In this episode, I spoke with Ahrefs CMO Tim Soulo about the common challenges any early CMO faces and how to push past those. We also discussed Ahrefs’s remote marketing team setup and their playbook.
Read moreHow ConvertKit brings in 1/3rd revenue through their affiliate program
I’ve looked up to ConvertKit for a long time now. Over the last 4 years, they’ve grown their revenue ~50,000%. THAT is extra-ordinary growth.
They’re currently making about $19 million annually with 48 team members distributed globally.
From Marketing Hire #1 to Marketing Lead at Todoist: Brenna’s Playbook
For a lot of you who don’t know, I’ve got a weekly podcast called the Remote Marketing Podcast where we talk everything about remote marketing teams.
The podcast has generally been me sharing thoughts on marketing, but I occasionally try to bring on guests. In this episode, I invited Brenna Loury who is the Head of Marketing at Doist, the makers behind two very popular work productivity apps called Todoist & Twist. In total, their products serve over 20 million+ users and my favorite part is that they’re a 100% remote team.
Read moreRemote Work Loneliness: The Closest Solution
For the entirety of my remote working experience (6+ years now), I’ve been trying to find a solution to tackle loneliness while working remotely. In fact, it’s not just me – hundreds of other individual remote workers and remote teams are trying to find a long-term solution to this problem.
And yet, no-one’s found a permanent solution. In almost all remote work surveys, the no. 1 challenge for remote workers is tackling loneliness. Why are we not able to tackle it? Why is it that all solutions/articles on the internet only give temporary respite from it?
Read moreTop Remote Job Perks to Attract A+ Candidates [INFOGRAPHIC]
Today, competition for remote talent is fierce, as more and more remote companies are surfacing. Want proof? Go ask the companies that’ve listed their job positions on WeWorkRemotely on how they’re doing finding the right candidate for their openings. Chances are that 50% of companies would tell you that their positions have been open for over 3 months.
In fact, I’ve faced this problem myself. I’ve personally struggled finding the right candidate for a lot of our remote marketing roles, even though we advertise almost exclusively on remote job boards. We’ve often had to re-post our job listings with different descriptions to attract the right candidates. More often than not, the job perks make a huge difference in the number of applicants we get on our listing.
I was curious to know what job perks were most successful for companies in attracting the right candidates for their position. So I did some research. Over the last 1 year, I’ve been analysing remote job listings on various hiring portals to figure out the top perks other remote companies are using to attack the highest quality remote marketers.
The goal of this research was to figure out the most attractive remote job perks that I could use for my own job listings, but I thought I’d share the results of the research anyway on the blog. After all, we’re in this together! 🙂
Read moreHow to Network Globally (While Working Remotely)
I came across a blog the other day on why this entrepreneur started a conference and came across this advice from him:
“I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have been put on the same trajectory if it wasn’t for attending WD Summit that year and the 5 seconds of courage it took to introduce myself to Caleb and James. That’s what conferences can do. Because that’s what relationships can do.”
Nathan Barry, ConvertKit
I follow Nathan Barry’s work religiously. He has such a phenomenal story. From being a designer at a company, he’s gone on to write his own book(s), build best selling courses & started a software company that makes $12 million+ annually. Oh and did I mention that he’s just 27 years old.
That’s probably the reason why I was so pumped after reading that post. Tons of people have told me that conferences can transform people’s lives, because of the relationships & connections you make over there. You have to be outgoing, but you will potentially connect with tons of great people and it could change your life forever.
- You’ll find new business partners,
- new consulting clients,
- make new friends and/or
- possibly find your own mastermind group
If conferences could make me meet such folks and make such collaborations happen, I’m all for it.
Except that…
- Most conferences that I want to attend happen on the geographically opposite side of the world.
- Each conference ticket costs an average $1000 (if not more).
- Air-fare, lodging and everything else will set me back by another $3000.
Total damage = $4000
Read moreRoad to $4 million ARR: Lessons
Earlier last month, I opened our revenue dashboard to discover that we hit a sweeeet SaaS revenue milestone – $4 million ARR.
Here’s why it’s so surreal for all of us: we added the same revenue in last 1 year v/s in the previous 5 years.
It took us 5 years to go from 0 to $2 million ARR. (2012-2017)
It took us 1 year to go from $2 million to $4 million ARR. (2017-2018)
Just like how I shared my learnings on hitting $2 million ARR, here are some lessons that I learned from hitting $4 million ARR. It’s a mixed bag of lessons touching operations, strategy, culture etc.
Read moreDeveloping Marketing Strategies: A Framework to Go From “Tactic” To “Strategy”
Finding the right way to build a sustainable digital marketing strategy isn’t exactly a piece of cake.
A year and a half ago, there were just a handful of us making up Hubstaff’s team. We were constantly juggling between long lists of tasks that needed our attention. While we did want to fuel our marketing efforts, in reality, we were too focused on just sustaining our business.
This situation is probably familiar to many of you. When you’re bootstrapping to the max during the early days, marketing looks more like shooting in the dark and waiting to see if you hit something, rather than a structured process.
Still, when things got a bit more stable for us, we realized that we needed to use a more systematic approach. That’s how we would be able to identify the marketing methods that work for us so that we can invest in them and scale them to sustainably grow Hubstaff.
Read moreThe Secret of Our Growth: Successful Integration Partnerships
You know what the best part of working is? Working together.
Looking for ways to establish your brand and create meaningful connections can be daunting. But reaching out to people you can collaborate with is truly rewarding.
At Hubstaff, I’ve experienced that firsthand through creating close connections with our integration partners. Not only has it brought a lot of benefit for us, but it has truly made our work more meaningful.
Why did we decide to build an integration plan? Why would you need one?
Well, because in efforts as big as this one, you need a clear strategy and smooth steps to follow. That’s how you set the stage for real growth.
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