The main business objective was boosting the signups. Even if I boosted SEO, if it didn’t lead to an increase in signups it wouldn’t achieve the objective.
I found at least 10 major obstacles to increase performance. This included title tags, pages with not enough content, and increasing the keyword strategy. After analyzing the issues and solving them I slowly started to see gains. I created a plan moving forward for them to follow which included a gap analysis for keywords to target.
By targeting the gaps and fixing the issues, traffic slowly started to gain. After moving forward with the strategy I had suggested, they did see positive improvements with a net benefit of over 33% in organic traffic gains.
A law firm wanted to increase their acquisition rates. They had only run Google Ad Campaigns and hadn’t considered Facebook ads at all
We decided to target two types of Facebook ad campaigns, custom audiences and lookalike audiences.
1. Custom Audiences: When it came to custom audiences we used the existing customer list and information to find and retarget existing clients.
2. Lookalike Audiences: In order to best target potential clients similar to his existing, we used the lookalike audience feature to find new customers similar.
The Results:
We gained a ton of new leads that were 40% more qualified than they had been getting from Google Ads. The ability to target within Facebook ended up being a profitable channel choice.
The campaign overall was a success.
A company was not ranking well in their local market even though it wasn’t very competitive. They had ranked for some national keywords but those weren’t bringing in many clients. They wanted to increase the quality of their overall acquisition.
The best approach was to target local keywords and make sure the business was listed in all the appropriate local directories, Yelp, Google Maps, etc. Secondly I looked through the keywords for opportunities to
For advertising, I did a combination of targeted Google Ads for local searches and Facebook campaigns. We experimented as well with a few paid local directories.
After analyzing the data, Google Ads brought us the best leads for the type of client they were looking for.
A company had a high bounce rate and not many leads. I determined that we needed to go through their entire funnel step by step to improve the acquisition process.
The result. After making improvements from initial landing page to the email marketing campaign, I was able to improve their success end to end funnel process by 34%.
Onboarding new customers was critical. I needed to make sure to:
a) Get users to use the product more than once in the first week.
b) Get a pattern of usage started
c) Make my product a useful tool in their lives.
My Onboarding Process
1) Welcome email
2) Guided tutorial walking through the features
3) Utilizing empty states of data to / test data to show how everything comes together.
4) Making customers aware of the knowledge base (usage information, etc)
5) Scheduling a call / follow up email to see if there is any questions /. a call to help the customer further.
There are three different life cycle phases within a lifecycle. The process itself means communicating and sending relevant messages according to what level the customer is in.
1. Customer Acquisition
2. Customer Retention
3. Customer Development/Loyalty
When it comes to developing a multitouch campaign, there are three main ways I segment:
Needs-based segmentation – Segmenting through market research and industry size. Determining their needs and making sure the marketing message fits.
Value-based – segmenting within economic value, creating individual segments that can be distinctly targeted.
My least successful campaign was when I failed to achieve a marketing goal. This was to target specific clients for a law firm. I only achieved half the intended brand awareness goal. This was a factor of a) a budget that was too small and b) higher goals. This experience helped me learn how to be better at setting goals. I make sure to be more realistic and would rather understand than over state expectations.”
Collaborating With Others To Develop Campaigns is one of my specialities. When I worked on a project to increase the awareness of a b2b platform, one of the main tasks was agreeing on the strategy, roles, and objectives. Through scrum sessions as well as constant feedback sessions we were able to alter the timeline as needed when it no longer made sense to continue on a certain task.
I needed to develop a life cycle campaign in order to onboard customers to my CostBrain platform. I was able to decrease support questions and improve my acquisition rate by nurturing clients slowly. While I did see some drop in my newsletter subscription, I did notice an uptick in the quality of restaurants. It also increase the success rate of following up on leads as rather than engaging clients right away, I waited until they were ready for contact by sales.
When I was setting up a CRM campaign, my team disagreed on the layout and content. We discussed as a team the concerns. This was a good time to step back as a group, look at the data and come up with pros and cons with moving forward. We ended up running a modified version of my proposed campaign. We also tested against three variations of the campaign.
Result: 40% of customers revisiting their checkout cart
I had a client that wasn’t engaging their customers. I created an automated alert that triggered an email based on what was in their cart and demographic information. By sending up follow up email reminders, it increased engagement and led to an increase of 40% more customers coming back to purchase the items they had added in their cart.
Result: Increased referrals by over 60%
I needed to improve a customer rewards program. The overall goal was to make current customers aware of the newly created rewards / incentive program.
The result was an increase of referrals by over 60% leading to a positive increase on returns despite the increase in spend due to code usage.
Result: Increased engagement 30%
For an app I developed, I needed to increase engagement rates. I noticed quite a few users hadn’t logged in and wanted to push them toward a great way to further engage customers was through push alerts. I would push messages according to how long it had been since a user had last logged in
How I increased push alert effectiveness? I used messaging that stressed the value proposition the app provided. I tested various messages until I found a pattern that indicated stronger engagement.
In the end, at least 30% of those with the app on their smart phone were incentivized by the messaging.
Result: Increased client acquisition 20% through email campaigns
Client for a charity that wanted to understand why engagement was down. Looked into how they were engaging and the personalization they involved. Went through and segmented users based on their stage in the process and as well, made sure they were sending out proper re-engagement emails.
Result: Engaged customer signups 25% through re-marketing
Client wanted to increase revisits from previous clients. I setup a campaign targeting previous customers offering them a targeted promotion. We linked information we had regarding services they had uses before and offered custom promo code that targeted previous services. This worked and saw an uptick in customer reengagement but at least 25%.
In any email marketing campaign, I use thee three parts to a lifecycle program as a broader segment for engagement including: potential, customers, late stage.
The first step was connecting with those new customers, those that were a new subscriber, first time purchaser, cart abandonment, etc.
Tasks: Have a warm and friendly welcome email triggered. Make sure an abandonment email is sent out if the customer had any products they didn’t buy.
Findings: Providing the most optimal experience was necessary to keep customers engaged. Did the customer have a great experience the first time? It took more than the initial email to engage customers and keep them engaged. I also had to reduce any onsite friction points as well that may have led to cart abandonment, or non purchase. Not every customer will move into repeat customer phase, but engaging those new customers was key in moving many customers to that stage.
I sent emails such as asked for feedback, cross sold based on related purchases, and ran special codes letting them know how important they are.
Tasks: Trigger a first time buyer email, up sell similar services / products, send out surveys for feedback.
Findings: Existing customers that aligned with the product liked updates but had to be careful about sending too many updates. At the same time, segmenting different customers out by their user type
Reached out to those customers that were not engaging. Proposed an enticing value proposition, used codes, and alerted about new features.
Tasks: Win-back emails triggered to remind customers wha you offer and maybe why they used you the first time, timely reminders triggered for renewals
Findings: While codes were effective at bringing customers back, it often led to customers only coming for the codes. That information did allow me to create a persona based on that information.
Brand campaigns promote a focused effort that guides consumers towards a desired action. They also give brands identity, personality, and emotion. Making sure to set SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
The goal of multivariate testing is to determine which combination of variations performs the best out of all of the possible combinations. This can be done with tools such as Optimizely.
Working with a variety of cross functional team members means creating the highest possible quality ads. This means working with creative designers to get quality assets that drive performance.
Working directly with the engineering team to implement features to improve and automate channels.
As its important to work cross functionally, I work with data teams to identify and solve technical issues. This lets me easily collaboratively build testing frameworks
I managed plenty of campaigns on Facebook, getting hands on into the details to improve lead quality. YouTube also offers some dynamic target which I’ve used to generate leads.
Experience with FMPs such as Smartly or Adphorus which is a tool that helps you create on brand creatives.
The reason that I prefer utilizing tools such as dynamic re-marketing is the fact that you can scale ads easily as you scale your products and services. This lets you utilize your product feeds to scale ads that cover your entire inventory line.
The combination of SQL, Google Analytics, and Tableau are the perfect set of tools to analyze in a visual way whats going on. I utilize SQL exports to analyze the data within Tableau.
I’m certified in Optimizely which is a great A/B testing tool.
I use plugins even for WordPress sites for smaller clients like Nelio which helps you do quick testing of WordPress templates and layouts.
I created A/B testing to improve campaigns within a 95% probability checking reliability with a significance tester.
I used A/B testing to reduce bounce rates by 18%, improving acquisition rates by over 25%.
Areas I’ve run tests on include:
Best Practices for Experimentation That I Utilize
Working within a cross functional team is one of the best ways to accomplish more tasks and at the same time improve communication. The best way to work cross functionally is to make sure everyone is on the same page, and aware of whats going on.
Working Cross-Functionally Within Asana / Jira – I use a tool such Asana / Jira to keep everyone on the same page. When multiple people are working on multiple projects, its important to keep everyone on the same page. Using this platform allows multiple sprint sessions to allow optimal communication and flow.
I optimized entire referral acquisition funnels to increase signups by over 35%.
I created a profitable referral program that increased shares by 25%.
I signed up influencers in a profit sharing program that leveraged an influencer network.
I used segmentation to identify my most valuable customers by monitoring behavior, creating new use cases to further enhance the product.
I determined my most profitable demographic segments, and creating buyer personas that aligned best with the customers that would most identify with my product.
Demographic – Segmenting by factors such as age, location.
Creating Buyer Persons – Who are those customers that need my product and why are they using it?
Behavioral Targeting – What kinds of customers are most using my product? Understanding usage and what use cases the product is being used for can help me determine how and why segments are using the product.
A big part of growth marketing is refining all the parts of the customer lifecycle. This includes everything from advertising, to acquisition, and finally converting them to customers.
Reach – Getting the attention of customers through ad programs.
Acquisition – Acquiring customers through landing pages and highlighting the value proposition.
Conversion – Converting customers through
Retention – How do we keep customers engaged?
Loyalty – Keeping customers a loyal user through rewards and other incentives.
Important KPI – CLV: Profits Earned Per Customer * the length of time they are a customer
Testing Prioritizing – Running conversion tests such as adding images, and other features.
Resource Planning – Buying a template, getting someone to write it, what resources are available vs what is needed.
Goal Setting – I clarify the goal such as reducing the shopping cart abandonment rate. I list the goals to meet the over arching goals.
Actions Needed – Actions to take to meet these goals. Establishing a baseline.
Brainstorming Ideas – Involving other cross functional team members in the planning process.
Prioritizing Tests to Run – Resource First: using resource I have access to and the tests I can run. Results first – prioritizing on the results that should be achieved.
I used CRM to target new users and increased my first time usage by 35% vs not emailing them.
I converted 20% of churned users back into regular users by understanding why they left and targeting them again on the improved functionality.
I used a CRM to track and increase my email marketing performance.
I improved advertising campaigns but setting KPIs, such as Facebook cost per acquisition, and cost per lead such as through Google Advertising.
I built a go to market plan with my company CostBrain in which I used a value matrix to determine roadmap priorities.
I started with a business plan, outlining the target audience, marketing plan, and sales strategy.
I used KPIs to guide my business toward increased performance.
I set my North Star as number of users who were rated as at least an 80% according to our internal ranking system design for an app I developed.
I followed the smart method to create goals that performed best for the organizations I worked with.
KPIs I set include:
Sales: Number of New Contracts Signed Per Period
Financial: Growth in Revenue
Customer: Customers retained (churn rate), improving LTV (life time value)
Marketing: Lowering CPC, Improved ROAS
What is my North Star KPI?
What is the main KPI that will guide the business in its goals? An online ordering platform for example would set it as: number of mobile orders delivered
For setting KPIs I use the smart method to determine if they meet the checklist:
Someone who is not afraid to voice their opinion. Colleagues that are creative and willing to brainstorm. Those that are confident in what they do.
I try to resolve my differences with that person. Rather than focusing on the negative, I try to find something that I could admire about that person and and focus on that instead.
I make sure to know the strengths and weaknesses of those working for me. When I assign projects, I make sure that they will challenge them, but won’t defeat them.
I try to understand the causes of the problem. I make sure to devote time researching exactly what went wrong. I often act like an investigator, determining all root causes of the problem and once I fully understand the situation, I devise a roadmap to prevent the problem in the future. As well, I make sure to document root causes to foster information sharing.
The Situation: I needed to create an automated email campaign in order to encourage engagement.
The Problem: My team couldn’t agree on the overall approach. We discussed the pros and cons of each strategy and came up with a unified solution.
Result: Implemented a successful strategy that increased engagement by 20%.
I had a client that requested additional features. I worked with them to understand exactly what they were looking for. Looked into the feasibility of it and if it would be beneficial. In the end, I ended up not gaining that client, but I did point them in the direction of another competitor who could better server there needs. I used this as an opportunity to gain feedback and a point to research potential future solutions to implement.
My creativity, empathy, and ability to collaborate.
Creativity: I’m the person on a team that can think outside the box and bring my creative abilities as well. I’m a photoshop pro, music creator, and 3d model enthusiast.
Empathy: I make sure to consider the perspective of my teammates as well. I create an environment that makes it easy to share without fear of ideas being shot down or rejected.
Collaboration: I tend to make sure that all team members are participating and at the same time I’m considering everyone’s opinion. I utilize agile sharing tools to make sure all information is getting shared across the team.
This is an issue I constantly deal with. Take for instance the startup CostBrain that I founded. Before I got to the actual development of the product, I needed to figure out what to develop! This meant gathering as much data as possible.
My approach: Talk to the actual possible external stakeholders and get their opinion of the pains they are experiencing. Make sure to document as much as possible. The main thing is making sure you aren’t already assuming the solution before you start the interview. Keeping my mind clear was the best way to hear what they actual said vs just trying to qualify an end hypothesis I already had.
My Solution: Once you have gathered enough data, make sure to dig deep and remember that even data that seems irrelevant may actually be relevant. If you feel like something is missing don’t be afraid to dig back into data sources to gather further analysis before tackling a problem. The more prepared you are, the easier it will be when actually getting to the problem.
I worked across departments all the time. This includes working with the C-suite of Marketing and Operations, then the Content and Communications department, Creative Services, and also Consumer Insights. I would make sure to meet on a weekly basis to discuss larger projects and then collaborate through the week as needed. It was a great set-up and ensured smooth progress at all project stages.
I believe the best type of person to work for, leads by example at all times. They are approachable, hardworking, and fair. Also, they don’t just talk the talk without walking the walk. It is irksome when a leader says that we need to put in the long hours but leaves earlier than everyone else, for instance.
Every organization has various resources from marketing to design to even legal. Being able to build a strong bridge between those team members is extremely important in order to best utilize all the company resources.
1. I make sure to create an environment of trust. It’s important to have a shared vision. When I worked with a company in Berlin I made sure it was clear how their help aligned with the overall goal.
2. I improved clarity in what I needed. This included using tools such as Asana. This allowed a task to be broken up into subtasks. As well it would keep cross functional teams alerted with milestones and progress reports. Clarity was brought on as the completion and status of each task by each cross functional member was clearly visible.
3. Presenting clear goals and aligning goals. I needed to make sure team members were on the same page in tackling tasks. I would make sure my proposals for task were clear, had a reasonable timeline, and made clear the commitment from the team member.
As the vice president of the entrepreneurship club at ESMT Berlin, one of my tasks was to bring in speakers as well as drive club engagement.
Bringing in a Speaker
One initiative I was proud of was bringing in the founder of Berlin Startup School to speak and do a training session. He wanted to charge us 300 euros to come and give a lecture but I managed to convince him that it would be a good networking opportunity and so was able to convince him to come for free. It ended up being a hit at the school and its likely he will do further entrepreneurship sessions. I still stay in contact with Tino.
Creating a Brand New Event
Another initiative as Vice President I started was the Share your Fail experience. This allowed students who had perviously failed at a business venture to share what went wrong so that we could learn from it. At the same time it was almost a form of therapy for those presenting.
As the founder of Skeba Digital Corp I not only hired employees, but managed them. As well I convinced companies to use me as their source of marketing.
When Hiring Employees
I always had potential employees follow specific instructions in order to submit their application.. That let me immediately reduce the number of resumes I had to look at, those that didn’t follow the easy instructions wouldn’t make it forward.
In an employee (for a content writer position) I looked for someone with good communication and writing skills as well as open to feedback. I never expect someone to be perfect on day one. What I do expect is that someone is open to feedback and willing to use that to improve going forward.
Working With Clients
Getting new clients on board involved not only showing them the work, but also the care that I put into each client. I always make sure to go above and beyond, one reason why I do have clients who would refer me for more work. While some firms were more focused on numbers, I wanted to be as clear as possible, making sure that I was able to provide what they needed.
I’ve always believed that by being open and honest with customers as well as going the extra mile is a great way to build a positive reputation. While some companies focus on numbers and revenue, while important, giving the client a positive experience is equally important.
80% of clients returned for more work after engaging them. A good majority referred me as well to other potential customers
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CostBrain was created through a grant from the iCorps program. Through this experience I went through the entire process of build a company from just an idea.
Guiding Customers to Their Pains and Gains
When developing research for this project one of the most important tips we learned through the iCorps program was not to assume their pains and gains or to just try to validate what we thought it was. The main point was to listen to the customer and try to ask questions to get at exactly what problems they were facing.
I had to lead the conversation in ways that stayed on topic and poke deeper into their real problems. Often times I discovered that through the right questions they would often uncover problems they didn’t realize existed.
One example of a customer realizing their problem is a restaurant that admitted that they hadn’t updated their pricing in over 2 years and really weren’t sure what their margins were
Data Analysis: SQL, Tableau
Analytics: Google Analytics
Social Media: Hootsuite
A/B Testing tools: Optimizely
Team Management: Asana
CMS: WordPress
SEO: SEMrush
Automation: HubSpot
CRM: Customer.io
Graphics: PhotoShop, Illustrator
HTML: Sublime Text, Dreamweaver
Video: Final Cut / After Effects