Startup Growth Hacking: SEO, PPC & CRO

 

Conversion funnelStartups face unique challenges with their desire to disrupt the market, while growing more each month than most business can in a year, often with meagre resources, an evolving product and in the face of fierce, better funded competition.

Despite all of that, startups have some attractive advantages including speed, vision and passion, which is why they are our favourite clients to work with.

Having supported several successful, and not so successful, startups over the years including TrustedPlaces (acquired by Yell for £2M), Isango (acquired by TUI) and Supercover Insurance (acquired by Markerstudy for £20M), we’ve seen what works, and what doesn’t and so we are well placed to help you grow. As a result, we have considerable experience optimising large websites with hundreds of thousands of pages and scaling up profitable PPC campaigns that make thousands of sales per month.

At the heart of these campaigns is comprehensive keyword research; essentially a long list of target keywords with key metrics including their volume, value and the strength of the competition, which are used to determine the keywords with the highest return on investment (ROI).

That is then converted into an search engine marketing (SEM) roadmap that outlines how many pages are required to rank for each keyword, the content they’ll need and associated pay per click ads.

At that point, you know what your campaign’s going to cost, its revenue, delivery timeline and ROI and you haven’t even spent (or raised!) a penny yet.

A credible marketing strategy is often overlooked early on, but it is one of the things that most successful startups have in common (regardless of whether or not they bootstrap).

It can also help you to convince Angels and VCs that you’re a sound investment, since you can show them how large your market is, where you customer are, what they want, what they are worth and what it costs to acquire them.

Of course, achieving great results requires more than just good marketing; you need a great product too. Often a website’s poor conversion rate is the real impediment, since there’s no value in scaling up something that doesn’t work. Conversely, the benefits of conversion rate optimisation (CRO) are felt across the board, enhancing every channel including paid search, affiliate marketing, direct traffic and SEO.

Good decisions are based on good data, which is why we’re not just SEO and PPC specialists, but are also web analytics evangelists with a passion for CRO. So, whether you’re installing analytics for the first time or are overwhelmed by data, we can help you to extract actionable insights that boost the bottom line.

Whether you’re just starting out or about to float, we always have time for startups and will do our best to help you along the way. Some of our best clients lined us up ahead of schedule, knowing that finding the right partner isn’t a decision they’d want to rush down the line.

So, feel free to give us a call for a quick chat to discuss your plans, whatever they are.

To contact to Anthony Sharot, Market Appeal’s founder, call 020 3880 5692 or email enquiries(at)marketappeal.co.uk.