Gaetano Nino DiNardi’s Post

Question for marketing leaders: How do you know if "demand creation" efforts are actually working? How would you measure "organic brand equity" for your company? Outside of the very obvious "how did you hear about us" responses, here are some ideas: 1. Tracking organic clicks / impressions for branded keywords like: [brand name] [brand name + pricing] [brand name + product] [brand name + features] [brand name + integrations] 2. Tracking organic clicks / impressions to pages that are overwhelmingly branded traffic: - homepage - pricing page - etc 3. Tracking the search volume (demand) of branded keywords over time. You could compare this annually to see if actual demand is rising, flat or declining. 4. Tracking paid clicks and conversion data for branded campaigns. 5. Tracking the CPCs and spend of your branded keywords / campaigns over time. 6. Tracking direct traffic volume over time. 7. YouTube??? Do subscriber counts matter? 🤔 8. LinkedIn??? Are there any "brand metrics" that should be tracked? I acknowledge this is an imperfect method with a lot of flaws. For example, it's hard to exclude "non-demand" searches from investors, analysts, career seekers, employees and customers. Anyway, how do you guys solve this problem? Would love to hear best practices, new ideas, or anything I might have missed in the comments.

I’m going all-in on LO-FI content. This is very simply content shot from an iPhone. You don’t need corporate produced videos to be engaging. You just need someone who knows their sh*t to talk about a different spin on a common topic. Here’s mine… The silent killers of B2B advertising. Enjoy this rant 😎 PS — I’m launching a new venture verrrrrry soon that’s going to expose the untold secrets of B2B marketing. Every topic will be the best and most in-depth expert coverage from real-deal players in the field who actually do the work. No more “show biz” marketing that just recaps what other people / companies do. I’m pretty tired of seeing “10 things behind Snowflake’s explosive growth” etc.

Hey guys, meet my friend Shiva Kumaar. It’s his first time in Miami and we gave him a proper welcoming… this pic was taken right before we made the mistake of going to Key Biscayne… because we got stuck in THREE HOURS OF TRAFFIC coming back 😭😭😭😭😭 But anyway, why is this cool? Because Shiva was my very first client (DCKAP) and we are still working together today. We don’t view each other as client / vendor. We are homies. This is rewarding for me. Building lifelong connections with great people. Shiva is one of the smartest GTM minds I’ve ever worked with. So let me tell you about our problem at DCKAP: We have “hard to reach” buyers who don’t spend much time on LinkedIn and don’t reply to cold emails. ABM doesn’t work. SEO has been working, but it’s very long tail and it’s slow. We have been piloting Google Ads for a few months and even with maxing out 90% impression share on important SERPs, the engagement has been low. So we have to start building out field marketing and localized events to reach these people, since targeting distributors is such a relationships based industry — and plus, the way these people do business is still “old school” where deals get done at golf courses and steakhouses. We brought in Eden Bidani to rewrite our website copy and she did an AMAZING job. We brought in Mor Assouline to help us fix our leaky buckets in the sales process. He’s making a huge difference. Vibha Nair has stepped up tremendously. I’ve been working with her every week for over a year, and watching her grow and blossom as a marketer has been super rewarding for me, personally. Helping people get to the next level is what it’s all about. Karthik Chidambaram is a great CEO who actually “gets” marketing. He’s pushing us to try new things and take more risks. Why does the CEO “get” marketing? Because we collaborate with him a lot and educate him on modern day best practices. He’s very receptive to feedback and has a pragmatic view on things. CEOs will only “get” marketing if we take the time to educate and work with them on it. This is a real life post. The link won’t be posted in an engagement pod. There isn’t any copywriting formula that’s “proven” to get engagement. There’s no “link in the comments” for this one 🤣 It’s just sharing my experience from working with a client for almost two years now.

At least 1x per month, I take a call with a SaaS founder that wants to start doing SEO from absolute ground zero. They might be reliant on paid ads and branded search, but in some cases -- they have NOTHING. When this happens, I will "reverse engineer" how their direct competitors are X years ahead of them, and then paint the picture of costs involved and time commitment required to be successful. From there, it's usually... "oh sh*t... we didn't realize how tough this is..." Once they understand it's a multi-year commitment and hundreds of thousands of dollars are required to compete, they back out. I've done "All Out SEO" from scratch before. Here's what the setup was like: - 2 FT Content Marketers - 10+ Freelance Writers - 1 FT Link Building Manager - 1 Internal Designer - 1 Internal SME The output was 20 pages per month x 100 targeted backlinks per month. If you want to learn more about my "All Out SEO" strategy, join my live webinar on Moz with chima -- it's happening on Wednesday, April 17, 2024 @ 6PM BST / 1PM EST / 10AM PST. I'll be opening up my bag of tricks and teaching you guys exactly how to run a high-volume SEO program at scale (in a hyper-competitive niche). You know where to find the link! 👇👇👇

If you're not building targeted backlinks to money pages, SEO is a waste of time for most B2B SaaS companies. For example, I ranked Chris Orlob's website (Pclub) number 1 for [B2B Sales Training] within 6 months. Just "making great content" would never outrank brands like Udemy. I had to manually invest time and effort into acquiring backlinks from my network. But what if you don't have someone like me around to help you get powerful backlinks? Well, you could work with my friends at dofollow.com. I'm maxed out with client projects at the moment, but hit them up and they'll get this going for you, especially if you need to rank for competitive keywords. #SEO 🚀

A very technical problem regarding a website migration came up for me last week. I asked some trusted people in my network for their opinion and within 30 minutes I was able to get the right answers, which enabled me to make an informed decision. To me, that is the real power of network -- access to expert knowledge and people who are genuinely willing to help you. For clients, the value of working with someone who has access to a powerful network is INSANE -- because tough issues can get resolved FAST. What takes a week to figure out on their own, can be solved in less than 1 hour with access to the right expertise. That's the power of having a great network.

Here's the real difference when it comes to being a marketing contractor vs. an in-house marketer. Marketing Contractor: YOU SHOULD NEVER BE THE BOTTLENECK. In-House Marketer: YOU ARE THE BOTTLENECK. That's why I typically complete my action items after a client call within 48 hours. The ball should always be in their court. Clients should never be waiting on you to move things forward. Full stop. This is the winning mindset for contractors and fractional marketers. Meanwhile, the in-house mindset seems to be the opposite. There's often complaints about resources, priorities, tight deadlines and being overwhelmed with tasks. Deadlines are frequently missed. Excuses to support. So that's why most in-house marketers can never make it work as a fractional consultant. Speed is the secret to outperforming 90% of other marketers out there.

Big thank you to the team at Wix for inviting me on the podcast! 🙌 Mordy and Crystal -- you guys have a GREAT format and this was such an enjoyable interview (it really did feel like a sports talk radio show). If you guys wanna hear my teardown of how to build an SEO focused content program (starting from ZERO), this interview is for you -- so check it out!

My friend Tito is a genius when it comes to sales. He told me about his philosophy on "in-market" vs "out of market" and it blew me away. The marketing echo chamber has pushed a narrative of "capture demand" vs "create demand" which draws a hard line in the sand between who wants to buy versus who doesn't. But Tito says you actually have four categories of prospects: 1. In-Market Hand Raisers (everyone chasing these at the bottom of funnel). 2. Open to Change (unhappy with current solution, but not motivated to change). 3. Open to Learn (likes current solution, but open to hearing more). 4. Detractors (hates salespeople / hates ads - you will never convert them). Just because they are "out of market" doesn't necessarily mean they are a detractor. Some might be open to change. Some might be open to learn. Sales and marketing teams spend the majority of their efforts on finding hand raisers -- this is actually pretty easy. Finding the "open to learn" crowd -- that's not too hard. Moving them from "open to learn" --> "open to change" -- now THAT is hard. And that's what creating demand is all about.

Reddit and Quora have become the garbage dump destinations of the internet. Most forum threads are heavily gamed and/or spam infested -- loaded with fake comments, fake upvotes, etc. If you search Google for any product review query, you'll now see a "Discussions and Forums" section in the results. This new algorithm change has SKYROCKETED organic visibility for both Reddit and Quora -- basically, they are enjoying a free lunch. Below are the numbers from Lily Ray's research. Reddit = 867% increase. Quora = 294% increase. Glen Allsopp's research found that 51% of Reddit’s top-ranking threads currently have spam as a top comment. You've heard plenty of people say they append "Reddit" to their Google searches because "SEO ruined Google." But let's be real -- Reddit and Quora sucks. Put the spam aside -- most threads ranking in Google search are outdated by several years. Do you guys actually click Reddit / Quora results from Google and read them while considering a software purchasing decision?