Hear me out – a company's culture is not something you put on a piece of paper, it is something that you curate and grow. So, naturally, it depends on the kind of people you hire. For growing companies, it means staying close to the OG team and carrying that ideology and philosophy through. Of course, sometimes the original team is not healthy and you set yourself up for failure. In that case, strategically adding leaders who can bring in the ideology needed (not the one you want) and then scaling up. This specific challenge is very common in agencies and companies that are maneuvering the 100-member milestone.

Nevertheless, the new leaders would not essentially land in with a culture and have everyone absorb it. The point here is to ‘cultivate’ the best aspects of the team and navigate the growth of the culture in the direction it needs to be.

The core idea here is that culture is curated, cultivated, and grown – it stems from the people you have and that is always a mix of people, and their personalities. In order to do that, you need to have an environment that encourages and celebrates moments of honesty, truth, expression, and opinion. A safe space for everyone to be their best and their worst.

This, of course, means a loud floor, arguments, and discussions on seemingly unnecessary things, and a tendency to clash almost every week between people of opinion. That is the chaos which is very much foundational to harnessing the best abilities of every team member.

This is specially easier in technology companies, where progress can always be judged from a logical perspective, so you are never in danger of affecting the end result. The focus can then be put on how you get there instead. The strongest feature of letting the waves ride is that it is a repeatable and predictable pattern, which can be measured. You can always have a clear understanding of timelines, possible issues, and the ways to solve them, when you clearly know how your team responds.

This does not mean that the ideology fails outside of technology companies – in creative agencies, for example, chaos gives birth to creativity which is otherwise siloed and sometimes even buried under policies about “how to do your job”. Systematic industries like production would not benefit from this, but any team that strives on innovation needs to have this dynamic of freedom among their people.

There are some drawbacks to this approach as well, but nothing that cannot be handled. One common trend that I have seen many times is that people tend to exhibit the toxic side of their behavior too often and others start feeling a lack of ‘professionalism’ – which is, in my opinion, an oversimplification. To successfully carry this culture, leadership at the grass-root level needs to have the buy-in and be able to handle tough situations amicably.

Another problem that is very common is being able to manage a wide spectrum of personalities. This means that company policies have to be carefully designed in a way to cater to everyone and that sometimes has a negative impact on the bottom line. The only argument that should suffice here is that the overall uplift in productivity and progress far outweighs this negative impact.

The human mind is designed to work, and designed to enjoy it. Unfortunately, most of our work-related ideologies have come from systematic labor management and that is not a healthy approach in managing dynamic people in innovative jobs. Loyalty, belonging, and a strong work ethic can only be achieved when the person working feels comfortable, at-home, and be able to fully express themselves in their work and around it.

The word interview comes from French and Latin origins, and it means to ‘see between’ and ‘see each other’. I don’t know who decided it is going to be a monolithic questionnaire which needs to be designed to penetrate the soul of a job applicant, but whoever it was clearly had the ego of a potato.

Cursing aside, we have started to think of interviews as screening sessions, and that ought to, almost always, bring out the gaps in someone, more than it shows you their qualities. You should definitely use such methods, if your intention is to hire them in a company or a team that is consistently under pressure and you have a cut-throat culture. If you are one of those, or want to be like that, now is a good time to close this tab (Ctrl/Cmd + W – no need to thank me).

Alright, now that we have gotten rid of the wicked, let me share the blueprint to a couple of interviewing techniques and tips that I have found to be useful. All of these are built on the premise that you want to have a meaningful and insightful conversation with the person in front of you and get to know their best qualities, both as a person, and as a professional. With the assumption that the work culture is going to continue this experience for the job applicant, if they are hired.

Start Casually

Set the tone straight – nobody in their right mind (specially in other-world countries like Pakistan) are expecting anything other than a grilling session. You have to loosen them up. Talk about their hobbies, their family, a book that they love, anything but work. Spend a good couple of minutes getting them to share things about who they are and try to find common ground between yourself, the kind of people you already have, and the applicant.

This immediately makes them comfortable, and in turn, tells them that this interview is going to be easier than they thought it would be. This also lowers their walls and makes it less likely that they filter their answers in trying to impress you. Honesty is what you are looking for.

The Journey

A big part of someone’s behavior, personality, and skills, come from early education and sometimes even childhood. Walk with them and understand why they chose the path that they chose. This can be something as simple as ‘why did you choose to major in this’ and as detailed as ‘talk to me about the subject you loved the most and how you did with it in college/school/home’.

Of course, if someone is a drop-out or a down-right un-formally-educated person like myself, you would have to tweak your questions. Be respectful, their exposure to a university or a school tells you about their background but not more than how they reacted to their overall circumstances, and that is what you should be interested in.

Unsettle Them

I know, defeats the purpose, right? It does not. The sole reason why I like to switch subjects between every 1-2 questions is because I want the applicant to remain open and honest and not form constructs in their mind about where the conversation will go next. A surprising question not only give you a brutally honest response, it also makes it feel more like a casual conversation.

Of course, the key here is to make the connection between the two subjects you jump but it doesn’t have to be too obvious. For example, after asking why the candidate chose ‘software engineering’ as their major, and getting a response like ‘I did it because I was good at logic and I could see that I can have a successful career in it’, you can safely expect them to think that the next question can be about their current state of mind with it, or about building logic. Instead, you could ask them about their decision-making and if it has evolved from then to now. A subtle connection, and a highly valuable question, that you could not have asked straight.

Personal Lives

A person is not just a professional – nobody in their right mind can leave their emotional baggage at home and come to work with a singular focus. It is inhumane to expect that, and it also inhumane to try and separate the two parts of a person. It is very important to understand what drives a person to go and work. And it is always more than a bunch of things.

For example, people who would say that I work because I like it, haven’t really thought about it. Do not settle for less detail, ask them to dive deeper into their motivations. We don’t have Maslow’s pyramid tattooed inside our frontal lobe, human beings are complex and they need multiple factors to form loyalty with their work. It is important that you, your team, and your company has a good amount of overlap with this person for a long-term relationship.

Open Up

The most important ingredient to all of this is a two-way dialogue. Open up yourself – if they share something about their life, work, education, previous experiences, try and give them something back as well. It should never, I repeat, NEVER feel like an interview. Anyone is 100% more likely to be honest and open with you if you do the same with them.

Ask them to ask you questions, and not about the company and how many sick leaves we allow, we have documents for that. People are hesitant in asking too many questions but it is important for them to have the same level of clarity as you to make a sound decision. At the end of the day, if they do not have enough buy-in, they will eventually quit.

Benefit of Doubt

Here comes the controversial part – I want you to see the best in everyone, give them the benefit of the doubt, give them 100% trust right off-the-bat. Yes, it is risky and dangerous, but the other person is doing the same. No matter what financial terms they settle on, they will give this company blood, sweat, and tears – and they deserve to be seen at their best.

This gives birth to a larger culture, where people bring their A-game to the table, every single time. It brings ownership and responsibility and no serious team can operate without it.

No matter how many employee-friendly policies you have, if the people and the culture are not aligned with each other, retention will always be a challenge.

Afterword

Before you be all judgy, this blueprint comes from taking more than a 1000 interviews (I kid you not), in different organizations and has a very high success rate of understanding and developing meaningful connections with people from the interviews.

This is not a perfect recipe, but it will hopefully give you enough to stand on. What techniques do you use in interviews? I would love to hear about them and if you think this is absolute bonkers, let me know. I would definitely not agree with you, but it is good to know that there are other mindsets out in the wild, and how I need to do my best to avoid crossing paths with them.

The trick is to understand that achieving this balance is less about perfection and more about setting priorities, managing expectations, and being kind to oneself.

Put Fitness First

Prioritizing fitness helps professionals achieve work-life balance by enhancing physical health and mental clarity, which boosts productivity and decision-making. Regular exercise serves as a natural stress reliever, helping to maintain emotional stability and prevent burnout. You can ease into it, walking each day before you leave for the office or pedaling a stationary bike during lunch break. Setting up a home gym is another solution that allows you to snag a workout at your convenience.

Additionally, integrating fitness into a daily routine encourages time management and discipline, fostering a structured lifestyle that balances personal and professional commitments.

Establish Your Boundaries

Creating distinct spaces for work and personal life is not just a physical arrangement — it's a mental one too. Separate your professional responsibilities from your home environment. Let home be a sanctuary where work-related stress is not permitted entry. By carving out specific spaces for each domain, you empower yourself to switch off from work when needed, nurturing a mental state conducive to relaxation and family time.

Prioritize Personal Care

Self-care goes beyond pampering oneself and enters the realm of necessity for anyone seeking a balanced life. It is crucial to earmark time for activities that spark joy, whether it's reading, cooking, or hiking. Learning relaxation techniques like deep breathing or progressive muscle relaxation can help manage stress effectively. Prioritizing adequate sleep rejuvenates the body and mind, preparing one for the challenges of the next day.

Explore New Educational Horizons

Feeling stuck in a career that offers no growth can be a source of chronic stress. Sometimes, a change is not only refreshing but also necessary for personal development. One option is considering an online bachelor of education degree or another potential degree in teaching. The flexibility of online courses allows working professionals to juggle their job commitments while skilling themselves for a more rewarding future.

Consider Entrepreneurship

Becoming an entrepreneur allows professionals to design their own schedules, giving them the flexibility to allocate time for personal and family activities without sacrificing business goals. Whether you develop software, prepare taxes, groom dogs, or offer podcasts in your area of expertise, there are ample solopreneur ideas that are smart and profitable.

The autonomy of flying solo enables you to set boundaries and prioritize your well-being, leading to a more harmonious integration of work and life. Additionally, solopreneurs have the freedom to build a business around their passions and values, which can create a more fulfilling and balanced life overall.

Manage Attainable Objectives

Setting sky-high goals can seem motivational but can often lead to burnout when they are unrealistic. Instead, set achievable targets that offer a healthy challenge without causing extreme stress. Knowing what is possible within given timeframes and resource limitations is the key to success. It's essential to prioritize tasks and allocate enough time to complete them without overwhelming oneself.

Optimize Your Time

Effective time management is the cornerstone of a balanced life. Knowing how to allocate time for various tasks optimizes productivity without leaving one drained. Implementing proven time management strategies, such as the Pomodoro Technique or the Eisenhower Matrix, can transform chaotic days into structured, fulfilling times. These methods help to prioritize tasks, setting the stage for both professional success and personal satisfaction.

Incorporate Mindful Practices

Stress has a way of clouding judgment and impairing focus. Mindfulness practices offer a practical solution to these issues. Incorporating daily meditation sessions or simply taking a few minutes to be aware of one's surroundings and internal state can have a tremendous impact. These practices not only reduce stress but also improve mental clarity, helping to make better decisions in both personal and professional spheres.

Juggling professional demands and personal needs is far from easy, but it's also far from impossible. The key lies in creating a balanced lifestyle that serves the essential aspects of a happy life. Prioritize your fitness routine and assess your objectives, whether you’re going back to school or becoming a solopreneur – it goes a long way in helping you grow sustainably. Be mindful in your pursuits, and organize your time in a practical and healthy manner. Work-life balance is not about choosing one over the other; it's about achieving harmony between the two for a truly fulfilling life.

Sheila Olson has been a personal trainer for five years. She believes the best way to achieve physical fitness and good health is to set and tackle small goals. She encourages her clients to stay positive and incorporates mindfulness and practices for reducing negative talk into her sessions. She created Fit Sheila to spread the word about her fitness philosophy.

Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, this comprehensive guide will equip you with the knowledge and skills needed to harness the full potential of marketing analytics. From understanding key metrics to implementing data-driven strategies, we'll delve into the world of analytics and show you how to leverage it to improve campaign performance, optimize customer journeys, and boost return on investment.

Are you ready to unlock the power of marketing analytics? Let's dive in!

Why is marketing analytics important?

Marketing analytics plays a crucial role in today's digital landscape. It enables marketers and consultants to gain a deep understanding of their target audience, identify trends, and measure the success of their campaigns.

But why is it so important? By analyzing data from various channels such as website traffic, social media engagement, and email marketing, you can make informed decisions and optimize your marketing strategies. Marketing analytics provides insights into customer behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns, allowing businesses to tailor their marketing efforts and deliver personalized experiences.

Additionally, marketing analytics helps in tracking the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, identifying areas of improvement, and allocating resources effectively. With the power of marketing analytics, you can stay ahead of the competition and drive growth.

Key metrics in marketing analytics

To effectively utilize marketing analytics, it is crucial to understand the key metrics that drive insights and measure success. Some of the essential metrics include:

Conversion Rate

The percentage of visitors who take the desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. This metric helps measure the effectiveness of landing pages and marketing campaigns. But how can you improve your conversion rate? What strategies have you tried so far?

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The predicted revenue a customer will generate over their lifetime with a business. CLV helps in identifying high-value customers and tailoring marketing efforts to maximize their value. Are you focusing on your high-value customers?

Return on Investment (ROI)

The ratio of the profit generated from a marketing campaign to the cost of running that campaign. ROI helps in evaluating the effectiveness and profitability of marketing activities. Are your marketing activities delivering a good ROI?

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The percentage of people who click on a specific link, advertisement, or call-to-action. CTR is a valuable metric for measuring the success of online advertising and email marketing campaigns. How can you improve your CTR?

Bounce Rate

The percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate indicates that the website or landing page may need optimization. What steps are you taking to reduce your bounce rate?

Understanding these key metrics and how they relate to your marketing goals will enable you to make data-driven decisions and optimize your marketing efforts.

Tools for marketing analytics

To effectively analyze and interpret marketing data, a wide range of tools are available. These tools help collect, organize, and analyze data from various sources, providing valuable insights and visualizations. Some popular marketing analytics tools include:

Google Analytics

A free and widely-used tool that provides detailed website traffic data, user behavior insights, and conversion tracking. Google Analytics offers a comprehensive set of features to measure and analyze marketing performance. Are you making the most of Google Analytics?

HubSpot

A powerful inbound marketing and sales platform that offers analytics and reporting capabilities. HubSpot provides tools for tracking website visits, lead generation, and customer interactions, allowing you to measure the impact of your marketing efforts. How are you using HubSpot to track your marketing efforts?

Adobe Analytics

A robust enterprise-level analytics solution that offers real-time data collection, advanced segmentation, and predictive analytics. Adobe Analytics provides in-depth insights into customer behavior and enables marketers to optimize their campaigns across multiple channels. Are you leveraging Adobe Analytics for your marketing campaigns?

SEMRUSH

A comprehensive SEO toolset that includes keyword research, link analysis, and website performance tracking. SEMRUSH helps marketers improve their search engine rankings and visibility, ultimately driving traffic and conversions.

These are just a few examples of the many tools available for marketing analytics. Choosing the right tools for your business depends on your specific needs, budget, and technical capabilities.

How to set up your marketing analytics framework

To unlock the full potential of marketing analytics, it is essential to set up a solid framework that aligns with your business objectives. Here are the key steps to follow:

Define your goals

Clearly define your marketing objectives and identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with those goals. This will help you measure success and track progress. What are your marketing objectives?

Identify data sources

Determine the data sources you need to collect and analyze to achieve your marketing goals. This may include website analytics, social media data, CRM data, and more. What data sources are you currently using?

Implement tracking mechanisms

Set up tracking mechanisms such as tags, pixels, and cookies to collect data from your various marketing channels. This will ensure that you have accurate and comprehensive data for analysis. Are your tracking mechanisms set up correctly?

Data integration

Integrate data from different sources into a centralized analytics platform. This will allow you to gain a holistic view of your marketing efforts and identify correlations and patterns. Are you integrating your data effectively?

Data analysis and reporting

Analyze the collected data to gain insights into customer behavior, campaign performance, and overall marketing effectiveness. Create comprehensive reports and visualizations to communicate these findings effectively. Are you analyzing your data and reporting your findings effectively?

By following these steps and establishing a robust marketing analytics framework, you will be able to make data-driven decisions and optimize your marketing strategies for maximum impact.

Data collection and analysis

Collecting and analyzing data is at the core of marketing analytics. It involves capturing, storing, and processing data from various marketing channels to gain insights and make informed decisions. Here are some key aspects of data collection and analysis:

Data collection methods

There are various methods to collect data, including website analytics, social media monitoring, surveys, customer feedback, and more. It is crucial to choose the right methods based on your objectives and target audience. What data collection methods are you using?

Data quality and accuracy

Ensuring the quality and accuracy of data is essential for reliable analysis. Implement proper data collection mechanisms, regularly validate data, and address any data quality issues to maintain the integrity of your analytics. Are you ensuring the quality and accuracy of your data?

Data segmentation

Segmenting data allows you to analyze specific subsets of your audience and gain deeper insights. Segmentation can be based on demographics, behaviors, interests, or any other relevant criteria. How are you segmenting your data?

Data analysis techniques

Utilize various data analysis techniques such as descriptive analytics, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics to uncover patterns, trends, and opportunities. These techniques help in understanding customer preferences, predicting future outcomes, and optimizing marketing efforts. What data analysis techniques are you using?

By effectively collecting and analyzing data, you can uncover valuable insights that drive informed decision-making and improve marketing performance.

Using marketing analytics to drive business decisions

Marketing analytics provides a wealth of information that can be used to drive strategic business decisions. Here's how marketing analytics can be leveraged to make data-driven decisions:

Target audience analysis

By analyzing customer data, you can gain a deep understanding of your target audience's preferences, behaviors, and needs. This information can be used to tailor marketing messages, personalize campaigns, and improve customer experiences. How are you using target audience analysis to improve your marketing efforts?

Campaign optimization

Marketing analytics enables you to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and identify areas for improvement. By analyzing campaign data, you can optimize targeting, messaging, and creative elements to maximize ROI. How are you optimizing your campaigns based on your marketing analytics?

Customer journey optimization

By mapping and analyzing the customer journey, you can identify pain points, opportunities for engagement, and areas of friction. This allows for the optimization of touch-points, content, and interactions throughout the customer journey. How are you optimizing the customer journey based on your analytics?

Budget allocation

Marketing analytics helps in understanding which marketing channels and campaigns are generating the best results. By analyzing performance data, you can allocate your budgets effectively and invest in the most impactful strategies. How are you allocating your marketing budget based on your analytics?

Challenges and limitations of marketing analytics

While marketing analytics can provide valuable insights, it is important to be aware of its challenges and limitations. Some common challenges include:

Data quality issues

Inaccurate or incomplete data can hinder accurate analysis and decision-making. It is crucial to ensure data quality and address any data collection or integration issues. Are you addressing data quality issues in your marketing analytics?

Technical complexities

Implementing and managing marketing analytics tools and platforms can be complex, requiring technical expertise and resources. It is important to have the necessary infrastructure and skilled personnel to handle analytics effectively. Are you equipped to handle the technical complexities of marketing analytics?

Privacy and compliance

With increasing data privacy regulations, you must ensure compliance with relevant laws and regulations. This includes obtaining proper consent for data collection and ensuring the security of customer data. Are you compliant with data privacy regulations?

Interpreting and acting on insights

Collecting data is just the first step. Extracting actionable insights and effectively implementing changes based on those insights can be challenging. It requires a combination of analytical skills, strategic thinking, and effective communication. Are you effectively interpreting and acting on your insights?

By understanding and addressing these challenges, you can overcome limitations and fully leverage the power of marketing analytics.

Hiring marketing analytics consultants

For businesses that lack the in-house expertise or resources to effectively utilize marketing analytics, hiring marketing analytics consultants can be a valuable option.

Marketing analytics consultants bring specialized knowledge and experience to help businesses set up, analyze, and optimize their marketing efforts. They can provide guidance on data collection, analysis techniques, tool selection, and strategy implementation.

Hiring marketing analytics consultants can accelerate the learning curve, save time, and ensure optimal utilization of marketing analytics resources. Are you considering hiring a marketing analytics consultant?

Conclusion

Marketing analytics is a powerful tool that can transform your marketing efforts and drive business growth. By understanding key metrics, utilizing the right tools, and setting up a solid analytics framework, you can unlock the full potential of marketing analytics. By leveraging data-driven insights, you can make informed decisions, optimize campaigns, and deliver personalized experiences to your target audience.

While there are challenges and limitations, marketing analytics offers immense value to digital marketers and consultants. So, are you ready to unlock the power of marketing analytics and take your marketing to new heights? It's time to dive in and harness the power of data to drive success in the digital landscape.

But my perspective has changed in the past few months heavily. I have been working with some pretty dope brands and products in the past few years, as a full-time employee, as a mentor, and as a consultant. And I found that SEO is failing these businesses. These are content pros, who are actually producing good, tactical, and helpful content. Yet, their products are not growing through organic means.

Why? I started doing an analysis of how Google is evolving search and how many websites have lost traffic to those updates. The more I saw, the more I could see the monarchist rule of Google and their plans of evolving search from the user's perspective.

Let's break it down.

Google focuses on fast answers

We have all heard this one, give your visitor the answer to their question, as fast as possible. This is the equivalent of someone asking a question while driving past a billboard, and that billboard should have the right answer to that question. People will literally spend seconds on a page before deciding if it is worth their time or not.

This gives you a very short time to:

1. Convince the user to read more (which is exactly what they want to avoid)

2. Take some sort of action to get the answer (somebody else is highly likely to be competing with you to give that answer without the action)

3. Sell yourself or your product as the answer and hope that they convert then and there (this, at best, manages to convert impulsive buyers)

So, what do you do? A popular argument against this is that blogs are supposed to be this way, and blogs are just a foundation that helps you build the right authority, so that your landing pages, which are focused on commercial queries, can rank better.

It doesn't work that way.

What you rank for, is who you are

We did an experiment at a company I worked for, we wanted to find out how Google ranks us for different topics. As to say, we needed to understand which category our website falls in, as far as Google's algorithm is concerned.

This website had some serious organic traffic, a leader among its industry. The user experience was not awesome, but good enough. We posted two new articles, one of which was very closely tied to the product that they were selling and talked about how to solve a specific problem with their software.

The other blog focused on giving information on a topic related to their niche, and did not focus on converting the user at all (besides the CTAs in the header and footer of the website).

The informative blog started ranking in 3 weeks and the other blog took 3 months to rank on the first page. Both the keywords had an almost equal amount of keyword difficulty and search volume and mostly had the same competitors ranking for it.

The conclusion – if you start scaling your organic traffic too fast, you can be considered an informative blog website and you won't get the recognition you need to rank what you actually want to sell, your product.

I know I am going to get a lot of 'nays' for this, but this is the reality for many businesses out there. The SEO spend has risen for the past few years and if you think about it, it costs way more than paid search marketing now. You cannot scale SEO beyond a certain point without heavily sacrificing your ROI.

Publishing massive amounts of content is bad for the industry

The perfect example of this is Zapier and monday.com – they post so much content that they have their weekly newsletters full of new content. Their strategy revolves around ranking for anything and everything in their niche. And while their content is awesome, you will find that they are indirectly using the same philosophy as Google, crushing the competition.

You cannot even think about competing with these two giants on organic channels. They have shit ton of more money than you, and their organic marketing channels are way stronger than you can ever be. A lot of new brands focus on organic marketing in the start because it is cheaper and they really strive to highlight the innovative new idea that they are bringing to the market. Only to find out that they need to target the same topics as their competitors do, with 20 times more money than them, it is impossible to beat them.

Google has always been vague about what makes a piece of content 'good', but even if they told us, these giants would easily capitalize on that to squash the innovative newcomers in seconds.

Google does not want you to rank for commercial queries

Let's assume that all of the points I made above are utter superstition and false. Google rewards good content and you can change the destiny of your newly founded SaaS company by writing dope content.

How will they make money? They cannot.

Searching on Google is free, ranking on Google is free, and there is no layer in between the search done by the customer and eventually purchasing your product that benefits Google.

Now, let's assume that Google does care about both factors and they want you to do the best by trying to rank for a commercial query, but you can also leverage their paid marketing features if you have less time or resources to work on SEO.

In that case, organic search results should be visible higher up than ads. Not the case, the advertisers, no matter how shitty their product or page is, are displayed above the organic search results, it is a clear preference.

And of course, Google is not the evil here, after all, they are profit-making company that needs revenue, one way or the other. I just think it is hypocritical of them to promote and glorify the 'organic way' when it is clear that it always has second dibs.

All your hard work writing 100s of blogs and establish topical authority goes down the drain against $10 that a shitty product company with loads of cash pays to Google for an ad for that keyword. What's the point?

SEO is a lot more expensive than Paid Search

Start by calculating the man hours put to get a website to a reasonable DA, all of the content that needed to be produced to reach there, the failed experiments, the overpaid agencies, the freeloading employees, and then add up the costs of retargeting the people who land on that blog with email marketing, other blogs and whatnot, along with the cost of everything that was involved in helping convert that customer e.g. a kick-ass website design, that video above the fold, all the plugins you paid for to achieve high website speed for better rankings and whatnot.

Now compare that cost with setting up a landing page and working on some nicely written copy to target the same keyword with paid search. When done at scale, you will find that many of these keywords would have a much better ROI when compared to exclusively-organic marketing.

Most of us fail to understand the cost of SEO. Sure, there are masters out there that are able to get a better ROI than you, and there are many SEO agencies that do the job very well.

But mostly, it is a bargain. The average Joe cannot afford good SEO when building a startup. They also have no way to forecast if it will work or not. While PPC almost always has a clear ROI, SEO is vague and you cannot plan on it effectively.

Does this mean we stop doing SEO?

No, SEO would continue to remain at the center of your marketing strategy but it is no longer an independent channel. SEO can only be a starting point for a user's journey till they convert with you. Because of how Google works, you can only be the bearer of quick answers for your visitors. But that also gives you the ability to target the same users with ads on social media and on other websites.

That said, all startups, big or small, should consider moving the better part of their investment in PPC. PPC helps you establish the base ROI for your product or service and it will give you perspective about your numbers, what you can achieve, how quickly you can achieve, and what will be the cost of it.

A good marketing strategy involves refining your PPC campaigns with the help of SEO, and not vice versa. It will be the most predictable, and it will be the most sustainable, regardless of competition.

Last words

I always caution people against it, and always give the advice that these channels are not perfect for business, and they will never be. At the end of the day, Google is a profit-making enterprise that will sacrifice what you get as a business to earn some extra cash, any day of the week.

Always have a strong marketing communications strategy that is able to adopt to any channel on any platform. Search engines are just one way of doing things, there are lots of other ways you can market your brand.

If you are curious on how sites that are not optimize for Google work, here is breath of fresh air with the awesome people at Fibery – the website is a work of art and reminds us how good copy should always come first. Check it out here: https://fibery.io

Understanding the Definition of a Growth Mindset

Those who cultivate a growth mindset agree to step away from an actualized mindset in favor of believing that their biology, talent, and aptitudes are malleable. By accepting this notion, they eliminate the burden of perfection and disappointment associated with a fixed mindset because they have already affirmed that improvements in these areas can be achieved. Practicing this adage can help individuals to osmose necessary skill sets over time, enabling them to ward off emotional roadblocks in favor of absolute progression.

The growth mindset is a powerful tool for personal development, as it encourages individuals to take risks and challenge themselves. It also allows them to recognize their mistakes and learn from them, rather than feeling discouraged or defeated. By embracing a growth mindset, individuals can become more resilient and better equipped to handle difficult situations. Ultimately, this mindset can help individuals to reach their full potential and achieve their goals.

Examining the Benefits of Adopting a Growth Mindset

Adopting a growth mindset can prove advantageous for both personal and professional success. For example, by focusing on building up necessary abilities gradually, a person can accept achievable goals in lieu of extreme objectives. This helps them to push past challenging mindsets and instead benefit from successes no matter how small. Additionally, people who accept a growth mindset can connect their effort to the outcome rather than their character or talent. This allows them to maintain a resilient attitude devoid of unrealistic expectations.

Furthermore, a growth mindset can help to foster a sense of self-efficacy, which is the belief that one can achieve their goals. This can be especially beneficial in the workplace, as it can help to motivate employees to take on new challenges and strive for success. Additionally, it can help to create a positive work environment, as employees are more likely to collaborate and support each other when they have a growth mindset.

Recognizing the Challenges of Adapting a Growth Mindset

Adapting to a growth mindset can also be daunting as its adoption requires being open to self-reflection and potential transformation. In order to desist from becoming overwhelmed when faced with difficulty, people must be willing to invest time and energy into fostering a healthy attitude toward personal growth. Additionally, those who adopt a growth mindset confront the risk of persevering through failures rather than recognizing these failures as impediments that cannot be overcome. As such, it is imperative that individuals learn how to discern effective strategies for developing and sustaining a growth mindset.

One such strategy is to focus on the process rather than the outcome. This means that instead of fixating on the end result, individuals should focus on the steps they are taking to reach their goals. This can help to reduce the pressure of achieving a certain outcome and instead allow individuals to focus on the progress they are making. Additionally, it is important to practice self-compassion and recognize that mistakes are part of the learning process. By being kind to oneself and understanding that mistakes are part of the journey, individuals can better foster a growth mindset.

Practicing Strategies to Foster a Growth Mindset

In order to foster a growth mindset, individuals must begin by setting realistic goals based on realistic expectations of self-ability. Additionally, they should break down projects and activities into smaller achievable tasks that allow for incremental triumphs. Constructing a reliable support system of mentors, peers, and family members who can help provide guidance is also incredibly helpful in this venture. This fosters an environment of camaraderie in which individuals can embrace their setbacks and celebrate their successes.

It is also important to practice self-reflection and self-awareness. Taking the time to reflect on one's successes and failures can help to identify areas of improvement and provide insight into how to better approach future tasks. Additionally, it is important to practice self-compassion and to be kind to oneself. Acknowledging that mistakes are part of the learning process and that failure is not a reflection of one's worth can help to foster a growth mindset.

Exploring How to Re-frame Negative Thinking Patterns

It is also important to be aware of any negative thinking patterns or self-talk that may potentially impede progress. If these ideas are left unchecked, they can interrupt relationships and block overall development. To remedy this issue quickly, practice re-framing negative thoughts that surface by replacing them with acknowledgment for progress or appreciation for the effort.

It is important to remember that re-framing negative thoughts are a process that takes time and practice. It is not something that can be done overnight. Start by recognizing when negative thoughts arise and then take a few moments to pause and reflect on the thought. Ask yourself if the thought is helpful or unhelpful. If it is unhelpful, then take the time to replace it with a more positive thought. This can be done by focusing on the progress you have made or the effort you have put in. Over time, this practice will help to create a more positive mindset and outlook.

Utilizing Support Systems to Foster a Growth Mindset

Alongside re-framing any negative beliefs, it may also be beneficial to create personal mantras or participate in activities that allow individuals to observe their progress over time. Furthermore, seeking outside encouragement through discussion groups or tutoring sessions may help support the objective of adopting a growth mindset. Small objectives such as taking classes on new topics or learning new skills should be celebrated and considered accomplishments.

In addition to seeking outside support, it is important to recognize the power of self-motivation. Setting achievable goals and rewarding yourself for progress made can be a great way to stay motivated and continue to foster a growth mindset. It is also important to remember that progress is not always linear, and that setbacks are a normal part of the learning process. By understanding this, individuals can remain resilient and continue to strive for their goals.

Gaining Clarity on What It Takes to Develop and Sustain a Growth Mindset

Moreover, it is essential to recognize the time required along with other resources needed to maintain and nurture a growth mindset. Additionally, fostering resilience and keeping track of improvements can help individuals stay on course with their journey. Finally, developing an increased passion for learning and viewing failure as informative rather than punitive are methods of sustaining the growth mindset mentality.

Investigating Different Types of Growth Mindsets

Research shows there are a number of ways to develop and adopt a growth mindset. For instance, individuals may explore what it means to have an intrinsic growth mindset that prioritizes self-motivation and curiosity toward learning. This practice allows people to view failure as being something beneficial rather than dispiriting. In parallel with that, there are also extrinsic modes where motivation is spurred by awards or recognition from others.

Reflecting on How Our Perspective Impacts Our Success

At the end of the day, recognizing how our perspective shapes our perceptions of success is essential for continuing the development of a growth mindset mentality. Examining when people enter a fixed versus a growth mindset naturally is also beneficial in understanding how to arrange strategies around individual needs so that calm can be preserved in times of duress.

Growth Marketing and Performance Marketing are very similar in this way, but what makes growth experiments successful is making decisions after measuring their results. That is where the complexity comes, especially when running multiple experiments simultaneously.

Thankfully, there is a structure you can follow to make sure you are measuring your growth experiments accurately. Let's dive into it.

List down your experiments

Start with a table, where you can list down all of your experiments. The way to do it is to note down the hypothesis behind it, and the funnel it will affect. If you have a broad experiment, for example, a design change that is going to affect multiple things, you should list it down for individual funnels.

At nTask, we changed the color of our logo and it affected a lot of things, the theme needed to be updated, and the same color was used in our emails, our social media, and everywhere else. We listed this as 12 different experiments because it would have affected each of those things differently.

Here is an example of how to list down your experiments

Determine factors to run the experiment

Every experiment is different, and prioritizing them is fundamental to your growth marketing efforts. Use this simple framework by determining what it would take to run an experiment and what outcome to expect. Give each experiment a value on a scale of 1-10:

1. How many working hours would it take to make it happen?

   • If the effort required needs to come from multiple teams, these should be measured separately.

2. How much impact would it have on the funnel in question?

3. What is the probability of success with the experiment?

4. How much confidence do you have that it would be successful?

You can label them as you want, I like to call them effort, impact, probability, and confidence. Many growth hackers also use more factors to determine the priority of their experiments, and you should do that too if you feel it is important for your business.

For example, you may want to factor in the time in which you will be able to decide whether this experiment was successful or not. Add anything that makes a significant impact on your decision-making, but don't get carried away by making it complex.

Score the factors

The next step is obviously to score the factors you decided on. Give them a score between 1-20 and then create an average score out of all of them to determine the priority.

One thing I would strongly recommend is to calculate the weighted average of these and not treat the factors equally. For example, it can be important for you to put less stress on the dev team and effort might be a bigger challenge for you. In this case, you should put more emphasis on running experiments that require less effort first.

I know it sounds complex and is not always a rule of thumb, but it helps to prioritize. You should always look at the individual score of every factor before finalizing the priority and not just use the average score.

Want a sample Google sheet to measure your experiments?

Request Sheet

Group experiments and start experimenting!

A good idea is to group experiments by funnels and start working on running them. This will allow you to scale to success faster because you will always have some tests running on each of your funnels.

This can also be challenging at times when you have a small team – in that case, you can group experiments by teams. Again, a smaller team would mean overlap between multiple people/teams to run one experiment, so assign owners!

An owner should be a person/team that has the most amount of effort going into an experiment and who is directly responsible for that particular function. Grouping by owners will allow you to not burden your teams and have a healthy workload ratio across your growth team.

Measure the outcomes

You should consider three things when measuring the outcome of your experiments.

1. Result, which is the quantitative and qualitative result of the experiment. Be as accurate as possible about it.

2. Learning, which tells you the subjective learning you got from running that experiment, even if it was a failure. Failed experiments, make way for new hypotheses and more experiments.

3. Difficulty to scale, which measures how much more effort would it take to scale a successful experiment. This can vary because sometimes your learnings might tell you that the experiment was a success but it is going to take a lot more effort on average to scale it up.

Sometimes, an experiment gives you multiple outcomes and you should note it that way. For example, changing your hashtags on social media might have given you more engagement, but fewer impressions. That can mean that you need to use the hashtags used earlier as well, to reach more people.

Noting down multiple outcomes will help you determine if your experiments should entirely replace something or combine it with how you were doing things before the experiment.

This is very important because a lot of growth experts sacrifice what is already working to find faster solutions and more often than not, it results in unsustainable growth patterns.

Scale away!

Now that you have solid learnings, and everything by the number, it is time to decide which experiments are promoted to be scaled. Choose wisely, and spend time studying your outcomes and what impact they can have on your overall efforts as a team and as a company.

Being hasty about scaling leads to unsustainable growth. Always prioritize efforts that can give you long-term growth even if these are slow to scale. Speedy growth is good if you need to achieve short-term goals, but for long-term sustainable growth, that might not be a good thing.

Need help with growth experiments? Just ask.

Running regular growth experiments is important to achieve growth. No matter which industry you are in, consistently testing your efforts will allow you to get to success much faster. It can become challenging, and sometimes you need an extra set of brains to help you with it.

If you are a business interested in growth, I do direct mentorship with early-stage startups and small businesses for free. Just leave me an email at email@fahadsheikh.net or fill out this form.

Contact Me

Even if you are not a small business or a startup, I can help you run growth experiments efficiently and save countless hours of work. Reach out if you need consulting on growth, marketing, sales, or SaaS product development.

Managing growth marketing can be really hectic – there is just so much to keep tabs on. Doing everything manually and using Google Sheets for everything is old-school and plain stupid.

There are hundreds of SaaS solutions and other software out there that can help ease the overwhelming burden. These apps add value to your workflow from project management to process automation, record keeping, and analytics.

Here are the top free and paid apps that I use and recommend to unlock your growth.

nTask

Free Plan Available
Paid Plans Starting From $4/month

With a very powerful free plan, nTask gives you everything you need for project management. The highlight of the app is that it is easy to use. You just cannot go wrong with it. You get task management, Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and time management making your life easier.

Put your growth goals and projects in there, create milestones, assign tasks to your team and get things going. You can plan meetings, share agendas and minutes, and manage timesheets as well. It is literally the easiest project management software you will find. Plus, the free plan gives you a lot of features and 5 team members.

1. Unlimited Tasks

2. Unlimited Timesheets

3. Unlimited Issue Tracking

4. Unlimited Meeting Management (including integrations with Microsoft Teams and Google Meet)

And, if you ever find yourself wanting to upgrade to a paid plan, their pricing is mind-blowing! $4 a month for the Premium Plan, that's cheaper than a cup of coffee!

You can get a 10% discount on top of the already affordable pricing by using the promo code HAPPYNTASKING

Start for Free

HubSpot

Free Plan Available
Paid Plans Starting From $45/month

HubSpot is, without a doubt, an all-encompassing CRM, which covers a lot of requirements for startups to enterprise-level companies. The biggest advantage you get with HubSpot is integrations – it connects with almost everything out there.

HubSpot has modules, and you can pick and choose from the ones you want to use, make a custom plan, or just subscribe to one of them. The pricing is smart, but it can get a bit expensive at times too.

HubSpot's Starter CRM Suite is the best deal for most teams, which includes all of the modules at a discounted price of $45/month

Get it Here

My recommendation to every early-stage startup is to implement HubSpot as much as they can. Even if you decide to diversify your portfolio of software later, migrations and integrations are extremely easy with HubSpot. You will always have complete data on your customers, subscribers, or prospects.

From automated email sequences to campaigns, managing paid Google Ads, and social media platforms, HubSpot covers everything. Take a deeper look at what they have to offer on HubSpot's Get Started page.

Reporting with HubSpot is as powerful as you can wish. You can connect your data across your modules and even from the integrations that you are using for a crystal-clear and comprehensive view of your performance.

Implementing HubSpot completely can be challenging at times too. If you are looking to get their Pro plans, a great tip to save onboarding costs is to complete the relevant certifications from the HubSpot Academy.

If you are still hitting roadblocks in implementing HubSpot and making the most out of it, you can always reach out to me and I can help get you set up.

Heap Analytics

Free Plan Available
Paid Plans Starting From $10,500/year

I can't tell you how much I love this one. It is the easiest analytics application out there. You just need to plug in a tiny script to your app or website and analyze anything and everything about user behavior.

Heap tracks every event and action on your app out of the box. You heard that right, no need to configure events in Google Analytics and tell it what to track. It is that simple!

You can define events with your own names, merge events together, define events with multiple events, track funnels, and even analyze complete sessions from visitors.

Heap gives you deep insight into how your users are behaving in your app or on your website. Understanding how your funnels are working, where users are spending the most time, and tracking your growth experiments is why you need Heap in your tech stack.

Headline Studio

Free Plan Available
Paid Plans Starting From $19/month

The most important part of content anywhere is the headline. Get it right and you have the attention of your user. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer does just that. The tool is rated 5 stars on almost every review forum. Works inside WordPress as well as a standalone app.

The free version gives you plenty of features to get the headline written and is the better option for most users. Just write in a headline and it will provide a score from 0-100. It tells you how you can improve it by analyzing character counts, words used, the type of headline, and the nature of words.

I use it for almost everything I write, from emails to blog posts. The headline for this blog was analyzed by it (got a score of 88/100, not bad eh?). The paid plan gives you a couple of more superpowers and does help you create headlines quickly, but in my opinion, the free version should suffice in most cases.

ZoomInfo SalesOS

Paid Plans Only – Starting From $10,000/year

Okay, hear me out here. This is not your run-of-the-mill app. And it does not have a free plan, but trust me, you cannot find an alternative to ZoomInfo. Sure, Lusha and Hunter are good options, but those are just 'contact databases'. ZoomInfo is a data powerhouse.

The amount of time you can save with this tool and the insights that you can get on prospects, leads, and current customers is truly amazing. Their crown jewel is information about companies looking for different solutions for their needs. They call it 'intent data', and well, it is intent data.

But that's not all, ZoomInfo has evolved into a full-scale data platform with so much information on people that it is almost creepy. They have inside information on companies, individuals, industries, and a lot more.

The pricing, of course, is a lot! You need $10,000 just to get started, and that is assuming that you negotiated a great deal with them. You can, however, get a free list of prospects from them, and also get a trial once you get in touch with one of their salespeople.

If you have the kind of product or service that would benefit from strong outbound campaigns, then this is your best bet. ZoomInfo will shorten your sales cycle by a margin and will allow you to target prospects so precisely, that is almost scary!

Rank Math

Free Plan Available
Paid Plans Starting From $59/year

Gone are the days when Yoast ruled the SEO market. Rank Math is the new leader. They have the widest portfolio of features among every SEO plugin out there. The team behind the tool is extremely helpful, I have never seen such a strong support team behind a WordPress plugin.

Features like instant indexing, schema markup, and FAQ blocks, are what make it a must-have. They have a built-in Content AI feature as well that advises you on how to structure your content and which keywords to use for better search engine rankings.

The plugin is pretty easy to use, and everything is divided into separate modules with their own settings. You can customize everything according to your requirements. With every function, there is a definitive help article that explains why it is important and what the best practices to use are.

I specifically liked their News SEO and Video SEO feature, which helps you optimize your site for videos and news articles. It also generates separate sitemaps for the same and puts you in control of how you want to be visible on the search engines. Overall, this is a one-stop shop for your SEO plugin needs.

UberSuggest by Neil Patel

Free Plan Available
Paid Plans Starting From $12/month
Lifetime Deal Starting From $120

If you have been in the content marketing business then I am sure you have heard of a charming man named Neil Patel. He is a thought leader and a guru when it comes to marketing and especially with SEO.

Neil has created a solid SEO tool called UberSuggest to compete with the likes of SEMRUSH and AHREFS – although I agree that these tools are much more powerful than what Neil is offering but there are some things that he does really well.

The lifetime deal is what really makes it worth it for larger teams and the generous pricing is the sweet spot for small businesses. It has everything you need to get started with SEO and make sure that you are hitting the right notes for your website's growth.

For larger teams that have a full stack of SEO applications, I recommend UberSuggest because of its usability and research features. Neil has really worked on the experience of using SEO tools – you can do your keyword research in minutes and start writing a blog post.

The audit functionalities are also quite advanced and you will even find metrics like backlink spam scores, etc. (which is awesome considering the price you get it for). Another neat trick he does is explain what it will take for you to rank for a keyword in terms of Domain Authority and Backlinks. It doesn't really give a clear roadmap of what to do but is a good measure of how competitive the keywords are.

Need More?

This article will be consistently updated with more tools and apps. Look out for updates and subscribe to get them in your inbox.

The term 'growth marketing' has been popular in the industry for quite some time now. Mainly led by software companies looking to find their product-market fit more quicker. And then scaling that success beyond.

Over the past couple of years, it evolved from being a singular approach to finding the right funnels for growth to proactively optimizing and scaling all of them, enabling sustainable growth.

But isn't that what regular marketing is supposed to be? Yes, and no. According to the AMA, marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

In simpler words, marketing focuses on what you want to say, to whom you want to say it, and when you want to say it. It focuses on your message and everything related to it.

How is Performance Marketing Different from Growth Marketing?

Growth Marketing and Performance Marketing can be thought of as a subset of marketing but that does not do justice to them. I like to think of them as an evolved way of marketing in the modern world.

What is Performance Marketing?

Performance Marketing is focused on engaging with marketing programs where the costs can be directly correlated to the revenue they generate. It means a clear ROI on investment and the exact value that the marketer will get for spending money on it. Influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, and search marketing are good examples of performance marketing.

What is Growth Marketing?

Growth Marketing is when marketers use growth hacking techniques to conduct experiments on all or some of the marketing channels and strategies on a consistent basis. While regularly optimizing their tests and figuring out the most effective way to spend the overall marketing budget.

Growth Marketing is essentially a mindset, that enables your marketing teams to think about the impact of everything that they do. Whether it is traditional advertising or performance marketing, that growth mindset can really get the best out of every effort and ensure that the business keeps growing.

Growth marketing is a fundamental approach, not just a subset of marketing because it's proactive. It's about planning, strategy, optimization, and scaling. It's about making sure that every channel you use is working towards the same goal. It utilizes the principles of performance marketing and uses calculations to understand, optimize, and eventually scale, all aspects of marketing.

How to Get Started with Growth Marketing?

Start by analyzing your current marketing funnels. Even if you are a new business, or haven't started yet, you can consider your marketing plans as your current marketing funnels.

From there on, it is a simple process of experimentation. Think about every aspect of a marketing function, not just the whole funnel or channel. For example, you can experiment with something as simple as changing the color of the CTAs on your website.

How to do Growth Experiments

Create hypotheses for any experiments that you can do with your funnels. And then assign a score to these hypotheses. The score will be totally subjective at this point, but a good practice is to contemplate as accurately as possible. Divide your scores into 4 parts.

1. Confidence

2. Impact

3. Effort

4. Probability

These are self-explanatory, but if you are scratching your head.

Confidence is the number you give to the hypothesis on how sure you are that this will result in positive growth.

Impact is how much of a difference will it make compared to the current outcomes.

Effort is how many working hours or resource spend will it require for you to test this.

Probability is the chance of success for this experiment.

All of these scores should be on a scale of 1 to 10. Once you have all of your hypotheses listed, you can then choose which ones to go for first.

Check out my post here about how to run successful growth experiments (includes free template)

But that's not all. Experimenting does not mean that you take the successful ones at face value and scale them. Outcomes have to be dissected and measured properly.

With each outcome, you need to analyze and understand the learnings, opportunities, and mistakes. More opportunities mean more experiments can be done derived from this one. More mistakes mean you would have to redo the experiment with a different configuration. And more learnings mean that you might be able to scale your growth marketing strategies with a few tweaks.

How to Get Started with Performance Marketing?

As compared to growth marketing, performance marketing is more objective than subjective. You start by gathering all the data that you can about a marketing function. And then optimizing it for maximum output.

Let's take the example of influencer marketing campaigns on YouTube. The idea is simple – get all the metrics in one place. In this case, the number of followers for each of the influencers you want to go with, their audience demographics, and their video views statistics, among other things.

You put that data in a nice spreadsheet, analyze the ones with the most ROI respective to your target audience and make your decision.

But, just like growth marketing, it does not stop there, in fact, things are just getting started. Performance Marketing dictates that you keep on measuring the results from all of these campaigns and make adjustments as required.

So, let's say that you have 10 influencers that are doing really well and getting customers for your business, and the rest are not doing so well. You put more of your budget towards the influencers that are performing and cut it from where it is not getting you the bang for your buck.

As for any marketing technique, there are subjective considerations to be made as well. Some of the influencers might be failing because of a lack of relevant content, direction, or resources that you need to provide to them.

The Winning Formula

Every business is unique and might find success with Growth Marketing or Performance Marketing. But there is a simple winning formula, and that is to combine both approaches wherever possible.

What I mean by that, is for you to really dive into what Performance Marketing is doing for your business and run experiments on it. While scaling Growth Marketing experiments using Performance Marketing tactics and taking your growth to the next level.

Both these approaches complement each other in a lot of ways, and when done right, can become a major boost for the growth of your business.

If you want to dive more deeply into how these approaches can help your business – I help businesses find their north stars and work toward sustainable growth. Contact me and let's talk about your business.