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In Episode 3 of Grow and Convert Deep Dives, we took a question from Elliott Davidson, where he asked us: "What are your go to posts you know straight out of the gate will help you start lead generation for a new client engagement? Even better if they have no domain rating (DR) for the purposes of this conversation. i.e. founder story backed in with pain points etc." and answered it using 3 different company examples.
In this episode we explained how we would think about forming a blog content strategy in the first few months of a client engagement, specifically what topics we'd go after, what keywords we'd target, and more!
We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.
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Alright...
Episode three of the Grow and Convert YouTube channel.
We have a good one.
You tweeted out about asking for ideas earlier,
um, or a while ago, and Elliot Davidson had a
good idea and we're gonna do it on this channel about starting off,
like how, how to build initial content strategy for the first couple of months.
So why don't you
Yeah.
Here's specifically what he said.
So I tweeted out what a week ago, suggestions for new topics.
So again, if you're watching this and you
have suggestion for a new topic, just feel free to
tweet at Devesh (@deveshkhanal) or I (@benjihyam)
and we'll take it into consideration, but we thought the one
that Elliot did was pretty good here.
So what are your go-to posts?
You know, straight out of the gate will help,
start lead generation for a new client even better
if they have no DR. For the purposes of this conversation.
This is kind of interesting.
We can talk through what we do a little bit there.
IE.
founders story backed in with pain points, etc., etc.
So you can see here tagged Devesh said it was a good topic, so we can cover it
here.
Then what we did today was we also went back
to Twitter and we wanted to get suggestions
on companies that we should case study.
So we're gonna case study the first two people that responded to us.
Oops, sorry.
Wrong tab here.
Are you able to see the right tab Devesh?
Uh, if no, this is still the suggestions for topics.
Okay.
Sorry.
Let me fix this really quickly.
Cause then we'll show you the companies that we're gonna talk through.
All right.
Here's the right one.
All right.
So yes.
So now you can see my tweet from 30 some
minutes ago wanted to get a few companies
that were gonna case study.
So we're gonna do two different ones.
Uh, one is Elliot's three PL service, uh, parcel master.
And the other
Was
Joel's.
Let me see where it is.
Here we go.
We're gonna do case study buddy, for our friend Joel here.
So let's dive in which one do you wanna start with David?
Let's start with Elliot.
He did suggest it, which he indicated
He did suggest it.
Us.
we can start with
this.
While you're pulling up the site, I can explain to everyone.
So I, I don't even know what parcel master is.
Like Elliot literally just tweeted this
and we, we tweeted all of this beforehand.
Um, but 3PLs.
It's like, e-commerce just a quick thing
so that people don't have to like do a bunch
of research while they understand this video.
Basically just think of it as like a fulfillment
service for e-commerce companies, right?
Like nowadays there's like 1,000,001 DTC direct
to consumer e-commerce brands started by everyone.
Not all of them have their own warehouses.
That would be ridiculous and expensive.
And so instead they like rent space basically, or
like pay other people for warehousing facilities, not just
the warehouse, but also the actual shipping.
That's why they call these you know, it says fulfillment
and the video is actually pretty explanatory.
Um, yeah.
So I don't know what you would call this.
It's not really SaaS.
It's like actual physical bus business,
But yeah, it, it is a service, but from,
for the purpose of the content strategy, I think
it, it does mimic what we would do for a SaaS company.
Oh yeah.
I mean,
heck we do the same thing for SaaS company
as a non-SaaS kind of with some asterisk.
I mean, I can start with just a high level
of how we approach this regardless of the
company, regardless of parcel master, I mean, in general,
you know, how did Elliot phrase this question?
Like what are the go-to things I'm gonna
leave aside the low DR Situation for a second,
right?
Anyone who's followed Grow and Convert knows
that a large part of what we do is ranking for
these bottom of the funnel keywords.
But the other part of the tweet was like go to content for lead generation.
So obviously if you've not read pain point SEO, it's our foundational piece.
You should read it.
Our go to way to do lead generation is to
rank for keywords that, have a large buying
intent.
So the first bucket that I'm immediately
looking at is what are the absolute, no brainer?
Like this is the category name, keywords someone's Googling for this, right?
So that's like, think
For the purpose of the video, we should even
back up one step farther and talk about what
we would do to just understand this business.
If we were engaging in a service, cuz I
think what we're gonna do for the purpose of,
of this exercise is a very quick version, just
looking at the website, but there's nuances to the
business that would come out.
Uh, when we talk to different people in the,
the companies and things that we're trying to figure
out in our kickoff, or when we talk to different
members in the company is what is the
unique selling proposition or what is the competitive advantage of the company?
Because sometimes that can, uh, that can lead into different keywords.
That would be really good for the company to
go after, especially right in the beginning of the
engagement.
Who,
Who are they servicing?
Go ahead.
So I'll asterisk this so sure we can do that, but let me pull up pain point SEO
and, uh, oh, looks like it's already opening a tab.
Is that like a big stereotype that we
just, you and I both just have pain point SEO
open in a tab at all times.
Can you pull it up since you're the one sharing your screen?
Oh, here I can share.
So
in this piece,
you list out these five types.
Um, I actually consider one and three kind
of the same category, but I think what you are
saying is, should we talk about the kickoff interviews
and stuff we do to understand the nuances of
the company, the, the customers and the pain points is yes, of course.
Like we do that for a reason, but in my
mind that yes, that helps elucidate keywords in
any of these buckets, but primarily
this right, which is like the real pain point bucket, like
the types of pieces.
Let me explain why I said that question or
even why, why I went there because, you know,
in a heavily commoditized space, such as a 3PL
I would want to know what's different about
this 3PL service than any other 3PL out there.
So for example, do they focus specifically on startup companies?
Do they help larger companies?
Are they only focused on enterprise?
Because I think from a keyword perspective,
even us trying to back into some of these best and
product lists and that kind of stuff, or even the comparisons
that that would let us know, should we be comparing
this service to a 3PL company like ShipBob,
or are there smaller players that they would compete
against or are they focusing on startups or are
they focusing on enterprises?
And, and I think that because Elliot asked
it in a way where he said, what, what is
gonna get leads in those first three months?
And what is that keyword strategy?
And what is the, um, how are you gonna approach different topics?
Right.
I think that first three months we would
try to be very specific on the keywords that we
went after.
And, and I think some of that information from
the kickoff would help, uh, us choose which of
those keywords we would start with.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's fair.
I agree.
So essentially what you're saying is like,
back to the, I guess the tab that I was sharing
here, like yeah, you're saying Devesh, yes.
You can go after, like, what I was gonna
say is, well, it's like, e-commerce fulfillment.
So like, aren't there just obvious keywords that
are like extremely bottom of the funnel, like e-commerce
fulfillment company, 3PL companies, 3PL companies like whatever.
And you're saying yes, but in particular, the
way Elliot asked her, like low DR means, if you're
really trying to get leads to the beginning,
you need to factor in like likelihood of ranking.
And then also
like differentiation because that increases likelihood of converting.
And you're gonna be better on both of those categories.
If you pick keywords that have
some additional layers to it, that's more specific
and that your company like uniquely excels at great comment.
Correct.
Absolutely agree.
Um, let me share my screen really quickly.
And then we can go back to pain point SEO, because I think this will help,
uh, touch on what I was just talking about.
So if we go, I, I actually asked a follow
up question to Elliot, cuz I just wanted
to understand this business a little bit more.
So I asked him who he serves and what the unique
selling proposition is because he mentioned ShipBob
in, uh, his tweet.
So he just said having dug into the reviews,
um, here are the, the weaknesses from some of
the other companies.
So sometimes long dispatch times customer
service is poor and not catering to new startups.
And so again, this point right here that the
other companies don't cater to new startups, but his
service does might shine light on some of
the keywords that we want to target in the very
beginning of an engagement.
I give an example, right?
We're not, you know what, you, I know
what you mean, but like listening might not.
So I think what you mean, not catering startups is like, what I.
So if I was to search for, are you seeing what I'm searching for by the way?
Nope.
Still the Twitter tower or
No.
Okay.
Sorry.
Working out some technical issues with this product.
All right.
I mean, while you pull it up, I think just to, to keep the zoom out for a
second, there's gonna be two things.
I think we're gonna talk about here, right?
Like we're all still on number one, which is
find the SEO keywords that we think are extremely
bottom of the funnel that it's like, we absolutely have to rank for this.
And you added an important, I don't know, disclaimer
to it, which is, and if you're really starting
at the beginning and you like, you wanna rank it don't yes.
You may be able to do just like the obvious category keyword,
best eCommerce performance services.
Like one of the bubbles you're showing now in Google
suggested search the top left one mm-hmm
but you may be better served from both a rank ability perspective.
Oh no.
I wish you kept sharing that from both a rank
ability perspective and a conversion perspective to do
something slightly more specific, which is the
second one, which is fulfillment services for startups.
It's gonna be easier to rank less competition.
And if we're just gonna assume for a second that
this company has some actual, like genuinely good
differentiators there, if you do, then it's gonna be
even better from a conversion perspective when someone reads
the article, but that's bucket one where let's finish
talking about that, then we're gonna talk about bucket
two, which is a non SEO article approach we do at the beginning.
All right.
Should we keep talking about these brainstorm,
this I, I sort of cut you off and saw your
thunder here.
No, no.
All good.
So if we just go back to that point that
you're talking about here, so these are the
frameworks that we typically lead with.
So again, I think it's important to know if we're
comparing our, this company to a larger competitor,
that might be something that we lead with.
These alternative posts might be something that we lead with.
And so in, in Elliott's Twitter response, he
did mention ShipBob is, is a key competitor here.
So we might lead with a post that does alternatives
to Shipbob , Shipbob alternatives.
Then we want yeah.
Shipbob alternatives.
Uh, and then we typically like these to
start with so best product or service list.
And here's an example.
Uh, so if someone was searching for best e-commerce
fulfillment services, this would definitely be, uh, a
keyword that we would want to own here.
So you can see, and currently runs the
features before you added the disclaimer.
This is what I was talking about is keywords like this.
Like you like, like my pushback is like how
much interviewing or like research do you need to
do to know that this company should rank, should
go after best e-commerce fulfillment services?
I would argue zero
For sure.
Okay.
But my pushback to your pushback would be
if, especially with, with the Elliott's question of starting
from zero, that this more specific keyword
is probably gonna be better for conversion.
If he's saying a lot of the big 3PLs don't even deal with startups.
And so if you had gone to this, if you had already
searched for best eCommerce fulfillment services,
maybe you reached out to a couple of these companies,
you realized that these are either way out
your price range, or they're not even gonna
take you as a company because you're too small.
And then you're now looking for fulfillment services
for startups, because that more defines, the type of eCommerce
business you are from Elliot's standpoint.
I feel like this would be a better keyword
to try to rank for initially one, because it's
probably gonna be less competitive than just this main category keyword.
Yeah.
And two, because it more fits the market that he's going after.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fair
Do we want to talk about the disruption story now?
No, I mean, I think, I think just a little bit more on just the SEO side, like
you, I cut you off and we did this kind of back and forth on this, but like,
I think you were going somewhere important.
Sure.
Which is what do we do at the beginning to elucidate more of these keywords?
Like we happen to exchange one tweet with
Elliot about this, so we know the startup angle
and um, yeah, I mean, I don't know.
Do you wanna talk about that?
Like our kickoff calls and what we ask and who we ask it to and, and how we
sort of get these?
Sure.
Um, yeah.
So in, in the very beginning of an engagement,
we typically like to talk to people who are
on the sales side of things.
So whoever's running sales is typically a good one account
executives, even the people prospecting into accounts to
understand, um, who are some of the, the customers
that have closed recently, who are some of the
people that they've talked to that haven't closed.
And why, what
is, what unique selling proposition do people,
latch onto in sales calls?
What are some of the objections that some of
the sales people or sorry, some of the prospects
push back with when the salesperson gives their pitch.
And a lot of this information just helps us understand
the mindset of a customer who the customer
views as, alternative companies that can do the same thing as your business.
And then also on top of that.
Actually I think that's pretty much it,
No, I mean, that's pretty, you have anything else?
I think that's pretty exhaustive.
Yeah.
I think in general, I think if you're listening
to this and you're like, okay, you guys have
said a lot and we're still on this first bucket.
Like, what should I do?
I think simply think of the first bucket as
find like these, what we're calling extremely bottom
of the funnel keywords, but try to find ones that
include some qualifying terms
that
pair well with unique strengths of yours.
So like, yes, you can have one of your first
keywords, just be the equivalent of this thing.
Going after eCommerce fulfillment services,
it'll probably have way higher search volume.
That should be a separate video by the way,
to talk about our whole mini volume approach.
But it'll have high search volume than whatever
you found fulfillment services for startups.
But if you're talking about initially, like you can
go after that eventually, but it's initially like find
the find, do the startup version, whatever that is for your company.
Right.
So just to like generalize, if you're doing, I
don't know some like accounting software, but it's like
accounting software for entrepreneurs or like accounting
software for this and that for like shipping companies or something
like that, then do that specific one first because
it's gonna have less SEO competition and you're gonna
get a higher conversion rate because you have some
unique, you know, things differentiators to put into the
body of the post that's bucket one.
And to, if you are working for, I don't know,
you're an employee, an employer, if you're the
founder,
you know, and you're talking and you're listening
to this and you're trying to do this for your
own business, you should not have to think hard or do a lot of interviews.
You should have done the sales already.
You should know your customers already.
This should just like come to you, right.
These specific, um, iterations of these keywords.
But if you are working with clients or you're
even just starting a new job, then it's what
Benji said is like talk to sales and get as
much of an understanding of the customer psychology
as possible.
What are they coming for?
Who else did they try, etc.
And that's gonna elucidate those second layers
to add to that keyword that's bucket one.
Yeah.
And, and what I'm doing in the background
here, uh, I'm just trying to go through the site
to try to understand beyond just these really high
level keywords that describe the category of services.
So fulfillment services for startups, what are
some of the other features of this business or use cases
that the service would solve for?
Because that would also, um, bring us to, to different
keywords that maybe fulfillment center or fulfillment services
for startups.
Okay.
That's the broader keyword, but are there other
specific things that is unique to parcel master such as
pick and pack?
I was trying to figure out what this is.
So again, I'm not, I'm not super familiar in the eCommerce space.
I don't have a ton of background with 3PL and if I did, I'm sure I could come
up with more specific keywords here.
But what I'm trying to do is just go through the site.
And if, if you're a founder, if you're a
marketer in your own company, try to think of
different use cases or different features that
customers come in for that is unique to your business.
That would also, be other good keywords to go after.
And so what I was doing here in the background
while Davis was talking, was trying to figure
out is pick and pack one.
Is that language something that someone would search for?
Is that a, a key feature or something that, uh, parcel master here?
Does that ShipBob doesn't do, or maybe they
have some unique way of doing it and doing it
better, or maybe they handle lower volumes.
Whereas, uh, ship Bob only does this with, with higher volumes.
And so I saw that, stick out here.
So even something like low volume pick and pack
service or something like that might be, oh,
super good, a keyword that I would want to would
want to target, because again, if that's a competitive
advantage, whereas all the other 3PLs focus on only
high volume, large companies, and you've created this
parcel master service just to go after those startups and
really help those small businesses.
And again, someone had a need for this.
Then this would be a really good keyword
for you guys for you to own, because again, your
competitors don't do this, but you have a service that is, specific to this.
And so that's kinda what I was doing by going through services here.
I, I think maybe going to the
Case study buddy example, would probably help because
it's a business that's a little bit farther along the
parcel master.
I know Elliott said is just starting this business.
So I think there's probably more of those,
different keywords that we can go after.
Other than just case study, writing service or something like that.
Did you have anything you wanted to cover here before we move on?
No.
I wanted to make a quick, mention of when you
then go after these more specific keywords that
align with, you know, the strengths of your business.
The other thing that we're not really gonna
cover in detail in this video is that I'll do
not in detail quickly is you gotta sell the
crap out of those differentiators in the post, like
sell it.
Now, maybe that's its own video later, but
this whole common thing that I'm gonna like roll my
eyes at, in content marketing of just like add value don't sell.
If you add enough value, they're magically gonna buy like that.
Doesn't apply here.
They're Googling something where they're looking to buy.
Like what, what did you just find E eCommerce,
low volume pick and pack service.
Like that person does not need to be nurtured.
They know exactly what they want and they just Googled that thing.
And so if you have built an eCommerce fulfillment
service with whatever the heck pick and pack is,
and it's specialized for low volume, talk about exactly why that's true.
Like here are the differences in high volume,
eCommerce fulfillment versus low volume.
Here's why it's really hard for small eCommerce
companies with early low volumes to use one of the
other 3PLs.
Here are the issues.
We understand that.
Here's how we built ours to solve that.
It has this, it has that it has this like,
yes, it's gonna come across as the super
salesy blog post.
That's the point.
That's literally what they're looking for.
If you are Googling something that specific, think
about your own life, think about a B2C term, like
some consumer thing.
You're looking for some super specific thing, right?
That then you, you would love for a company who
specialized in doing, solving that problem or building
that thing or selling that product to give you their best foot forward.
Like, here's exactly how we addressed it.
We get that pain point extremely well,
this is what we are doing, blah, blah, blah.
Like here's how it is.
Here's why it's like, you're smart enough to know that's a sales pitch.
I, I think I'm ranting for a little bit, but whatever.
I think that, that this whole content marketing
ethos of like, don't sell don't sell in some ways
it it's, it's positioned as respecting
the customer because like give them value.
They'll decide.
I actually think to some extent, if it's overdone,
it's disrespects the customer because it treats them as
stupid as though you don't know that a company
is selling like a lot of clients do that
are like, oh, should we do a list post with ourselves in it?
Because you know, the it's on our site.
It's like, yeah, they're smart enough to know that
the company's talking about itself also there's times
Just acknowledge it.
Yeah.
And like you Google something good at some simple B2C thing that we all buy.
I don't know, like men's shoes, like I'm looking for running shoes.
Men's best, men's running shoes.
And I get on a site with Adidas and Adidas
talks about why it's running shoe is the
best.
I'm not like offended.
Like of course Adidas is like, give me your best sales page.
I'm smart enough to then go to Nike and go to whoever else is on page one and
do my own comparison shopping.
And so you it's, that's your turn to give your best sales pitch.
They'll figure it out.
They, they're not stupid.
They don't think you're duping them.
That's literally what they're looking for.
Okay.
End of my ran.
Yeah, well, no, I actually wanna keep pushing
on that because I think it's important because I think
one of the pushbacks that we've heard lately
has been, well, I don't, I don't wanna do an
SEO strategy because if I own some of these
keywords, a lot of the results, aren't interesting.
I can't produce like interesting content around,
uh, a keyword like best eCommerce fulfillment centers.
There's nothing unique about what I would write in the blog post itself.
It's just gonna be another list post.
What, what would you say to that?
How could you bring either the personality of the
company or that unique selling proposition into a blog
post like that?
That is one of these more utilitarian keywords.
If, if you are writing a blog post for a
keyword that like describes what your company is
or some aspect of your product, and you don't
think you have anything interesting to say, like, you
should not be in that business.
Like I ha I built an e-commerce fulfillment
company and I'm, and then you're like, oh write,
for e-commerce fulfillment companies, like for that keyword.
And you're like, well, I don't have anything
to say then why did you build that company?
Like you, you're not doing anything innovative.
You're not changing any, there's no reason
why you think you're better and there should be.
And then tell that story and you can back it up with case studies.
Like a lot of the objections you're talking
about these people are like, well, we have all these
interesting stories and case studies.
Yeah.
Put it in those now it doesn't mean the whole
post is that that's not really what they're
Googling for, but you can allude to it.
You can give a snippet of it, maybe link to some longer story, but then
maybe that's a good segue into the disruption story thing.
But in these posts you can and should talk about what makes you different.
And in fact, mention, you could, we could
pull up if we had time, I don't know, uh,
some of the recent posts that cam has done
for Grow and Convert on, uh, B like content
marketing agencies, content, marketing, B2B content, marketing, agencies needs.
In fact, I'm, I'm set to edit another one
after this, after we record this, um, SaaS content
agency or something.
And so we are going after these keywords finally.
Um, and we, like, we don't find those boring.
We'd say all of this passionate stuff and opinions
we have on content marketing and how to do
it well, and SEO and pain point SEO.
We put that in the post.
And so we don't, I think, I think again,
you're right to, to link that to my previous
rant.
I think the idea that that's gonna be boring
comes from this idea that if you write for
that post, you, you don't sell your own stuff too much.
And you just do this very vanilla like list post
at what is eCommerce fulfillment, eCommerce fulfillment is
this, it works like this.
There are 10 companies these days, everybody is buying things online.
you're like, right.
It's like that.
They think that you're supposed to do that.
Um, but no, you should just sell yourself
and actually have something interesting to say,
All right, I will give you two options either.
We can go directly to case study buddy, and
just go through the content strategy for that.
Or we can pull up the disruption story.
Examples.
I have both 'em
Up.
No, we should do disruption story to, to finish this part faster.
Okay.
So bucket two, cool is totally non SEO
in terms of early content that we often do.
Not always, but often for our clients.
And we've started calling it a disruption story.
We used to call it the founding story, but
that sometimes got a little bit too historical.
And what that is is a post that is not targeting any keyword.
It's meant exclusively for promotion on social media,
both organic and what we primarily do, paid social promotion.
And if the, like the founders have social
clout, they should share it, email list, etc.
And it tells exactly what we are calling this,
this, the disruption story, AKA what we were just
talking about, of what you should put into
the SEO pieces to make it interesting, but it tells
just that story with no, no SEO angle.
What problems did we notice in this space?
And why did we create this company?
And what is it disrupting?
What is it changing?
What is it doing better?
And how is it solving those, um,
those problems?
And so here is an example from one of our
clients rainforest, which makes a QA software for
people who QA.
It makes a QA software for people who QA software
it's key difference is that most quality assurance
or QA software is itself like coding based, Highly
technical.
Yeah.
You code this script that then like goes through
a series of actions on your website or your
app and checks for certain things to happen at each action.
Like click this button, did the product actually
add the cart and you code that rainforest is visual.
I think if you scroll down enough, you'll you can show an actual screen.
Yeah, it'll get there.
But I, I think this, this part's important here.
So just even the setup of this blog post
many software companies have no formal QA
strategy.
And those that do take one of two flawed
approaches ask developers to do QA or delegate it
to a siloed team.
And then, so again, you're setting up the
problem here that they notice in the industry.
And we've learned that both approaches are flawed
and in this post, we're gonna explain what we do
differently, all that kind of stuff.
So again, setting up the problem, explaining
why the product exists, why the company exists.
So here's the problems.
Again, developers, aren't incentivized to prioritize QA developers.
Job satisfaction goes down when they're in charge of QA.
So again, main problem is, is an organizational problem,
which is when companies build software, the developers are
char are in charge of QA instead of having
a QA testing team or other people inside of
the organization doing QA.
And then they're not incentivized to prioritize it.
And then it explains again, more of these different problems.
And then it talks through the solution, put
QA in the hands of people that are responsible for
the business outcomes, with no code.
So a less technical solution focused on automated
testing or anyone in the organization can be, uh, in,
involved in QA, specifically product people and other
people that are in charge of releasing the software.
Do you have anything else you wanna say
about the disruption story or the setup?
No.
I mean, I think, uh, yes,
by no, I mean, yes.
Um, I think the, the key to this one is make the title and the intro and, and
just kind of the, the angle and setup of it as
interesting and click worthy as possible because
the whole point of this and the way this is gonna
be distributed is not through SEO.
So you don't have the advantage of knowing
that the reader just Googled what this is about .
This needs to now capture the attention of someone who's
scrolling, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever, um, or gets
it in their email inbox.
And so it has to be interesting.
And so other ones that come to mind that
we've done, and then we can talk about this,
Even our own, our own example, too, if you want.
Yeah.
Just, I mean, we can share this, but like,
I don't think when we, correct me, if I'm
wrong, but I don't think when we share
this or do Twitter ads to it, we use that
exact title.
Why we set out to build the best content marketing
agency, cuz this, we actually, uh, kind of
mangled...
We tried, tried optimize it around a keyword.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We tried to do both and it was done a while ago before a lot of this became
clear to us.
Um, but what we,
I do wanna on Twitter, a couple other things about these, just
Go ahead, finish your thought.
Well, what we would do on Twitter, like
titles and stuff, just like brainstorming.
And I guess, you know, the actual titles,
we look at the ads more than I do, but
it's like things like,
most content marketing.
I mean, I guess this I'm just gonna reiterate
our homepage headline, but like you would say things
like that, like most content marketing,
Doesn't just most content marketing agencies.
Don't yeah.
Don't don't measure results.
Here's what we're doing differently.
Doesn't generate leads.
Here's what we're doing differently.
We would, we would take that more controversial title,
opinionated title and bring that into these pieces.
Another thing that I wanted to touch on really
quickly is just other ways that these pieces can
be used outside of social promotion.
They can be used by the sales team to sell,
uh, send a prospects because now you have
a very succinct piece that really sells the
whole story of your company and why you exist.
And so if you know the value props and you
know, the problems in your space really well,
uh, this piece should really resonate with people when they read it.
It can also be linked to from other pieces.
So for example, even that other piece that
we did or the, the other keyword that we went
after, the best eCommerce fulfillment companies, then
imagine you had a, a piece like this disruption story saying
all other, uh, most 3PLs fail at this.
We do this differently.
And then you linked to that in that blog post.
And you said, if you wanted to, to see why,
we're different than most of the other 3PL
companies click here to read our full story.
Now you have a piece that again, it shares
your value props and all that kind of stuff.
And so these are just some of the ways that we use this type of piece and doing
this at the very beginning of an engagement with,
with a client also allows us to really understand
the product in depth because if we nail
this piece and the company edits it and we come
to an agreement on the value props, together,
then we have a very good understanding of the key
points that need to go in all pieces going forward.
And so this is why we typically lead with one of these, blog posts.
Yeah.
That's a great point.
That's a great point.
It helps solidify those, um, some client
case disruption stories that come to mind.
So you have some more examples.
Well also continuing with parcel master, it sounds
like, yeah, they're just with a little that we know
about it.
So we're just gonna make it up.
Disruption, story ideas for parcel master based
on the Twitter exchange would be things like,
you know, you could, you could have one, be a
little founder storyish like, most 3PLs are designed
for only big companies.
Like we were tired of that.
And you know, this is why we built a
3PL for early stage, like D2C e-commerce or
something.
Obviously that's like,
I, I know Elliot Elliott's Elliott's story
too, is that he was pre I think he previously had
an e-com company and it, so I think even on his headline it said 3PL created by
an e-commerce owner.
And I think that's probably a good hook too,
is just, yeah, we, we started an e-commerce
business and realized this is what was missing
from a 3PL I know that's a really long title,
but something to that effect where you can
relate to the founder and say, look, I'm on your
same level.
And here's the problems that we noticed, with other 3PL solutions
And that structure of writing.
These is really important.
Like every single one that we do is pain points like starts with that.
It has the disruption story framework has to start with that.
Like, these are the issues we noticed.
The other one that came to mind is our current
client vocal video, which has this really cool
product on like creating these testimonial videos with no video crew.
You like send customers a link and just using
their iPhone or like their, their, you know, computer
thing.
They can like record this video and then
it comes and you can like easily edit it without
editing software.
It's like pretty cool.
And the disruption story there is about how the
founders like tried all these things to create these
marketing videos.
And it was really like a crappy experience.
And we, they hired these expensive film crews.
They flew someone to Australia from the
us, and it was like ridiculously expensive.
They tried like
iPhone at a conference and there was all this background noise.
And so that structurally you, you have to start
these with a pain point and then present your
solution because the pain points help you get on the same page.
Again, the person reading this is not Googled anything.
So you, the title is the initial hook.
The first line is the hook after that, then intro.
And then maybe the first section is like the pain points.
Have you have them in the palm of your
hand being like, we get each other, right?
Like I get you, I know exactly what you're experiencing.
And if that happens like game over, then
they're ready for whatever solution you present.
If that pain point resonates
Case Study Buddy, let's do it.
All right.
Let's do it.
I think this is gonna be an easier, example to understand here.
So case study buddy, they do B2B case studies, in, in different ways.
So they primarily do written case studies.
So the case studies that you would put on
your website, think like, yeah, case study with a
company and an image of a person, and then
the whole story about, uh, how they worked with
a business, they produce those.
They do 'em really well.
Heard a lot of great feedback from people who've
used 'em then they also do these video testimonials.
So they help produce video content remote or on location.
So think like the highly produced video testimonials where
someone's sitting with a blank background and explaining why
they love a product or company, they also help
with those and they can do 'em remote remotely
as well.
So what would we do in the first three months with a company like this?
I, I think since we just ended on disruption
stories, I think doing a disruption story here would
be a really great way to start off the engagement.
So what you could do with this business is explain
why people have trouble producing case studies on
their own, if that's the main person, or if
that's the main problem that you're selling against.
I don't, I don't think case study buddy,
from what I know of them sells against too many
other case study services.
It's mainly against someone internally producing case
studies and they need help with writing, or maybe they, they
just don't think that they're effective at producing these.
They want a partner who can help them create these.
They're gonna turn to case study buddy.
So the disruption story here would be telling that
story about why they created this service, what they
do differently, how they either extract this information
from companies better than anyone else write the stories better
than anyone else, uh, produce the finished product better than anyone else.
But essentially just tell that whole, story
about the why behind the them creating this product.
And then what is the solution to the company's
problem when they're creating case studies
next?
If we're thinking back to that pain point SEO
post and those five frameworks, I'm trying to figure
out what would be the best like parent term or category term to go after first.
So there's a few different examples here, but
I'm gonna just keep going just best case study writing
service.
So again, I'm just, we don't have the nuanced
information about who their best customers are.
The unique selling proposition when people buy and all that kind of stuff.
I'm just kind of going off of the main tabs here.
So seems like the core services written case studies,
the second core services, video testimonials.
So based off of that, I want to do some
keyword research and try to figure out, uh,
what keywords Joel should go after here.
So case study writing service,
and we can even take best off of here just to look at the main keyword, look at
how many people are bidding against this.
On the paid side.
If case study buddy could own this organically, it
looks like this company case study writing service does,
I don't know if they are a competitor to.
Or if they do something slightly different, but
this would definitely be a keyword that I wanna own.
As someone's searching for case study writing service,
it indicates that they would be a really great fit
for someone who does written case studies.
And they're looking for someone to take this off
their plate, which the service aspect of this keyword
indicates.
Now this is something that I also like to do.
If we just go through suggested search and
hover over this, you can see other clarifiers here.
So they want someone that can help them virtually or online and not in person.
Well, that would be another keyword that I would
wanna own because case study buddy does help people
virtually and, and they have a remote aspect to their business.
If we kept going down this list, oops, sorry.
This list
professional case study writers
completely different keyword here.
And you can see here.
I think this is a key thing to point out.
How would we determine if let's say going back to this keyword,
if it was worth it to create a separate
blog post or a separate page on the site
to go after case study service versus case study service online versus
business case study writing services versus professional
case study writers, we would look at the search results here
and see if there was a lot of overlap in
what shows up for these different, queries here.
So professional case study writers, if you don't
remember, I'll just go back to, this has very different,
search results showing up than
professional case study writers.
So we would probably go after both of these different
keywords and we'd probably have a preference around
trying to go offer the case, study, writing service
or writing service online or best case study writing
service first, and then loop back to something like
professional case studies writers a little bit later in
the engagement, maybe two or three months down
the line, just because this has slightly lesser intent.
Someone might be wanting to search for a freelance
writer versus an agency that does this, but again,
the freelancer and agencies can somewhat be interchangeable.
And so this would still be a good, a good one to own.
Let's see here.
What else comes up?
B2B case studies.
So another, another keyword that stuck out
to me on their site was just B2B that's who they're
specific to.
So I would wanna see if there's other clarifiers in here
SaaS that would bring in just only those people.
Oh, that's a good one, too.
SaaS, SaaS case study
software as a service case study
SaaS case study service
Side note on one of the keywords that
Looks, Ooh, I really
go ahead.
Yeah,
That's a good one.
No, I was gonna do a total aside, like on
that first one, the case study, apparently case
study writing service or whatever, it's also, there's
like a side intent of writing, helping write like school
case study essays.
So just be mindful of that.
Right.
I think best.
Yeah.
And I think that's to, to that point,
I think that's why we like to be as specific
as possible.
So yeah.
Yeah.
If you can include the word B2B in here and
instead of just B2B case studies, which could
also be interesting for, to, for Joel to own
here, even though you see the intent is slightly
different than a service.
To me, the intent here is either examples
of good ones, how to write them a process for
creating them
Well, this,
So
This is some of that cross, I think some,
some level of this is like people in business
school, like you saw the scholarly articles for
some of that is like, there's some cross intent of
people being like, I just want examples of like
cool business case studies of like B2B businesses that
I don't know, like that, that I can be
used in some like MBA class or whatever, but
that's okay.
Like, that's fine.
Just look on the SERP.
And if there's some level of intent, you
think for your use case, which in this case is
like, I want examples of B2B case studies that other
businesses have written about their customers so that
I can imitate that therefore indicating that I'm
in the market for something like case study, buddy, if
there's like.
A few pieces on the SERP for it.
I would probably go after it.
Maybe not the first keyword, but at some point.
Yeah.
So I know we've talked a lot about the, the high level pain point SEO strategy.
So those best customer or the best category keywords,
alternative keywords, we haven't gone into some of the
more specific, real pain point SEO use cases or examples.
So this would be one of them here, how to write a B2B case study.
Again, if you're searching for this, you probably
have a need to write one of these, and maybe
you might be willing to use a service like case study buddy, to
do this because you realize after reading an article
like this, this seems very complicated or case study,
buddy just has such a better process.
I should just probably use them.
So if I was doing this blog post for case
study, buddy, I would probably share their own
internal, not, not like the own internal process
behind the scenes, but more the public facing process that
they use that allows them to get these case
studies that are a notch better than anyone else.
And so in these, I'm guessing a lot of these
blog posts are really a generic, like let's
go through these.
You are too busy doing the actual work.
So how to write 'em problem solution results customer again, super high level.
Doesn't really say anything.
Do a question and answer with a customer with authentic photo.
This blog post, you
Probably took that
Photo.
Yeah.
This the structure.
Oh, have a headline.
What is the case study about again, like
most of these blog posts that are written on any
of these subjects are just so bad.
They're so bad.
They don't even say anything unique.
They don't like what all this is obvious how
Best part is the results?
The results says detail is crucial.
Perhaps you should have included detail in your own post
facts and figures are the best.
If you don't have results in a case study, what are you even doing?
Like how I
Should.
I think, yeah, I didn't realize I should include
results in my case study until I read your
profound blog
Post.
So again, if you have a service like case
study, buddy, and you've been doing this for a
long time, you should be able to write a
much better blog post around how to write B2B
case studies.
And it should be very clear to the reader that
you actually know what you're talking about here,
because you have some unique process that you've
created over a period of years, doing this for clients.
And you have a lot more nuance in your blog posts
around maybe challenges of scheduling interviews with
the company that, that you're trying to do
the interview with how to ask good questions in the
interview, how to structure the, the case study
that is far and away, better than just this headline
results, whatever structure that they had in here.
And so I do think, think this, this is
a valid keyword to go after and, and probably
a good one to go after.
Um, that is more,
I would say the pain point, SEO.
It's not gonna be as high converting as someone
looking for a service, but it's definitely something that
I would test in the first few months of
an engagement to, to see if it converts or
not other, other things that are even a little bit more middle of the funnel.
And even people could say, this is more
top of the funnel, but I actually think I, I
can argue this is more middle of the funnel
because I think if you're gonna go write a
case study or you even tasked with producing
them, you want to go look for examples of case
studies that are good, that you can emulate.
And so I would argue that if you were to rank for B2B SaaS or B2B case study
examples, again, focusing on this specific customer and,
and then showing examples, you could actually just show the
finished product of all your great client.
All the great client work and say, here are
all the examples of case studies that we've produced
at Case Study Buddy.
You could even weave some of the here's, how we produce it in here.
And I think that would likely convince someone
to work with you and that you clearly know what
you're doing and have a CTA.
I, if, if you're, if you need to produce
a case study and you don't wanna write it
yourself, try Case Study Buddy, something like that in your blog post.
Yeah, I, I, I mean, and I would, even in
the example, post, I would mention the process
and the differentiation, cuz you say, here
are our examples, but how did we create those?
It's not just by chance.
It's not by doing what everyone else did.
They're created via our process and here are links to it, etc.
Um, let's do this for both this and, um,
parcel master.
Let's now distill this into, like, what would
be the first three posts I can go first on
parcel master.
I would probably do.
I would probably do a disruption story at the beginning.
Elliot mentioned like extremely low DR So you
need something while SEO is like taking time to pick
up.
Then I would do one of your super specific, um,
SEO posts, like really specific if you're low, DR Like whatever that last,
Like that low, that low volume
Pack pick and pick and pack pick and pop
pick, and that pick and pop is the basketball
move pick.
And,
And again, even in the, even in the first
three months of an engagement, or even in the
first month, even if that had no,
let's say search volume for it.
And we knew that that was a big pain point that the business solved for.
We would still go after that even in the
first few months, because we know, yeah, just one
conversion there, or two or three or five
conversions is pretty meaningful for that.
And if no one else is talking about their service
in that way, that's still a really valuable
keyword to own.
And especially with Elliott's example of saying
that there's very low, DR If no one else is competing
for that term, you're even with low DR You're probably gonna rank for that.
And so that's, that's a, that's an even
better reason why we might go after it in the
first three months is because we can show some
early wins with something ranking very quickly.
And also because we're going after a keyword that
no one has really even thought about going after,
because there's no volume around it.
Yeah.
I, I, I have a rant that I wanted to save for the end and I will continue
to save it, but it's based on that is like,
this is something that people need to do
to actually take action.
The third slot, I was debating, while you
were saying that third slot, you could do one of
two things.
Um, you could either then mix in one of those
like category terms that you just you're like,
maybe I don't have the domain authority and
the backlink profile to ring for this now, like best
eCommerce fulfillment service, but I wanna lay the seeds for it.
Um, and just like, get it, get that published.
Or you could do a second.
Uh, you could do a second really specific one.
And I honestly think that as I'm thinking about
this, I would do a second specific one because
of what you just said is like,
just get wins.
And so maybe that's, you know, the brief
version of my rant now is like, we have a
bunch of people in our course and all that.
Sometimes I feel like they psych themselves out
a little bit and even clients or prospects that talk
to us where they're just like, they think
content has to be some like huge thing, you know,
like, well, I want to talk about this aspect of our brand.
And I wanna talk about that aspect of our brand.
And I really think, and, and they say things
to us like guys, I really think we have
an amazing opportunity.
Like our company is so well positioned for
content and I have this vision and they have this
vision of being like some example company that
they follow that they love, or they're jealous of that
they want to be like, all of that is fine.
Like, it's good to do that.
But I, what I've seen is I feel like people
psych themselves out over it is they're just
like, they, they have this vision of perfect or ideal content marketing.
And so it's so hard to take the early steps
because that first piece going after some nichey
term, like low volume pick and pack eCommerce fulfillment,
you're like, well, that's not my like, vision of
us being this amazing content marketing.
That's so boring.
And then you're just like, don't do anything.
Or you try to execute this vision, but you don't have the chops for it yet.
Don't have, or, or I think what you're saying
is it, it only talks about one aspect of
my service.
I, I don't want to be considered a low volume pick and pack company,
Right?
Oh, we're gonna fulfill all this other stuff too.
And we're gonna grow into this thing.
And I have this vision of just being this data
platform, like, you know, how all VC companies
eventually just, they're a data problem.
And so like, you're like, that's fine.
But in the meantime, you're not generating any leads.
So what are you doing?
And then they're like, well, content is not really working for us.
It's like, cuz you haven't done it yet for real.
So like get your early wins, get those published.
Another thing is you can use this kind of
three to five pieces using the framework we talked
about in this to just do your tests.
So there's other groups of companies that are
like, well, I wanna test the channel and is the
channel gonna work?
You're like, great.
You can produce five pieces stop and come back in six months.
And like, what is it done?
Has it produced leads?
Make sure your attribution
ducks are in a row.
You can check our site for attribution stuff,
Google attribution site colon growandconvert.
com and then, and, and be able to attribute it.
Okay.
So that's parcel master.
That's my rant case study buddy three pieces.
Again, I would do a disruption story.
I would do, uh, that B2B content or sorry, B2B, or what was it?
Case study writing service or B2B case study writing
service, SaaS case study CA SaaS uh, can't even
speak right now.
SaaS case study writing service.
I would probably also do the how to write
a B2B case study because I, I do think
that that gives the, uh, opportunity to share
the process and uniqueness about his service.
I know on his website he had video testimonial
service as well, or that was another key service.
That might be another thing that I would go after.
And again, that decision is probably made by
if we were doing that kickoff session.
One of the questions that we would ask is
how much of his business comes from written versus
video.
If a, a majority of it is, let's say 70
to 80% is all written testimony or written
case studies, then we would probably focus more on
those written case study keywords in the very beginning.
However, if you said there's a 50, 50 split,
then I would bring in one of those video
testimonial service keywords, or something like that.
Yeah.
Um, request, I know we're almost at an hour,
there was someone who replied to your tweet, like
instantly, could we do a rapid fire on her business?
Can we add that?
Sure.
Just because she replied so quickly, if you
go to your Twitter thread, um, I could probably find
it here.
It is.
Testbox.
com.
I haven't even evaluated.
I don't even know if it's like good.
Um,
I don't even see this, oh, test box
Here.
I can share it.
Okay.
Test and compare B2B software, say goodbye to boring demos,
trial accounts, unnecessary qualifying accounts instead get, Ooh,
this is gonna be hard instead of get hands
on experience and compare the top B2B software side
by side with real use places.
Maybe this will be interesting instead of it's gonna be
Hard.
I, I would just do a bunch of comparison keywords.
So yeah, X, X software versus Y software.
That would literally be the whole strategy
that I would do in the very beginning.
Yeah.
This is not a normal one.
The reason I, so if you're wondering, like, as
I was halfway into reading the homepage headline and
sub-headline why did I immediately say this
is gonna be hard because it was very clear early on.
This is not a big existing category.
Yeah.
Is that fair?
I have never heard of something like this.
Yeah.
I mean, there are some keywords around compare
SaaS tools, so maybe that I'd want, I'd want to
go after that.
Yeah.
Um, but I agree, but to be honest, I would
just probably copy the strategy of G2 or,
Capterra.
And so going after the category keyword, so best
category keyword product, and try to rank for that.
And then whatever the uniqueness of the product
is in the way that you compare them, bring that
into the blog post.
And then I would also just do a bunch of head-to-head, uh, comparisons.
So whatever the big softwares are that you
compare on your guys' site, I would do those ones
first.
So whoever people are comparing the most, start
with those and do X software versus Y software.
And that would probably be the whole content strategy that I would lean with.
Okay.
Thank you everyone for listening.
If you enjoyed this, please like it and, or comment.
And again, if you have any more suggestions
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Thank you.