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Secret Sauce by Austen Allred

Secret Sauce by Austen Allred

by Parker · 340 things on Twos

Matt Redler recommendation
Introduction
Your product is the base number, and growth hacking is the multiplier. There are times when fixing the product matters more than all the growth hacking in the world. And there are times when you need the multiplier
We recommend that you pick one channel first, and get that channel working
These methods don’t work well if they’re done only part of the way. You have to be all in. You have to be thorough. There may be times when things become monotonous and boring. That generally means you’re on the right path. Don’t give up or try to outsource or automate too early. Even the best marketers spend an absurd amount of time doing repetitive and boring things to get what they’re doing off the ground. It just comes with the territory. Do the work, and you will see the results. There’s simply no way around it
Stop. Slow down. Do everything manually. You have to watch every process intensely in the beginning to know what is working and what isn’t. You need to have your ear to the ground to understand what the feedback is. Do a small experiment, make it work on a small scale, and iterate quickly. Once you’ve really nailed it (and only then), start to scale. And scale big.
When considering the long-term work you’re doing, remember that you’re building equity in the Internet
Chapter 1: The Thought Process
Understand who your customer is.
Find out where people like your customer tend to congregate.
Figure out how to make contact with them where they are.
User acquisition
Creating something desirable enough that some subset of the human population wants it
Getting in front of those people in the right way
What is Johnny’s day like? Who does he hang out with? What websites does he visit? How would I describe what Johnny is into? What does Johnny do? What’s his daily routine? What websites does he use? Instagram—that could be interesting. So assuming that Johnny is on Instagram, he probably has a bunch of friends that are too. After all, Johnny isn’t everyone, it’s just his type we’re looking for. How could I find them? Who does he follow? What words does he use and what kind of photos does he post? How can I find all these people?
Went on Instagram, found Johnny, looked at his photos and hashtags, found a hashtag that would really resonate with people like Johnny, found somewhat of an influencer on that hashtag, reached out to them
Start by figuring out the type of person you want to reach and where that type of person congregates
Sending an e- mail to 15 million random people will probably be less effective than engaging in a real conversation with a dozen of these folks
Get in the mindset of the people you want to reach.
Making assumptions and playing around can get you a long way, especially in the initial stages
The most enlightening thing to do is talk with someone who falls in your target market. (Ideally, you are that person)
Find where the people you want to reach congregate
You’ll want as large a group of your target market as you can get
You’ll also want that target market to be as specific as you can
One of our favorite ways to track groups is by focusing on a keyword or hashtag that a specific demographic has unintentionally adopted
The interesting thing about following this process is that in doing so, you incidentally figure out what your marketing should look like. In this example, the words that stick out are artisan, dapper, and craftsmanship. Now we can go into creation mode with a greater understanding of how to build a world that our target audience wants to be a part of
Our end goal will be to get in front of the market we’ve discovered. But more important, we have to create a home where they can land once we find them
Chapter 2: Instagram
Conversion funnel: learns who we are, downloads the app/visits the website, uses twos every day
Pop up offering 10% off when the store opens if they drop in their email. Email that the store is open and they have a one-day, 10 percent off coupon
Tag people, comment on their photo, like their photos, send a DM, follow them
Follow and then like 3 photos had a 25% conversion of a follow back
We followed this process for a week before setting the product live, and by the end of the week we had ten thousand followers
It did get tiring spending literally all day liking photos on Instagram, but it was all worth it come launch day
Be very, very selective about whom you follow. Make it a tight network and as directly targeted as you can
We want to find influencers who don’t know yet that it should be expensive
Accounts with between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand followers are virtually never approached for shout-outs. Because of this, they have no price set for a shout-out, and we can often buy shout-outs from them for cheap
I’ve purchased dozens of shout-outs from accounts with fifty thousand followers for five to ten dollars
Your numbers may be slightly different, but $10 per shout-out serves as a good starting point
The first tool we’ll use to find influencers is Audiense
Perhaps the best (and definitely the cheapest) way to structure these types of deals is to shoot for some sort of affiliate structure. If my production cost on a tie is twenty dollars, and I sell it for eighty dollars, let’s agree to split the sixty-dollar profit with the influencers
The more we post with a hashtag and the more hashtags we use, the more we’ll be seen
A great way to find popular hashtags is using TagsForLikes
Posts also show up for hashtags in your comments so if you drop a bunch of hashtags in quickly you can show up at the top of hundreds of hashtags
Two cheater posts
Double tap if you X!
Tag someone who Y!
Chapter 3: The Perfect Landing Page: Starting a List
The money is in the email list
Layout
A really strong headline
One sentence a five-year-old can understand
A complementary and supplemental subheadline
The child asks, "What does that mean?"
A statement about the major benefit your product provides (what problem do you solve?)
"Why would someone need that?"
Benefit bullet points
A conversion button
"Download E-book"
Testimonials and data
Load this up with data and testimonials about how incredible your product is
The long conversion
Use the same button as you did above, but at the bottom
Chapter 4: SEO in One Day
The sites with the most links were— theoretically—the best sites
For now we’re going to focus our home page (our landing page) on ranking for one keyword that isn’t our brand or company name
At least in the beginning, we’re going to go after long tail keywords—very exact, intention-driven keywords with lower competition that we know can win
Finding long tail keywords
Use ÜberSuggest, Keyword Shitter, and a little bit of brainstorming to come up with some keywords.
Keywordshitter.com
Try to get a solid list of five to ten keywords to start with
Ideally, you’ll have over fifteen hundred options to work with after completing this process
Export those keywords to the Google Keyword Planner to estimate traffic level.
The Google Keyword Planner https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
Get Search Volume Data and Trends
Paste in your list of keywords
Click "Get Search Volume"
Export data to Excel with "Download"
SEMrush.com
As a general rule, the maximum level of “difficulty” or “competition” (Google sometimes uses the words synonymously) you should go after will be determined by the number of links you have.
Number of backlinks and maximum difficulty
<30 = 40
<100 = 40-50
<1000 = 50-70
1000+ = 70+
Sort the data by difficulty or competition, and eliminate all of the stuff that is too high for your site
Sort the traffic volume highest to lowest, and from this data pick five keywords that seem like a good fit
Search for those keywords with the SEOquake browser plug-in installed to analyze the true keyword difficulty.
https://www.google.com/trends/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seoquake/akdgnmcogleenhbclghghlkkdndkjdjc?hl=en
You might look into writing an article for Entrepreneur.com
Search your keywords and see if you'd be able to make it to the first page
On-page SEO checklist
Your keyword is in the <title> tag, ideally at the front (or close to the front) of the tag.
The title tag contains fewer than the viewable limit of sixty-five characters (optional but recommended).
Your keyword is in the first <h1> tag (and your page has an <h1> tag).
If your page contains additional header tags (<h2>, <h3>, etc.), your keyword or synonyms are in most of them.
Any images on the page have an <alt> tag that contains your chosen keyword.
Your keyword is in the meta description (and there is a meta description).
There are at least three hundred words of text on the page.
Your keyword appears in the URL (if not the home page).
Your keyword appears in the first paragraph of the copy.
Your keyword (or synonyms—Google recognizes them now) is used other times throughout the page.
Your keyword density is between .5 percent and 2.5 percent.
The page contains “dofollow” links to other pages. (This just means you’re not using “nofollow” links to every other page.)
The page has original content not taken from another page and is dissimilar from other pages on your site.
Off-page SEO = links = backlinks
Search Traffic -> Links to Your Site
More -> Who Links to You the Most -> Download This Table or Download Latest Links
https://ahrefs.com/
HTML links look something like this: <a href=“http://www.somesite.com” title=“keyword”>Anchor text</a>
The relevance of the anchor text matters. Generally speaking, you want to use your keyword as the anchor text for your internal linking whenever possible
If you’re ever creating links, you should use something generic, like the site name or the full URL
Generally speaking, you don’t want orphan pages (those that aren’t linked to by other pages), nor do you want an overly messy link structure
In an ideal world, every page would link to every other page on its same level
This can easily be done with a footer that feels like a sitemap or “recommended” pages
Almost every site has a page at url.com/robots.txt
This is just a plain text file that lets you tell search engine crawlers what to crawl and what to not crawl
If you don’t want Google to crawl a page (maybe it’s a log-in page you don’t want indexed or a landing page) you can just disallow it in your robots.txt by saying “disallow: /somepage.”
If you don’t add a trailing / to it (e.g., “disallow: /somepage/”), it will also disallow all child pages
Technically you can specify different rules for different bots (or user agents), but it’s easiest to start your file with “User-agent: *” if you don’t have a need for separate crawling rules
You can disavow links in the search console to combat against attacks from a competitor
Use nofollow if you want to link to somebody but you don’t want it to count as a vote (you don’t want to pass link juice), or you support user-generated content and want to deter spammers, you can use a “nofollow” link. Google says it discounts the value of those links
<a href=“http://www.somesite.com” title=“keyword” rel=“nofollow”>Anchor text</a>
If you’re going to change a URL but you don’t want its link juice to disappear, you can use a 301 Redirect. A 301 will pass a majority of the link juice
With two pages that are virtually the same, you can add something like <link rel=“canonical” href=“https://www.someurl.com/somepage”>
The easiest way to build high-quality links are what SEOs call Web 2.0s. That’s just a way to say “social sites,” or sites that let you post stuff
Twitter bio, GitHub readme, Youtube description, WordPress blog, Blogger blog, Tumblr, HackerNews, GrowthHackers, Inbound.org
Chapter 5: Your First Drip of Traffic: Becoming an Authority Site
Comments must be contextual, only mentioning your company when it naturally fits in, and they should learn something by reading your comment
People will click and respect your company because you're a thoughtful person who likes to contribute
BuzzBundle
People want comments on their tweets, videos, etc.
You can also send a Tweet and follow them to be a bit more personal
Chapter 6: Getting Press
Heavy-hitting content sights: Time magazine, BBC, The Guardian, TechCrunch, PandoDaily, Slate, Gizmodo
All you need to do is find a reporter or blogger who might like to write about you, and e-mail them your pitch
It should take you less than a day to e-mail up to a thousand relevant press contacts
We're selling the reporter that we're legitimate and interesting enough that their audience will want to hear about us
Scraper Chrome Extension for getting emails from websites
Alltop - blog-ranking website
Search for your category
Right click on one of the publications and use the Scraper Chrome Extension to get blogs
Export to Google Docs
BlogRank
Search for your category
Right click on a blog and click Scrape
Export to Google Docs
Is it timely? Is it relevant? Is it interesting? Why would someone like you be interested in reading this?
In the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, Jack Sparrow defined the difference between need and is this way: “That’s what a ship is, you know. It’s not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails. That’s what a ship needs. But what a ship is—what the Black Pearl really is—is freedom.” What Grasswire needs is an Internet newsroom. But what Grasswire is is democratization of journalism and information.
So in the initial pitch, we won’t go into detail about how the technology works, what APIs we pull from, why the user interface/user design (UI/UX) look like they do, and so on. We’ll talk about the story of Grasswire: what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and why it needs to be done. Reporters don’t often like products, but they usually love missions
A press kit should include the following:
Company overview
The company overview is a simple document that explains who you are and what you do
Include a tagline, a one-sentence description, three “how it works” paragraphs, and a call to action
Tagline: Waterproof iPods and headphones for swimmers
Description: Underwater Audio has developed technology that allows us to waterproof iPods, headphones, and other electronic devices for swimmers.
How it works: Underwater Audio music players come waterproofed from the inside out. They look, feel, and smell like any other 2GB iPod Shuffle—but they work underwater.
Underwater Audio seals the iPod from the inside out using a proprietary process, and we have tested it at a depth of two hundred feet (though we don’t recommend Underwater Audio for diving). Dunk it in water, leave it there, and it still works.
The Underwater Audio player will work with any headphones—though under the water, you’ll need waterproof headphones to create a watertight seal with your ear to have good audio. Our recommended picks are available along with your iPod on UnderwaterAudio.com
Underwater Audio iPods and bundles are available at UnderwaterAudio.com starting at $149.
Start by pretending I’m explaining a company to a five-year-old and then make my explanation more technical and detailed from there
Founder photos
Logos
Press mentions
Product screenshots, videos, or photographs
The strategy here is to give them every piece of content they could possibly want, and then let them decide what is relevant for their type of media
Keep the emails short
Introduction
One-sentence pitch
Offer or ask (sample or press kit)
Example email
Hey [name],
My name is Austen, from Underwater Audio. We developed a process that makes iPods completely waterproof. It’s some pretty cool technology you and your readers might be interested in. We’re at UnderwaterAudio.com, and I have a [press kit/sample/demo] I’d like to send your way to [review/check out] if you’d be interested. Let me know!
Thanks,
Austen Allred [contact information]
No long introductions, no links, no videos, no demos—just, “We’re here. Are you interested?”
BuzzStream to pull contact information off sites
First, find out if there are one or two blogs that would be your ideal publications. Find the ideal person there, and reach out to them on Twitter
@username Hey I have something to send you about [your angle]. What’s a good e-mail?
I like to send tweets to two people, but refrain from tweeting at fifty people. First because that’s annoying, second because the other reporters will see you blindly reaching out, and third because you’ll be suspended from Twitter for spamming
It’s worth spending twice as much time to find the right person
I try to send five hundred e-mails per day if I’m working a full day. Yes, it’s a full day’s work to send five hundred e-mails. That’s because you should try to understand who the person receiving the pitch is and speak specifically to them. If you’re copying and pasting and just hitting “Send” on every e-mail, you’re doing it wrong
If you don’t receive a response after a few days, follow up. But don’t be annoying about it. Remember that running a company is a marathon, not a sprint. You may want to get coverage from these reporters again. So be cordial, don’t burn any bridges, and be grateful if anyone writes about you
Chapter 7: Twitter
If a product we’re marketing doesn’t get 50 sign-ups (not to mention 150 new, active Twitter followers) every day, I know I’ve done something wrong
Twitter allows accounts with fewer than two thousand followers follow up to five thousand people. Those with over two thousand can follow a thousand people per day (so long as the number of people you follow isn’t more than 110 percent of the number of your followers). In other words, you can, by brute force, get a split second of attention from up to a thousand Twitter accounts daily. Set up your profile right, and that traffic drives through to your product or landing page, and interested parties can sign up from there
Let’s say you have a 10 percent follow-back rate (though in my experience, you will get a higher percentage of follow-back than that). That’s one hundred new followers per day, three thousand new followers per month, and thirty-six thousand five hundred new followers per year
FollowLiker helps you follow the people you want
You can expect to see at least a hundred new followers per day, and at least fifty clickthroughs to a landing page in a bio
Using FollowLiker on a personal profile will pretty much destroy the enjoyment of using Twitter
Use TweetDeck to reply quickly to searched tweets
One of the things you’ll notice in hacking social networks is that vanity matters. If you tell people they’re awesome, they’ll want to share that with their followers to make it clear to everyone else that they’re awesome
We’ve seen people do the same thing with affiliate reviews, rankings of influential people, “here’s what I learned from Person X” articles, etc. If there’s an influencer in your industry you want to get at, this is among the best ways to do it
Chapter 8: Pinterest
Pinterest is a discovery engine
Once you are invited to pin on those boards, as long as you don’t become overly spammy (be careful there—many will ensure that you’re not just pinning products from one company), you can pin on that board indefinitely—at times showing your pins to as many as hundreds of thousands of people
Pinterest content has a long shelf life
PinGroupie
Navigate to my category of choice and then sort by “Repins p.1,” which means repins on the first page. Generally speaking, the more repins there are on the first page, the more active the audience of a board is