The SaaS Growth Blog

As a business owner, you might be scratching your head when you see your competitors starting blogs on their websites. First of all, who has the time? And, depending on the industry, you might even wonder what they could possibly write about. Why might a construction company, for example, spend time writing bi-weekly posts - shouldn’t they spend their time remodeling kitchens instead? 

Blogging is a growth hacking technique that any business can use to increase traffic, convert leads, and close customers. Even if your business is strictly local, you can access hundreds, if not thousands, more customers online than you ever could through traditional marketing methods (unless you have the budget to buy a SuperBowl ad). To get these potential customers to notice you online, you have to make it onto the first Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for your business’ keywords.  After that, it's essential to write about blog topics that your readers and target buyer persona will find engaging.

Great salespeople know that making a sale is about building a relationship through enjoyable (and educational) conversation.  Great Inbound Marketers, like Lincoln Murphy of Sixteen Ventures and Larry Kim of WordStream know there is no difference in growth hacking.  Visits, conversions, and customer success all come from relationships driven by enjoyable, educational conversations.  Their conversations just come to life in the digital world.  These are places like Inbound Marketing Communities, fascinating Twitter accounts like @NikkiElizDemere, and most of all focused, relevant personal blogs like Seth Godin's Blog Typepad. 

The best Growth Hackers know that if they focus on building relationships through their blog everything else will fall in place. (Click to Tweet!)

Is your business website just there – or is it a real online presence? To reap the benefits of what online marketing has to offer, you need to stand out from the competition – and that means increasing your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking so your products or services rise to the top like proverbial cream. The good news is – this isn’t impossible and it doesn’t require a huge marketing budget. All you need is time, fresh content, and a strong message.

We’ve compiled 5 growth hacking methods that will increase your SERP rankings with some resources to help you get where you want to be – in rank that is.

If you study e-commerce growth like we do, you can’t ignore ModCloth – they do everything right. Starting out in the Carnegie Mellon dorm room of founder Susan Koger, this vintage clothing business grew from collecting thrift store finds to a 100-million-dollar online business. If you’re wondering how Susan and her husband Eric did it – you’re not alone! 

Most of their growth hacking techniques are related to principles around inbound marketing. Inbound marketing refers to the efforts of producing quality content and using methods that attract prospective customers to a company or product versus outwardly approaching them. On the contrary to traditional marketing efforts, inbound focuses on aligning your content with customer’s needs and interests. (Click to Tweet!) There are many takeaways that we can learn from ModCloth’s growth hacking. We’ll look at their website to see how you can take on a similar approach with your inbound marketing efforts.

Fear of Abandonment: The irrational belief that one is in imminent danger of being personally rejected, discarded, or replaced.

At least for Ecommerce sites, this isn’t an “irrational belief” at all – you see it every day: Cart abandonment. Most online retailers experience high rates of cart abandonment and can’t understand why. “Why do you want to leave me?!” they plead, sounding a lot like the ex-boyfriend I had in college.

In fact, much like that ex-boyfriend, most retailers send you notes as if you didn’t leave, you just forgot about them. For a really long time. Is this effective? Well, as my ex-boyfriend could tell you, not one bit.

So what is? How do you woo your cart abandoner back to finalize their purchase?

“Growth hacking is not a rigid process or ‘secret book of ideas’, but rather a philosophy.” - Derek Clark, Inturact

I asked three growth hackers — Morgan Brown, Lincoln Murphy, and Jim Gray — “What five tools are in your growth hackers’ toolbox?”

“Growth hacking”. Sounds a little strange and probably doesn’t mean anything unless it’s used in context. “Hacking”, after all, is widely perceived as something destructive or subversive. Here, however, the emphasis is on the creative connotation of the word, where the path to the solution requires shortcuts, and shortcuts require a comprehensive understanding of each piece involved.

“Growth Hacking” is a phrase that started spreading around Silicon Valley in 2011, used to describe the creative usage of technical knowledge to develop and implement marketing strategies.

Neil Patel (Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics) and Bronson Taylor (Growth Hacker TV) have written a 30,000 word guide to Growth Hacking. You can download it here and read more about it on Quick Sprout.