spending 800k on marketing ideas lessons learned with timestamps YoutubeScribe.com

[0:00] We spent over $800,000 on marketing campaigns
with zero tracking and zero expectations for ROI.
[0:06] Was it a waste of money? Let's find out…
[0:09] Starting with this Google ads campaign where we
spent around $16,100 to try and earn backlinks.
[0:16] Because backlinks help a page rank higher in
organic search, we wanted to test if you could
[0:21] earn these backlinks simply by paying your
way to the top of the search results with ads.
[0:27] To test this, we bid on keywords that were
relevant to our content and noindexed these
[0:31] articles so the only way to find
them would be through our ad.
[0:35] We let the ads run and monitored backlinks
to these pages using Ahrefs' Site Explorer.
[0:40] And in total we got 101 backlinks from unique
websites which works out to a cost average of
[0:46] $159.31 per referring domain.
[0:50] Not bad.
[0:52] But only 36 of these backlinks were actually
good, bringing our cost average for decent
[0:57] referring domain to $446.94.
[1:02] Not great.
[1:04] This is the short version of the story.
[1:06] We actually have a video that shows exactly
how we ran this campaign and how we got
[1:10] links for as low as $49.17 per 
referring domain.
[1:15] Link in the description.
[1:16] Now let's rewind back to 2020.
[1:18] This was our homepage.
[1:20] It's about as standard as you can get and not
much changed on this page for close to 5 years.
[1:25] It was time to redo it.
[1:27] Now, there wasn't anything wrong with
the page, but we wanted to add some
[1:30] personality and rethink our messaging.
[1:33] So we actually hired not one, not two
but three different copywriting agencies.
[1:39] Each agency went through a few weeks
of market research, dozens of customer
[1:43] interviews and several Skype calls.
[1:46] And after they'd done their copywriting magic,
hey sent us mockups of what they thought
[1:50] would portray Ahrefs in the best way possible.
[1:53] And in total, we spent around $33,000
for their services.
[1:58] Now, an interesting thing that happened is that
all three home pages were drastically different.
[2:03] As such, we didn't choose a single agency's
work as the so-called "winner" because they
[2:08] all made great points.
[2:10] So our team kind of "Frankenstein" our
current homepage together which we were
[2:14] and are still pretty happy with.
[2:16] Now, if you think 33K for a homepage
is a lot, wait until you hear about our
[2:20] $52,000 podcast experiment.
[2:23] Now, $52,000 on podcast ads might
not sound like a big bet, but in 2018,
[2:29] podcast advertising wasn't exactly
popular – at least in our niche.
[2:33] Plus, there really wasn't much information
around it so we were kind of going in blind.
[2:37] Here's how our journey began: we started
by sponsoring five podcasts, which cost
[2:42] a total of $14,200.
[2:45] From these ads, we got a total of just
339 pageviews and 11 trial signups.
[2:52] That's basically the equivalent of $41.89
per click or $1,290.91 per lead.
[3:00] [You can't be serious!]
[3:03] It was then that we discovered how foolish
it was to expect a substantial ROI from cold
[3:09] ads to a complex product like Ahrefs with a
30-second pre-roll ad in a 30 minute podcast.
[3:16] In fact, the results were so bad that we
almost pulled the plug on the campaign.
[3:21] But something that Tim, CMO at Ahrefs
discovered was that people would frequently
[3:26] tell him at conferences and meet-ups that
they heard about Ahrefs… yeah, you guessed it,
[3:31] on a podcast.
[3:33] It was then that we realized that podcast
ads were more a tool for gaining exposure
[3:37] and brand awareness rather than lead generation.
[3:40] So we spent another $37,775 on
round two of our podcast ads.
[3:47] And in total, we sponsored six more podcasts.
[3:51] And we didn't even bother tracking clicks or
sign-ups because what's another 40 grand?
[3:56] Now, podcast ads are just one way
that we've sponsored creators.
[4:00] In December 2021, we moved our Google
and Facebook ads budget of around $200,000
[4:06] to support and sponsor creators in our space.
[4:09] Now, before I tell you the details about
our ad spend, some context is due.
[4:13] We've all gotten used to a model where 
search engines and other ad platforms
[4:17] earn more revenue from content than the
creators themselves, which is arguably unfair.
[4:23] And if you know anything about Ahrefs, then you
know that we've created our own search engine,
[4:27] yep.com, from the ground up so than we can
give 90% of ad revenue to content creators.
[4:33] So reallocating our ads budget to
sponsor creators made a ton of sense.
[4:38] So what does 200k buy you?
[4:40] Well, we sponsored 72 videos, 108 podcast
episodes, 138 newsletter issues, 11 standalone
[4:48] projects and events, 9 sponsored blog
posts, and 7 social media campaigns.
[4:53] Now, something that I thought was super cool
about this project is that for 11 of these creators,
[4:59] Ahrefs was their very first sponsor.
[5:01] Again, we didn't try and measure ROI or
clicks for these campaigns so I can't share
[5:06] that information with you.
[5:08] But to give you an idea of the amount of work
that's involved to run these, I can tell you that
[5:12] our partnership manager, Igor, sent around
2,000 emails and had around 20 hours of
[5:18] Zoom calls to make this all happen.
[5:20] And he's continued this effort throughout 2022
where we spent an additional $400,000 or so on
[5:27] creator sponsorships.
[5:29] Now, in addition to individual creator
sponsorships, we also spent around
[5:32] $100,000 in conference sponsorships in 2022.
[5:37] And this only accounts for the actual
sponsorship fees to organizers.
[5:41] So no airline tickets, hotels, or swag
were accounted for in this number.
[5:46] So based on these marketing activities alone,
we spent roughly $838,875, which excludes
[5:54] salaries and other expenses.
[5:56] Now, old Sam would look at these campaigns,
roll his eyes a few times and ask… where's the ROI?
[6:03] But new Sam, who's now worked at Ahrefs
for over five years has three takeaways.
[6:08] #1. When possible, make your
marketing campaigns multi-purpose.
[6:13] So as a company that sells software to marketers,
pretty much all of our marketing experiments and
[6:19] campaigns can be turned into case studies.
[6:22] This is a type of content that's harder to replicate
and our customers love hearing about them.
[6:27] Let's take our podcast ads experiment for example:
[6:30] If we expected to get at least $52,000 back
from our 52K in ad spend on podcasts,
[6:37] it would have been a great failure.
[6:39] But we wrote a case study on this project
which got hundreds of backlinks.
[6:43] It was shared by influential people in our industry.
[6:45] And it also led to Rebekah getting some
of her own airtime on industry podcasts.
[6:50] Plus you just heard about the experiment
if you didn't already know!
[6:55] This kind of secondary brand exposure makes
a lot of our marketing ideas actually worth
[7:00] trying because if the results are sub optimal,
at least we still get content from it.
[7:05] PS. We're hiring.
[7:06] Takeaway #2 is to accept that
ROI is not always trackable.
[7:12] Take our conference sponsorships for example.
[7:14] Let's say we created a special landing page and
used campaign parameters to track the so-called
[7:19] ‘effectiveness' of our presence at a conference.
[7:22] Now, if someone signs up from that special
link, can we really say that they signed up
[7:27] because we sponsored the conference?
[7:29] Maybe they had a conversation with another
attendee who had been a lifelong customer.
[7:34] Now, what if three months passed by and
then they signed up through that link?
[7:38] Do we know any other interactions that they
had with our blog posts, with our videos,
[7:42] social content or organic mentions
from others in the industry?
[7:46] What about our backlinks experiment?
[7:48] What is the ROI of a backlink?
[7:50] The bottom line is that attribution
is kind of a nightmare.
[7:54] And if we're just counting touchpoints, we're
at best guesstimating the value of an activity.
[7:59] I love data just as much as any other marketer
but making assumptions based on bad data
[8:06] will most likely lead to bad decisions.
[8:08] So I guess lesson 2b is that common
sense can sometimes be the better bet.
[8:14] Alright, the next lesson I learned is
to spend on things you believe in.
[8:18] As cheesy as this may sound, spending on
things you believe in just as we had done for
[8:22] creator sponsorships and events,
gives more meaning to a campaign.
[8:27] In fact, it almost feels weird to call it a "campaign"
because things like ROI are no longer the focus.
[8:35] Now, the marketing dollars that went into
these campaigns pales in comparison to
[8:39] what we put into our product-led content 
marketing efforts which we've been pursuing
[8:43] heavily for over 5 years.
[8:46] If you want to see how we use product-led
content marketing to grow our business and
[8:50] how you can do it too, then watch our tutorial on
product-led content which will walk you through
[8:55] our process step-by-step.
[8:57] I'll see you there.

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