, MailChimp offers great integration with hundreds of software and applications, from popular ones like WordPress, WordPress alternatives and niche CMSs. It’s very easy to integrate MailChimp with your existing environment.

Pros:

• Very easy to use template editor
• Generous free plan allowing 10,000 emails and 2,000 subscribers
• Great third-party integration with hundreds of platforms
• Great reporting functions
• Great lead capture features
• A/B testing

Cons:

• Hard to program automation compared to its competitors
• Strict policy prohibiting affiliate marketing

Pricing: A free version, enough for basic email marketing needs. The cheapest Essentials plan is $9.99/month, and the Premium plan is $299 per month

You can also check Mailchimp alternatives.

2. ActiveCampaign Lite

ActiveCampaign is a full-fledged digital marketing tools suite, offering various sales and marketing automation tools.

ActiveCampaign Lite, however, is solely focused on email marketing, with various features like setting up autoresponder, analytics report, great user segmentation features, and many more.

A key advantage of the ActiveCampaign Lite, however, is the ability to send unlimited number of emails with a very competitive price, at just $9/month, you even get quite advanced automation features in its basic plan.

You might also want to consider subscribing for ActiveCampaign’s full Enterprise plan, which offers some of the best digital marketing tools available today.

Pros:

• Cost-effective as a well-rounded sales and marketing automation tools suite
• The Lite plan, focused on email marketing only, is also very affordable where you get unlimited number of emails sent for just $9/month
• Great, easy to use personalization features

Cons:

• Fairly obsolete user interface compared to newer competitors
• Slow customer service

Pricing: Lite version for email marketing is $9/month (unlimited emails), Enterprise plan is $229/month. No free plan available.

3. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is quite similar to MailChimp in many different ways, but mainly because it also offers an easy to use visual builder with a drag and drop approach.

However, Campaign Monitor offers better email automation features, with a more user-friendly email automation workflow and more advanced automation features.

On the other hand, Campaign Monitor is slightly lacking in its lead capturing features. Again, especially when compared to MailChimp.

Pros:

• Cost-effective, slightly more affordable than MailChimp with all of the offered plans
• Easy to use, user-friendly visual builder
• Great and easy to use automated campaign builder
• Great reporting and analytics tools, you can easily evaluate your campaign and develop your strategy

Cons:

• No free plan offered, the $9/month plan is comparable to MailChimp’s free plan with slightly more features
• Pretty steep learning curve for the advanced functions, although initially easy to use

Pricing: The most affordable plan is $9/month, and the most expensive plan is $149/month. You also have the option to pay per campaign or a custom plan based on your needs.

4. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is an email marketing tool focused on ecommerce, offering several unique features that are useful for ecommerce-specific needs. For example, the feature to do recipient analytics, opt-in forms designers, and landing page builder, among others.

ConvertKit probably offers the richest feature set among the other tools in this list, especially focused on conversion (hence the name ConvertKit). A well-rounded tool for any email marketing needs, even when you are not planning to do ecommerce.

However, it’s quite expensive with its subscriber-based pricing model. If you do have the budget, ConvertKit is a very good choice especially if you want to boost your conversion.

Pros:

• Great set of features, especially for conversion-focused features designed for ecommerce needs
• Easy to use marketing automation features
• Intuitive user interface with great visual builder
• Advanced marketing automation features
• Website builder as an extra feature

Cons:

• The cheapest plan is relatively expensive, and limited to 1,000 subscribers
• Steep learning curve with a very deep, advanced features
• Not many templates

Pricing: Starts from $29/month (1,000 subscribers), the most expensive plan is $79/month (5,000 subscribers), custom plan available, no free plan.

5. Mailjet

Similar to MailChimp and Campaign Monitor, Mailjet is an email marketing software that especially focuses on simplicity and intuitiveness with its drag-and-drop email builder.

Mailjet does offer relatively basic email automation but is sufficient for most email marketers. However, there are two interesting selling points that might make Mailjet the best choice for you: just like MailChimp, the free plan is fairly useful. Second, it’s very easy to integrate an SMTP server with Mailjet.

SMTP can be useful if you want to improve the speed of email delivery, so it’s a valuable feature to have if you are going to implement time-sensitive email campaigns (i.e. limited offer).

Pros:

• Easy, reliable SMTP server
• Very easy to use, intuitive builder
• Free basic version, sufficient for basic email marketing
• The paid plan is also affordable at just $8.69/month
• Can integrate sign-up forms within the email

Cons:

• Customer service not very responsive
• Basic overall features compared to others in this list

Pricing: free version available, the most affordable plan is $8.69 per month, and the premium plan is $18.6/month.

5. Respona

Respona is a powerful email marketing and outreach tool designed to streamline your communications and improve your overall marketing strategy.

Originally built for link builders, Respona has evolved into an all-in-one email marketing platform that combines user-friendly features with advanced automation and data-driven insights.

Respona stands out due to its integration of data credits, which allow you to enrich your email campaigns with up-to-date contact information and AI personalization.

With a robust set of features that cover email marketing, lead generation, and automated workflows, Respona is a versatile tool for businesses of all sizes, from in-house teams to large enterprises.

Pros:

• Comprehensive set of email marketing and outreach features
• Data credit system for finding and verifying contact information
• Unlimited email sends, campaigns, and users for unrestrained marketing efforts
• Priority support and strategic sessions in higher plans
• Enhanced security and dedicated success manager for enterprise needs
• Easy-to-use interface with advanced automation capabilities

Cons:

• Higher price point compared to some competitors
• Significant learning curve for teams new to advanced email marketing tools
• Lacks a free tier beyond the 14-day free trial for more extensive hands-on experience

Pricing:

• Pro: $399/month. Includes 5 email accounts, 300,000 data credits/year, unlimited emails sent, unlimited campaigns, unlimited users, and 50k active contacts.
• Unlimited: $799/month. Offers everything in Pro, plus unlimited email accounts, 600,000 data credits/year, white-glove onboarding, three strategy sessions, priority support, and 100k active contacts.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing. Includes everything in Unlimited, plus enhanced security, a dedicated success manager, advanced permissions, and a service level agreement (SLA).

Conclusion

Each of the 5 email marketing tools we have discussed above offers their own unique selling points, and each has their disadvantages.

It’s important to first figure out your email marketing goals, and choose the right tool that can help you in achieving that goal(s), according to your needs and budget.

The post Top 5 Email Marketing Tools For Your Business Growth appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.