The lessons Rand has learned from building and growing Moz are almost old enough to drive. From marketing flywheels versus growth hacks, to product launch timing, to knowing your audience intimately, Rand shares his best advice from a decade and a half of marketing Moz in today's edition of Whiteboard Friday.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we are going to chat about some of the big lessons learned for me personally building this company, building Moz over the last 16, 17 years.
Back in February, I left the company full-time. I'm still the Chairman of the Board and contribute in some ways, including an occasional Whiteboard Friday here and there. But what I wanted to do as part of this book that I've written, that's just coming out April 24th, Lost and Founder, is talk about some of the elements in there, maybe even give you a sneak peek.
If you're thinking, "Well, what are the two or three chapters that are super relevant to me?" let me try and walk you through a little bit of what I feel like I've taken away and what I'm going to change going forward, especially stuff that's applicable to those of us in web marketing, in SEO, and in broader marketing.
Marketing flywheels > growth hacks
First off, marketing flywheels, in my experience, almost always beat growth hacks. I know that growth hacks are trendy in the last few years, especially in the startup and technology worlds. There's been this sort of search for the next big growth hack that's going to transform our business. But I've got to be honest with you. Not just here at Moz, but in all of the companies that I've had experience with as a marketer, this tends to be what that looks like when it's implemented.
So folks will find a hack. They'll find some trick that works for a little while, and it results in this type of a spike in their traffic, their conversions, their success metrics of whatever kind. So they've discovered a way to game Facebook or they found this new black hat trick or they found this great conversion device. Whatever it is, it's short term and short lasting. Why is this? It tends to be because of something Andrew Chen calls — and I'll use his euphemism here — it's called the "Law of Shitty Click-through Rates," which essentially says that over time, as people get experienced with a sort of marketing trend, they become immune to its effects.
You can see this in anything that sort of tries to hack at consciousness or take advantage of psychological biases. So you get this pattern of hack, hack, hack, hack, and then none of the hacks you're doing work anymore. Even if you have a tremendously successful one, even if this is six months in length, it tends to be the case that, over time, those diminish and decline.
Conversely, a marketing flywheel is something that you build that generates inertia and energy, such that each effort and piece of energy that you put into it helps it spin faster and faster, and it carries through. It takes less energy to turn it around again and again in the future after you've got it up and spinning. This is how a lot of great marketing works. You build a brand. You build your audience. They come to you. They help it amplify. They bring more and more people back. In the web marketing world, this works really well too.
So most of you are familiar with Moz's flywheel, but I'll try and give it a rough explanation here. We start down here with content ideas that we get from spending lots of time with SEOs. We do keyword research, and we optimize these posts, including look at Whiteboard Friday itself.
What do we do with Whiteboard Friday? You're watching this video, but you'll also see the transcript below. You'll see the podcast version from SoundCloud so that you can listen to the text rather than watch me if you can do audio only for some reason. Each of these little images have been cut out and placed into the text below so that someone who's searching in Google images might find some of these and find their way to Whiteboard Friday. A few months after it goes up here, hosted with Wistia on Moz, it will be put up on YouTube.com so that people can find it there.
So we've done all these sorts of things to optimize these posts. We publish them, and then we earn amplification through all the channels that we have — email, social media, certainly search engines are a big one for us. Then we grow our reach for next time.
Early in the days, early in Moz's history, when I was first publishing, I was writing every blog post myself for many, many years. This was tremendously difficult. We weren't getting much reach. Now, it's an engine that turns on its own. So each time we do it, we earn more SEO ranking ability, more links, more other positive ranking signals. The next time we publish content, it has an even better chance of doing well. So Moz's flywheel keeps spinning, keeps getting faster and faster, and it's easier and easier. Each time I film Whiteboard Friday, I'm a little more experienced. I've gotten a little better at it.
Flywheels come in many different forms
Flywheels come in a lot of forms. It's not just the classic content and SEO one that we're describing here, although I know many of you who watch Whiteboard Friday probably use something similar. But press and PR is a big one that many folks use. I know companies that are built on primarily event marketing, and they have that same flywheel going for them. In advertising, folks have found these, in influencer-focused marketing flywheels, and community and user-generated content to build flywheels. All of these are ways to do that.
Find friction in your flywheels
If and when you find friction in your flywheel, like I did back in my early days, that's when a hack is really helpful. If you can get a hack going to grow reach for next time, for example, in my early days, this was all about doing outreach to folks in the SEO space who were already influential, getting them to pay attention and help amplify Moz's content. That was the hack that I needed. Essentially, it was a combination of the Beginner's Guide to SEO and the Search Ranking Factors document, which I've described here. But that really helped grow reach for next time and made this flywheel start spinning in the way that we wanted. So I would urge you to favor flywheels over hacks.
Marketing an MVP is hard
Second one, marketing an MVP kind of sucks. It's just awful. Great products are rarely minimum viable products. The MVP is a wonderful way to build. I really, really like what Eric Ries has done with that movement, where he's taken this concept of build the smallest possible thing you can that still solves the user's problem, the customer's problem and launch that so that you can learn and iterate from it.
I just have one complaint, which is if you do that publicly, if you launch your MVP publicly and you're already a brand that's well known, you really hurt your reputation. No one ever thinks this. No one ever thinks, "Gosh, you know, Moz launched their first version of new tool X. It's pretty terrible, but I can see how, with a few years of work, it's going to be an amazing product. I really believe in them." No one thinks that way.
What do you think? You think, "Moz launched this product. Why did they launch it? It's kind of terrible. Are they going downhill? Do they suck now? Maybe I should I trust their other tools less." That's how most people think when it comes to an MVP, and that's why it's so dangerous.
So I made this silly chart here. But if the quality goes from crap to best in class and the amplification worthiness goes from zero to viral, it tends to be the case that most MVPs are launching way down here, when they're barely good enough and thus have almost no amplification potential and really can't do much for your marketing other than harm it.
If you instead build it internally, build that MVP internally, test with your beta group, and wait until it gets all the way up to this quality level of, "Wow, that's really good," and lots of people who are using it say, "Gosh, I couldn't live without this. I want to share it with my friends. I want to tell everyone about this. Is it okay to tell people yet?" Maybe it's starting to leak. Now, you're up here. Now, your launch can really do something. We have seen exactly that happen many, many times here at Moz with both MVPs and MVPs where we sat on them and waited. I talk about some of these in the book.
MVPs, great to test internally with a private group. They're also fine if you're really early stage and no one has heard of you. But MVPs can seriously drag down reputation and perception of a brand's quality and equity, which is why I generally recommend against them, especially for marketing.
Living the lives of your customer/audience is a startup + marketing cheat code
Last, but not least, living the lives of your customers or your audience is a cheat code. It is a marketing and startup cheat code. One of the best things that I have ever done is to say, "You know what? I am not going to sequester myself in my office dreaming up this great thing I think we should build or I think that we should do. Instead, I'm going to spend real time with our customers."
So you might remember, at the end of 2013, I did this crazy project with my friend, Wil Reynolds, who runs Seer Interactive. They're an SEO agency based here in the United States, in Philadelphia and San Diego. They do a lot more than SEO. Wil and I traded houses. We traded lives. We traded email accounts. I can't tell you how weird it is answering somebody's email, replying to Wil's mom and being like, "Oh, Mrs. Reynolds, this is actually Rand. Your son, Wil, is answering my email off in Seattle and living in my apartment."
That experience was transformational for me, especially after having gone through the pain of building something that I had conceptualized myself but hadn't validated and hadn't even come up with the idea from real problems that real people were facing. I had come up with it based on what I thought could grow the company. I seriously dislike ideas that come from that perspective now.
So since then, I just try not to assume. I try not to assume that I know what people want. When we film a Whiteboard Friday, it is almost always on a topic that someone I have met and talked to either over email or over Twitter or in person at an event or a conference, we've had a conversation in person. They've said, "I'm struggling with this." I go, "I can make a Whiteboard Friday to help them with that." That's where these content ideas come from.
When I spend time with people doing their job, I was just in San Diego a little while ago meeting with a couple of agencies down there, spending time in their offices showing off a new links tool, getting all their feedback, seeing what they do with Open Site Explorer and Ahrefs and Majestic and doing their work with them, trying to go through the process that they go through and actually experiencing their pain points. I think this right here is the product and marketing cheat code. If you spend time with your audience, experiencing their pain points, the copy you write, what you design, where you place it, who you try and get to influence and amplify it, how you serve them, whether that's through content or through advertising or through events, or whatever kind of marketing you're doing, will improve if you live the lives of your customers and their influencers.
Whatever kind of marketing you're doing will improve if you live the lives of your customers and their influencers.
All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. If you have feedback on this or if you've read the book and checked that out and you liked it or didn't like it, please, I would love to hear from you. I look forward to your comments. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Yup indeed Rand its very fascinating to hear about your marketing journey so far. Indeed the Whiteboard Friday is really a great concept.
Thanks for sharing your resourceful information and experience, Rand.
Best Regards !!
I partly agree with you about growth hacks. I'll give you an example (it may not count as growth hack, but you'll understand the point): i'm sure you remember Google authorship. When Google stopped showing authorship results, people who did not implemented it said: "I knew it will not last, glad i didn't implemented it." But, those who did set up authorship, got few years of increased visibility and significantly increased clickthroughs (a study performed by search marketing firm Catalyst found that clicks improved 150% with Google authorship). So, favor flywheels over hacks—yes, ignore growth hacks—no.
I totally agree with live the lives of your customers. Do not assume, test it instead. It applies to everything in web design, not only topics people are struggling with. A simple example: many websites use very small font size trying to show everything above the fold. "It doesn't matter - they said, visitors can increase font size in options." I decided to test it. I made a page with a small font size, show it to people and watched them "kissing the screen" trying to read. "-You know, browser have option to increase font size, there is also a keyboard shortcut." "-Really? How? Does that apply only to this page?" So, ask real people about everything. Don't assume if you know something or care about, that everyone else know or care.
About the book, I've read all that's available on Amazon (for Amazon newbies, above the cover you will see a colored text "Look inside". Click on it to read available pages). It was late at night when i read about the book on SparkToro, so i clicked the link with intention to look briefly on table of content. Instead i ended up reading everything till 4am. Do i need to tell you more?
Moz readers, do you want to start a startup company and have a cash shortage? Good news. There is no problem. Literally. There are so many options available. All over the world, regardless where you live. Read chapter "afterword - cheat code for next time" available for free on Rand's book.
If other chapters are giving insights like "cheat code for next time" it will become startup bible.
One question: is everything true in the book, or you added few things "for dramatic effect"? Like your close encounter with "chained don Corleone"?
Thanks Stelian! Appreciate the excellent feedback.
Re: growth hacks - as I noted in the video and the book, I think hacks, when applied to a point of friction in a flywheel, are a powerful tactic. I think authorship was exactly that -- it could help websites get more search traffic and that helped many of them turn their flywheel faster. A temporary tactic, but one that made those who received the traffic more powerful over time.
Re: exaggeration - no! My publisher and editor were very strict that I couldn't do that. I may by slightly hyperbolic in a description (e.g. "enormous!" when in fact it was just quite big to me at the time), but never outright inaccurate. It's nice having a publisher like Penguin/Random House, because they do a lot of fact-checking for you, too.
Rand, kudos amigo - I've watched you and your businesses grow over the years. I have learned so much from you and SEOMOZ / MOZ has always been a fundamental part of my business/lifestyle. Much respect.
Thanks for the tips. I can't believe you made a job swap. That is awesome!
Your book was already on my reading checklist. Is it good?
...Just kidding, I know it will! Thanks for the post Rand!
Fingers crossed it's good. I'm rarely proud of or happy with my own work, but I think this one is actually pretty solid. This is a dangerous road to go alone, and hopefully, the book can at least help you avoid making the same mistakes I did.
Just oredered your book on amazon! Can't wait!
Hi Rand, great content! I completely agree with you, the key of everything is listening to our clients and work hard to give them the best possible answer to their problems.
Congratulations for the video!
Thanks for sharing your valuable experience with us Rand!
The process is like a chain interconnected with each other and grows with the ideas and hacks that worked. But said well Rand that nothing can be constant for so long, it will always need a change.
I love how MOZ worked to grow its online presence… Whiteboard Friday, SEO Guides, question answers, an all. I am looking towards your next experience of the swap with Wil J.
One question with MVP, do you recommend or say yes to market MVP for small businesses? I am always confused with this.
I like MVPs that are private in the beta stage and/or MVPs that are from very small companies/organizations whose reputations won't hinge on whether it's received well by a large audience.
Stellar WBF, i definitely agree with creating duplicatable marketing flywheel strategies as opposed to jumping from growth hack to growth hack. Looking forward to checking out the new book Rand!
I shared this because I really like the viewpoint on flywheels versus hacks. It's interesting how hard it is to explain to some clients how hard it is to replicate the results of hacks long term, and how white hat is the way to go. Then other clients immediately see the logic. Thanks.
Rand, very good video and content topic. I agree that marketing fly wheels are better in the long-run than most growth hacks, however there are exceptions.
As you pointed out with your own growth hack to build reach and amplification in the early days. I'm currently struggling with this for my own start-up inbound marketing agency.
The live the lives of your customer's definitely resonates with me and I think it's important to get out of the office. I took a pragmatic marketing class and the instructor actually had the acronomy NIGDITO, which stands for nothing important get's done in the office.
It's very true, so for every company that I've worked for or clients that I have helped through my agency, one of my first order of business is to develop the buyer personas.
I build out content based on the buyer personas and discover the channels where customers live or find credible sources for via personal visits or discovery phone calls. Would you say that at the very least curated surveys sent to a segment of early adapters-evangelist of the product/service?
What are some of the tactics that you have found to work on amplifying your reach from two decades and a half at Moz? Are they blogs, vlogs (like this one), podcasts or speaking at conferences. I recently heard a podcast on Drift, from their CEO David Cancel, which really resonated. He said own your audience, and it sounds simple but there is a great deal of time, resources and consistency.
In a busy digitally focused world that has TIME being our most precious resource, it seems to me that getting an audience's attention is the new currency. What are your thoughts?
Again, thanks for the knowledge and feedback and I'll be sure to get your book, just clicked on the Amazon link.
Gianni Quintana | Digitechy Creative
to the end-user or
Great watch Rand. I'm in the early stages of my start-up and I have to admit, what I have learned about my potential SEO customers over the last couple of months compared to my previous years in an agency is immense.
When I was working in an agency as their Search Director, I rarely dealt with clients pre-signup and now, being a one-woman-band and having to deal with leads from the get-go.
Wow, it's an amazing learning curve! I am starting to understand potential client pain points a lot better and I have no doubt in the long run it'll make me a better SEO.
Hello Casey, I'm from Brazil and here SEO is still at an infant stage compared to the US. One of the things we see the most is people trying to sell growth hacks as a one time offer that will solve your SEO problems forever. It's nice to see people in this community who are really interested in SEO in the long term and know what works and what doesn't and apply and share this knowledge with the community. Great job to you and Rand Fishkin!
Thanks for the video. The idea of focusing on flywheels instead of hacks its incredible. The success comes after a great amount of hard work like you show us in this video.
Where you upload next video?
Thanks again :)
If I didn't luckily start my SEO journey from MOZ's SEO Learning Center, I might be in the dark side of internet marketing today.
Thanks, Rand! Stay awesome.
Loved the idea of focusing on flywheels instead of hacks. Very true, people can become immune to hacks but never to a long-term strategy that keeps working as it's intended to.
Yes, you're right.
Also, it is a nature of any hack to be short lasting; Because it is a hack, a shortcut, a hole in the system that has to be plugged, that will be plugged.
Why?
Well, because the system is more important than any hole it can produce.
On the other hand, flywheels have it in their nature to be long-lasting;
Because, as Rand said, it gets easier with time to turn that wheel, and faster; And since the hard and grueling part is already over, all that is left is safely coasting to greater and greater success.
And deservedly so.
Rand: Always enjoy your Whiteboard Friday's. Lost and Founder is an entertaining, educational read and refreshingly frank. Keep the lessons coming!
I love reading about the experience of people like you who have built their own company from scratch. There are many good lessons to be learned.
The exchange with the CEO of another company is very curious :/
Best regards!
It was a crazy experience for sure, but a powerful one. Hope you enjoy!
Thanks Rand for the video. I agree that success comes after a great amount of hard work. After running my informational website for 15 years and 15 years of hard work, it is finally paying off and the site is now seen as an authority in the industry. I also wholeheartedly agree that you must connect/network/talk to your customers/readers. When I did so is when I saw enormous growth.
Can't wait to read the book!
Never assume, always ask.
And when asking is hard, or people aren't forthcoming with responses, spending time with them is a great way to get at unasked questions :-)
Absolutely the best way.
This is my first White Board Friday. I am a student of SEO and marketing. So I must say that this platform has my attention in a positive way. I will be going though all of the content on this site. It looks like I have a lot to learn from here.
Hacks works, but only to some limited extent. (Like getting an organic search from cold email outreach). Though, it is not easy to collect 16yrs of experience in a single article, anyways nice stuff.
Hacks from BlackHat are always in demand, that’s a reason why blackhat forums bags tons of members. These hacks works but only when you know how to get benefits from them without noticed by search engines, and should be used to a limited extent with precautions.
Cheers! Shiv.
Hey Rand,
Your Marketing Journey was really inspiring. Thank You for such an encouraging WBF.
About the post, I strongly believe that comment section in the blog is the best way to find Topics for the next blog post. Along with the Market Trends, something that matters more is what our target audience expects from us. I personally believe that "Our Audience is our greatest Influencer".
We reply on their comments or we write an entire blog with their name in it, will automatically motivate them to share the post in their network.
Thanks once again for sharing your experience.
Great article! There are always a lot of new growth hacks comming to surface every day. Google is aware of that and alwyas change their algorithms to prevent abuses and over utilization of those techniques. What we need to know is to figure out what works at the long term and stick to it!
I agree.. people spend so much time on hacks and yes they sometimes have short term benefits.. but imagine how much time you've lost on the fundamentals that are long lasting when you're favoring the short term vs long term.
I think it's a tough battle for us all on a daily basis though. Do what makes us feel good today vs what will be good for us in the future.
Its hard to counter 16 years of SEO disruptor experience. Your transperancy is unique. The facts about the success of Flywheel, instability of MVP, and especially the uncomfortable but stunningly fundamental point of Living the Lives of Your Customer, combined to make this Whiteboard Friday a classic and quarterly reminder to all of us in SEO-Marketing land.
Well said re: the long-term payoff of flywheels over growth hacks. For all the effort that some people pour into finding a temporary hack, they could be investing that same effort in a reliable system that amplifies naturally over time and gives them a much higher ROI in the long run. But that requires folks to take the long view of success, which may be a differentiating factor from day one. Good luck on your next ventures!
Our company Bendyworks helped write some of your apps, so I am glad to see how successful you have been. I like the way you simplified this via the marketing flywheel. We are trying to improve our internet marketing execution. Although we know how to write code for internet marketing companies, we are not yet as proficient in internet marketing. Your content is informative.
Thx
Loved the idea of focusing on flywheels instead of hacks. Flywheels are done to be long-lasting, meanwhile the nature of a hack is be short lasting, a hole/problem waitng to be filled.
Rand really you are a awesome. I am new here wanna learn seo strategy really i am very surprised when i read your post. I think it will be helpful post for me and also other. Thanks a lot for sharing us your experience nicely.
Rounded off perfectly by homing in on understanding your audience, the most important part of marketing. Really interesting to learn of the lengths you went through to achieve that!
Great article! With you every day we are more experts.
Great post as always Rand !!
It is always a pleasure to read your posts and learn from your knowledge. It was very helpful to me. I'm sure I'll improve on my projects from now on with your advice!
Hi,
I would also like to thank you for sharing this with us, I am new in this field and I leaned many things from your video :)
Hi, Rand. I love your post! The most important thing to work with clients is to know them and get them to trust you. Once that happens, we can perform incredible strategies.
Have a nice weekend :)
The swap is incredible haha and I'm very happy that you make post of people you know or your public, that proves to be a great person who helps others like here
Thanks for sharing your experience, Rand
Best regards!!!
I'm sorry for the people who did not like my comment, maybe I did not express myself correctly, I do not know. Sorry
I do not understand because they give us poor ratings :(
Hello i agree with you, I do not think I said anything wrong either, I understand that everyone has an opinion, but even if I do not agree I never put my thumb down.
I think, if you look across other posts, comments tend to get downvoted if they look like they might not have watched/read the post (i.e. if you could have commented the same thing at the bottom of any post), or if they don't really critically & constructively engage (i.e. they're banal/inane).
I don't understand, I too have received a thumb down for a completely normal comment. Can't we thank Rand for the advice he gives us?
People should care about themselves instead of watching what others do.
Agree. Giving thumb down for normal comment is not cool.
Hi
I completely agree with you and really admire you for this. I would also like to thank you for sharing this with us. The video really helped put things into perspective. I like your approach of getting to know your clients on a deeper level to help them further.
Regards
Tanishq Mahendru
Thank you, Rand for being honest and sharing some insights from your book. What are you going to do next, now you have all this free time on your hand ;)?
Thank you for share this. Tôi đã học được rất nhiều kinh nghiệm từ bài viết và áp dụng thành công vào trang bài viết chơi poker online của tôi.
You are THE BEST!