When it comes to marketing, you typically have three levers broadly speaking:
For the last six months I have been focused heavily on the Earned Media growth channel for
and our traffic and PQLs (Platform Qualified Leads) are up by over 30%. Through earned media we have not only driven a surge in new business traffic, but have also built relationships and gotten collaboration opportunities that then in turn have led to more growth.
Below is an outline of how we used three earned media channel to help us grow to over 40,000 users.
Getting an appearance on a podcast is a great way to get your product, service or story in front of more people. When I first started trying to get my CEO or CMO booked on podcasts, it was a struggle. I had a few personal connections and after those 3 or 4 got booked, I struggled for weeks to find a good outreach approach.
Then I cracked it and now, after just a few months, our team has been on more than 100 podcasts (I even started jumping in for appearances as my CEO and CMO were so booked out!).
So here is what I did:
Say you’re a SaaS company, you might start by just searching “SaaS” in to
. The key with Listen Notes, is it gives you an email contact for everyone listed there!
This is super important as pitching people on Linkedin with only 300 characters is hard (what I used to do before I found out about Listen Notes).
I used to focus way too much on volume and my outreaches weren’t authentic or helpful. I was copy and pasting pitches by industry and hoping for a breakthrough that never happened.
I quickly learned my lesson and instead I started listening to the podcasts, at least a few episodes every single time before I reached out and then I would have specific things to talk about. And I could better understand their audience and how we might fit in. Sometimes after listening I wouldn’t pitch them because I would realize it wasn’t a good fit.
I went from 40–50 pitches in a day to 2–3 and yet I was getting 50%+ positive responses to move forward with the latter approach! Plus I was actually learning things from all these podcasts too! Quality over quantity.
Here is an example of a successful outreach email:
Just like any cold outreach, why do they care? Highlight how the topic is specifically valuable to their audience. And don’t be afraid to chip in a few dollars to promote their episode with your team.
I have strengthened a lot of relationships by showing I am willing to promote on our end as well and putting my money where my mouth is.
We went from getting a few backlinks a month to getting a dozen a week from quality sources like Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur etc.. Here is how I did it. We started by using the free site
and every day writing responses in the business category.
HARO basically takes journalist requests and then you (the company) have to pitch them to have your contribution included and they will provide you a backlink if they like your insight. An email goes out three times a day and the journalist requests look like this (with more info when you click in to them):
I would try and submit a thorough and well thought out response to any topics I had expertise in. My recommendation is to use bullet points and be concise as they often might use 10 different authors quotes and they are looking for “quotable” takeaways.
We pitched and got accepted to do a piece with Forbes about
once and the results were amazing. Currently that article has 237,065 views, though only sent the site 52 sessions:
Next, I started reaching out to relevant authors of written content that I found via Google News. Here is what I would do. I would go to Google and type in a topic relevant to my product, like “Personalized email”. Our platform does Personalized video emails so I figure that if an author is writing on the topic of the value of personalization, there might be opportunity for collaboration.
Then I would click on the “News” tab:
From here I would just click into articles, friend the author on Linkedin and ask if they were interested in the topic of personalized video emails.
That strategy has netted me probably well over a hundred great articles, with every format under the sun from them interviewing me, to them asking questions and writing the piece, to them asking me to write a pitch or outline and then they would fill it in.
Another great earned media outlet is webinars. My CMO has been the master of these and we do lots of collaborations with other outlets here. We look for hosts who are focused around topics we have expertise in such as video funnels, unique strategies for using personal video emails or brand evangelism/customer delight.
We work with businesses that are complementary to us (Like
(Lots of people using membership, also use personal video).
I think the key here is a couple fold.
First, recognize that when you first start doing webinars you might only be able to bring a very small audience to the table. We are blessed by having a very engaged email list that we invite to things like this, but even if we weren’t, if the webinars are great quality, they will grow over time.
This is a long-tail thing, so make great content with good partners and you can leverage it for months or years to come. Of course a big component of success will be whether your fellow hosts have an active and engaged audience too.
Next, make them actionable. I find that the best webinars deliver a specific way to do certain things. Include a guide or tangible takeaway that reduces friction for whatever process they are looking to do.
Finally, don’t make them JUST A SALES PITCH. This part is so key. So many webinars are just sales pitches and it's exhausting and customers tune out and leave.
When we create content around personal video and optimizations, we do it because we love the power of relationship building. We love helping brands make a unique footprint. People could take our tips and tricks and use other video software and it would still apply. Make sure your listeners are walking away with wisdom, even if they don’t work with you.
Those are a few quick earned media tips that I hope will help give your SaaS some marketing momentum. Feel free to drop questions for me in the comments and I will do my best to help...