Hi Mozzers! Today I wanted to share with you a recent experience that highlights the value of hiring an inbound marketer/strategist prior to launch of a new product and some recent success a project I worked on has had in generating loads of links, tons of Twitter hype, some great traffic - and most importantly some solid lead generation... with just a holding page.
Obvious disclaimer: As stated above, this is a project I have worked on and I am associated with the site to that extent - duh, how else can I write a meaningful case study? The client has been kind enough to allow me to share this information with you, which is both rare and exciting, and hopefully will give you guys some great ideas.
A Case Study
I’ve recently been working on a project with a client that truly “gets” online marketing and it’s been a great opportunity to try out some new things. They wanted to invest heavily in inbound marketing pre-launch and commissioned a team of experts to develop a social strategy, brand messaging, information architecture and keyword research as well as an international rollout plan and linkbuilding strategy document. This, in my view, was really smart forward thinking and hopefully justification for others as to how important and valuable it can be to involve inbound marketers BEFORE a site is built and use their input for a launch strategy.
For me, by far the most exciting part of this experience was being involved in the development of the pre-launch strategy. The formal launch of the client company’s Forex trading platform is set for early 2012. But with excitement building for a platform set to markedly improve the trading experience for Forex traders world-side – the founders gave us free reign to spec and launch a holding page months before the true launch of the site.
Now, we've all seen your standard holding page, but we decided to do something a bit different - why should the ongoing development of the site prevent us from generating a buzz? The idea originally came from hearing Dave Naylor speak at a4uexpo last year. Dave spoke about building links to new folders on a site and walling them off using robots.txt because it "makes the spiders hungry". This seemed like a brilliant idea to me, but I was nervous about building links to any part of the site for which we did not yet have content - user experience and the rest of it. After a number of chats with my partner in crime on this project, (and a number of other projects in the past), Neal Dougan, we came up with an idea to invest in design, make something different, and take advantage of the budget we had been granted. We explored the feasibility of using parallax scrolling (a la Ben the Bodyguard) but needed to create something that would be meaningful to our users and hadn't been done to death.
We pushed the idea of creating an interactive infographic to attract attention and interaction with the holding page. The real creative came from a New Zealand based design agency (STRATEGY) and some Django/HTML 5 wizards also based out of New Zealand (Sons & Co.). The end result takes personal input from the user, compares it against a high flyer in the financial trading space, and contains a hook to get users to sign-up. To have a look at the end result you can check out the holding page which is live on Mahi Forex.
The combination of getting the user to engage, and using new and emerging web technologies to create something interactive makes all the difference and it's pretty clear to me that there are many better ways to attract an audience than using tired techniques like "regular" infographics.
Results
The holding page went live on Saturday, October 1 - but we saved our initial push for Monday (October 3). At time of publication (Monday, October 10) this holding page has received:
- > 25,000 Visits from 130 countries.
- Links from more than 250 referring sources (including coverage from really exciting/high quality websites)
- 697 Tweets
- >1,000 Facebook likes
And most importantly we had more than 450 people submit their email addresses asking for an invitation to the platform - from people seeing how quickly a famous trader can earn your yearly salary and responding to the prompt "Perhaps it's time to start trading - Email me an invitation". This is clearly part of a broader marketing play – but I think the number of sign-ups is what has us most excited. Anyone who has worked in the affiliate space around forex and trading knows the value of getting people signed up.
There will always be people who are sceptical of anything that include marketing messaging, or undertones and people hate to be marketed to generally speaking but for me, if something is fun and exciting I don’t mind watching it. And I think the sign-ups indicate that we’ve got some of the right people involved and most excitingly, some people who may not have heard about us otherwise.
Why it Worked
Right, far be it for me to claim the credit for this one - without the help of Neal, the design agency, the amazing development team out in New Zealand, and the fact that the client "got it" this wouldn't have worked, but I think there are a number of reasons that this play worked in this instance.
First of all, I do think it plays to Rand's post the other day about thought leadership. The forex space is an increasingly crowded one, yet it is largely populated by sites that display very technical information in an inaccessible and uncreative way, and the market leaders (from a ranking perspective) are sites that have been around since the dawn of the internet. As a result - we decided the only way to make an impact was to make a splash and appeal to the design savvy, the marketing types, and folks who may not hear about the brand through the financial circles and press. So we decided to try something relatively new - and certainly new to the space.
Another reason this worked as well as it did, was that the design and development was truly good enough that it didn't just get flamed by the community and featured prominently on a number of design sites and CSS galleries.
The outreach and seeding on this has been really strong as well, but ultimately, the site attracts natural links and people naturally want to share it - and it was designed very specifically with this aim.
The Lessons
1. You should engage your marketing team long before you launch a new product or website. I know a lot of people say "you shouldn't pay for SEO until such and such a point" but I personally think that's nonsense. None of this would have happened had the client not recognised the value in inbound pre-launch. As a consequence, you can also be sure that the CMS will be client and SEO friendly, there will be a portion of the site dedicated to posting fun branded content, the information architecture will be well organised and the international rollout plan and targeting will be in the bag.
It costs a lot less to get this right the first time than to redesign and redirect a bunch of poorly organised content.
2. Do something unique. I know this sounds like a cop-out, but honestly, a plain old infographic will never get as many natural links as something experimental. With this project, we really needed to do something different to shake up the market so that we can compete with the platforms that started as currency calculators in year dot.
3. Take a risk every now and again. We couldn't promise numbers on how many links this would generate, how many leads, or how much traffic but we assured the client it would be successful - and I think if any of you have worked in the affiliate space in forex you know how much these leads alone are worth.
4. Consider your target audience. A successful piece of linkbait (in my view) should target your main client base as well as one other community and this should be evaluated on an individual basis for anything you put out for the purpose of creating buzz. It only made sense for us to target the design/internet community in this case because - who better to create a buzz - but you have to be true to the audience. You can't approach the design/dev community or tight niche communities like Reddit with some contrived crap. We didn't do it to get links, we did it to create interest, to make use of new technologies and to start a long process long before the site was ready.
5. Don't be cheap. I know that not all clients have big budgets to play with, but as I argued earlier: this holding page EASILY paid for itself with the lead generation alone, forget about the value of the links. It's hard to quantify the reward but there is no benefit to half-assing something. If you're going to bother to do a piece of linkbait, go as far as you can with your budget and bear in mind that done right, it's easy to cover your costs! This is especially important if you're hoping to get support from the online community.
6. Don't always do it for the links. I think this is especially important when considering a launch or a holding page. Yes we want links but that was not the purpose of this exercise. We wanted to engage and excite users about a cool new product that isn't quite ready to go to market yet. That was our primary focus and the links came naturally.
7. Downtime doesn't have to be suck-time. There is no reason that a delay in the development of a site needs to be time wasted. You can start building your brand and building up equity to your site long before launch and could easily do the same to launch subsequent new sections of a site - just remember to think outside the box!
An aside - it wasn't all dewdrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Everyone seems to like the creative, but some seem to find the reality a bit harsh/sad. A bit of an unplanned for externality, particularly with all of the #occupy stuff going on this week but we hadn't really planned on that when we started developing the concept almost six months ago.
Thanks all for reading, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the site and on the bigger picture stuff/lessons you've learned with this sort of thing as well! Feel free to find me on Twitter or Neal if you have any questions!
How to pre-launch like a boss. That. Is. All.
Well said Sir!
The first step to building trust is to make something understandable. I think the appeal of this page extends way beyond the target client base, the design savvy and the marketing types. It successfully reduces a complex subject right down to its most basic fundamental concept, and does so in a playful, engaging way. Pretty much anyone above the age of ten most likely will 'get' this. This campaign has the potential to reach far beyond the target market base, generating interest from people who may never even have considered trading before. Including a few ambitious 10 year olds. I think it's brilliant Sam.
Very well said. This page takes a subject that is alien to many and makes it tangible for almost anyone (of age and understanding). I find myself eager to show all of my friends, none of which have the slightest interest in Forex trading. The beauty, though, is that if just one of my friends (or colleagues) happens to be so captivated by the rhetoric and design that they convert, my link (which I provided in 'voting' for the cool-factor of the page) will have benefited the true underlying cause. As Google+ has shown us, circles overlap. If I share this site with my tech friends, there's a chance that one of those friends is actually interested in Forex trading (increasing their chance of becoming a conversion). As they spread it amongst their various circles, the chance of overlapping increases exponentially, and with it the conversions.
I love the attention to detail. Especially with what happens if you enter a truly ridiculous salary in the box. It's the little details backed by a strong idea that lead to something special, as you show with your final page. Nice post :)
cool beans .. anything over 2,000,000 and its surprise surprise ^_^
I came across Mahifx on 1st oct and must admit it was very well executed.
Sam, thanks for sharing :)
Hi Neal, quite an interesting case study. I am the owner of a leading forex affiliate news website and its refreshing to see something new being done on the marketing level. Most often all one gets to see is the over used ipad promotions, or companies investing heavily in paid search. Only a few companies really get it right when it comes to an overall marketing strategy.
Would you be kind enough to get in touch with me (contactATforexaffiliatesreviewDOTCOM)? I'd like to take this a step further and present a case study to my readers that comprise of both forex brokers as well as affiliates.
Cheers!
Great case and thanks for the transparence shown sharing all this with us, Samuel.
Your case reminds me a lot what, for instance in the movie industry, is quite usual: creating rumors and buzz in order to increase the desire of watching a movie; i.e.: first photos from the set, theatrical teasers one year before the premiere, sinerngy with related industries as could be music if the soundtrack is done by a famous singer/band...
Surely your approach is the one ideally any business would have to follow when it comes to launching new sites or redesigning its presence online.
You say "don't be cheap"... that's sometimes an obligation when it comes to some start-ups or when the Client is a small one. In that case the creativity must be even smarter, but results can be almost the same if the pre-launch inbound actions are well planned and realized.
What I see as key factors are three not technical or even marketing related ones:
PD: Yesterday, when Rand shared the link to your client's site, I played a lot with it. The "game" nature is surely a win win factor of that page. Ah, I felt like a crap seeing the results coming out putting my incomes :D... and I was ready to march to Wall Street.
I wasn't even halfway through this article and I sent it to my coworkers and shared it on FB. Brilliant and engaging. Nice job! Now I need to finish the article...
Sam, this is an awesome project mate! I didn't knew who's behind it but I was caught in the buzz. My first encounter was a week ago and I was shocked! I'll use it as an example in one of my courses next month :) Thanks for sharing the insighs with us!P.S: Brilliant idea!
I think I heard a reference to this website yesterday on a talk radio show. Nothing mentioned specifically about the site, I just remember someone saying "John Paulson makes that in 6 minutes!"
Thank you everyone for your kind comments. It's great to get feedback from you guys and we really appreciate it! It's one of those projects that is actually an SEO's dream to work on. When the client understands our logic and why we do things like this, it makes the whole process so much easier and enjoyable. Also I get to work with the awesome Mr Crocker!
In any difficult niche that you are trying to make inroads into, you have to endeavor to do something that will make waves, do something different and out of the norm. It's just not going to cut the mustard to do boring infographics ( Interbank FX's infographic on Algorithmic Trading - search for it to see what I mean) for the sake of doing them. Its not just about links (although that is a nice bonus) but to put the brand out there from the start. Why have a Dreamhost or Godaddy holding page, when you can start the ball rolling for yourself or for your own company or your client.
Also with the social element now coming into prominence, tweets, likes and G+ are more important than ever. Getting a few thousand of these will not only give you that authority your site needs, but also a steady stream of traffic. You'd be amazed at the social traffic this site has had.
In any case, the holding page has worked out really well. The price of this site has paid for itself in just 3 days.The value of the links, tweets, likes and signups so far have far outweighed the initial cost.
Definitely something for your clients' to think about, as this can potentially work in any given sector, if you think creatively and use current innovations in web tech to have a point of difference. Its all about the WOW factor baby!!
after you launch the site. I think you should do a follow up article on how the links you've built so far effect your traffic.
Absolutely brilliant campaign! I have seen that website before, too (I live in Austria, Europe). It's amazing how a great idea can spread the whole world.
Thank you for you insight information!
Couldnt have said it better tha that! Simply brilliant campaign.
Wonderfully written blog, but on a better note the site was stunning. From the placement of the numbers and graphs to where it would cut off text to make you actively scroll down the page. Thanks for the great insight into designing and planning for a product.
Pretty cool site concept for a niche which is would say is a little more difficult for making crative concepts and ideas. I agree with the concept about thinking up something different as a lot of ideas have been done over and over. But overall some good points for any one launching a new campaign.
Sam! this is really very smart! I really appreciate that you share this information as I see people rarely talk about actionable stuff.
The idea of having a SEO even before you start a project, launch a product or website is a great itself as it save lots of time. If you invest rightly on SEO in the pre-stage probably you are going to see great results pretty soon as he will exactly know where to go and not to fix the problems (design and links side) that has been created by someone.
Unfortunately, most business owners (sorry but usually startups) try to build links run different campaigns by themselves and as they are not experts they usually link to bad neighbor-hood and after all these they come to SEOs to fix the things up. I strongly agreed with the point that SEOs if involved before the product is launch they can bring new value to the overall business.
The Experiment is awesome and the good part is it can be applied to almost every kind of campaign (have to research the industry). Also, infographics is not the only idea but one can go with a free e-book, magazine, special discount and countless other stuff (depending on your industry and target market).
I must Congrats you for such a wonderful post!
Nice strategy.. and I agree to you regarding inbound marketing before making launch of any new product or service, and most of all I got to know that there should be something unique and new way of presentation with creativity, that's what I saw from your project of Mahi Forex, quite interesting Splash, it was!
and I agree to you regarding making strategies having the focus on target users not just for the links but for thier attention..
In conclusion I learned that a Pre Marketing process/action with creativity is must to do before the official launch, and it is not that much risky but instead it's helpful in making people aware of the upcoming product/brand etc.
thanks a lot...
Go to Mahifx and type in 2,000,000,000. Lol.
Great article sam. And the best part was creativity and target audience. For prelaunch buzz, we need to think of the early adopters. Their contribution is significant in products growth. And you have very well acknowledged it. And the other point which I consider important is don't do it for the links do it for product awareness.
"makes the spiders hungry"
Thanks for sharing this brillant quote :-) I wrote it down, love it!
Nice campain, thanks for sharing this.
Hey Sam, thanks for this great post! This is one of the most inspiring things I've read lately! Really, thanks for sharing!
Ever since I read it (the day it was posted), I've been trying to think of a dynimic infographic for my website (freelance jobs)... it's not that easy! :) So I really admire what you guys did here.
I was wondering, do you have an update of the number of visits, links, tweets, likes, etc., that you received? In just 10 days you had 25,000 visits, 250 links, etc., those numbers are great! I wonder what you guys achieved in 1 month! Please keep us posted. Thanks!
Hello
I was impressed by this pre-buzz campaign and I was quite sure that with enough creativity this can be implemented in most of the business fields.
This is what we came up with for our project management app pre launch : https://www.easyplanpm.com/
We've launched this campaign a couple of days ago and already received some cool feedback from the online community.
Thanks for inspiring us!
I'm a big fan of this type of interraction - please guys post more case studies like this, keep em coming!
How long did it take to create that infomotion?
BTW there's a typo on easyplanpm.com (near the bottom)
:) Saw ur site during the linkbait phase - when this page was on homepage
https://mahifx.com/john-paulson/
Good Work!
I think you need to update the link in this article to the correct page though - it points to the homepage and not the interractive infographic on https://mahifx.com/john-paulson/ - This might confuse users here?
It's hard to find the link as it is in the footer!
This is one of the coolost posts I've ever read on SEOmoz. Great strategy, makes me want to share your page with my friends even though I have nothing to do with the trading whatsoever! This is one of the reasons, I think SEO's should be working as Web Strategists, especially post panda.
I wish all clients listened to the gospel! It's nice when you have the freedom to experiment and measure - and it's even better when it actually works! Nice campaign.
I really love the format and push for the innovative marketing. I can definetely see how that landing page will stir conversation and new topics around the web, which will offer you strong inbound links.
But how are you going to get users coming back with interest? I would have liked to see some small infographics concerning the actual product/info that will be offered by Mahifx. I would be worried that you are generating leads and links based off controversy and conversation, but it won't turn into concrete sales or even inbound links with good anchor text. I'd assume most inbound links are about paulson and how much more money he makes, or how the 1% of america is wealthier than the other 99% etc etc.
All in good time Sir. This is just the first phase. Creating a buzz. Other infographics will be produced to cater for hardcore traders, but that isn't the only thing we have planned.
As for links we have, they are branded or branded with keywords which is great for the client. Getting links wasn't the main aim of this project. It was to create awareness of the brand and to create a buzz before launch. A teaser. It worked.
Cool infographic and lovely story. Must admit, I'm amazed it got that much hype, big kudo's for the achievement!
Launching an official blog (www.site.com/blog), 2 or 3 months before the actual site (www.site.com) launch.
If the blog has good and unique content that is highly relevant to the site, it will help in creating a buzz among its audience that are the potential customers.
I am just a bit concerned about the SEO aspect. Will it be a good practice in view if SEO.
Please suggest!
Thanks
Great to get thinking & data behind it! I sent the original around our office when you launched it, as a great example of Linkbait, now I have followed up by sending this post with the real data on it
Ive seen this pre-population of urls tactic mentioned by Dave Naylor before & im sure its used by many others, but the content and execution of this was just spot on
Great work on this post! I am actually on the precipice of launching a project that needs this kind of buzz. I appreciate your legwork on the project and hope to implement some of your tips here. ;)
PS: How much did the design/coding from New Zealand run you? Sounds like it might be a good place to look.
Hi Mitch- thanks for your response and good luck on the project. That is the one thing that we had discussed internally and ultimately didn't feel entirely comfortable sharing (in large part because it involved a number of parties and Mahi used a separate strategy/design firm to the developers). I'm sure the agencies would welcome and respond to any proposals or requests but ultimately felt like that wasn't my information to share!
Hi Sam, awesome work, could you elaborate on how you launched the holding page? Was it simple tweeting/Fb'ing, Adwords? How did you do the initial outreach to get the ball rolling. I can see how it spread so quickly but I'd love to hear more on the initial push for traffic
Derek
Hi Derek,
Sure thing. In terms of the "launch" it did come down to a simple product of tweeting and posting it on our own Facebook pages. I did quietly ask a few of my friends in the industry to have a look at it and Tweet about it if they liked it. From there it all grew quite naturally.
We've not done anything with AdWords on this account at all yet so most efforts will have come from the above.
In addition to this work we have done some manual outreach to contact webmasters (Neal has led these efforts) and also published a Press Release. The highest return has come from the "natural" stuff - i.e. growth from those initial Tweets and Facebook mentions as well as the manual outreach, whilst the press release has had a somewhat minimal impact from what we can see so far.
Hope this helps and feel free to ping me a message if I can clarify at all!
Pre-Launch is sometimes just as important as the acutal launch. Great post.
This is one off the most ethical post I readied on the MOZ, Sam thanks for the outstanding theory and Idea.
I am glad I read your post. The interaction on your client's site was intriguing. I wish you and you client a great start once the site goes live.
Bravo! holding page was fantastic but I have to admit the idea of this great iinfogrpahic below my mind :)
Thanks for such a knowledge able article.
Sam, thanks for sharing this case study, mate. You cracked it there! well done ; )
This is genious! Unfortunately, most companies won't be able to afford a "no holds bar" on funding holding page, and wait until next year before they can start earning money on their websites...
Hi There,
I just wanted to say that you are definitely right that this wouldn't be a realistic solution for everyone but I do think there are a number of lessons in this and also that this could be done quite affordably. It would ultimately come down to what you were trying to launch and what the model would be for making money - and then building something engaging, interactive, and using interesting tech.
If you're set up to run something with revenue only coming in the form of display and Google advertising then, no, this probably wouldn't work as well for you... but I'm sure there are ways you could find something new involving some sort of hook in almost any market and without breaking the bank. At the end of the day, given Mahi's model this was a "long term" play, but even with that said we've more than broken even on the costs (just in terms of leads) and the benefit of the links has an actual market place value (i.e. what sites would charge for links) well into the thousands.
For me it all comes down to getting the right creative idea for your product/site and then how you look at value created. For me we got a great deal on this but I appreciate that the "sell" for why you should do this sort of thing may not always be cut and dry because there are some obvious unknowns and risks.
Hope this helps and thanks for your comment!
Fantastic infographic for a holding page. Really interesting, fun, if not a little depressing! Great Job!
I agree that the ideas are great and the execution was excellent, but is less than a 2% conversion rate really considered acceptable. Seems like you have been getting mentioned in all the wrong places. The acceptable acquisition cost per lead in the FX market must be pretty high.
Hi Dave, First off, I just noticed that you've just joined SEOmoz so welcome to the community!
To your point I'm not sure I agree because the purpose of this launch was about so much more than acquisitions and was driven in fact by acquiring links and shares. And if you check out the comment from Travis above, we may well create new entries to the market as well.
Now, I honestly don't know what a good conversion rate in this market is, but I would say given that this has been driven at the tech community and others that would be likely to link to us or share the page with their friends both we and the client are ecstatic with the result. There is a lot more in the marketing pipeline that will directly target the market of existing traders but ultimately Mahi believe that it will be their execution of the platform and some of the other ways in which they will distinguish themselves from the competition that will really get those communities excited so we will be reaching out to them much closer to launch and at that point would be hoping for a higher conversion rate.
Lastly, just to talk about some of the other value this project has added we have gotten links and coverage from a number of high authority sites (including the New York Times business blog). Some of these sites are more targeted than others but some of these sites are sites that you could not hope to buy a link on and that are only interested in the tech behind what we've done. With all that in mind and given how a lot of the rest of the forex market behaves when it comes to SEO (I.e. Buying most of their links) we've managed to get loads of links before launching, do so naturally, and save Mahi thousands of dollars in the process from not buying links. Please do watch this space though as I know Mahi have a lot more exciting stuff planned and will undoubtedly be more targeted with some of those efforts.
Thanks for your comment and hope to see you around SEOmoz now that you've joined!
Edit: Formatting (silly iPad)
All excellent points, Sam. I was probably looking at this too narrowly and not looking at the value of the links. Again, I applaud you on the plan and execution ... very cool. And it sounds like the P/L works, too!