Built a $50M/yr SaaS Biz (that didn't work out so great), So I'm Building Another One. I'm Rand Fishkin of SparkToro (prev. Moz) AMA

Dear Rand

Questions around building a team for Content Creation.

Content creation across blogs, website copy, social posts, ad copies etc. is very critical to how your brand is perceived & you take a positioning.

We have tried with folks to write copy but often then not I have found it of average / poor quality. So, right now I along with one in-house marketer do the heavy lifting with discipline.

Thoughts on :

  • Where to look for good content creators ? Some good qualities to do a check when interviewing them ?

  • Can this be outsourced or shd be build in-house capabilities ?

Happy to hear your thoughts on this role of Content Marketer.

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Hi Ravi - for identifying where your prospects hang out, Iā€™d start with either a survey or a series of interviews. Try to get job titles, language your audience uses to describe themselves, things they regularly talk about WRT their work, etc. You can then use that to search https://sparktoro.com for things that make sense. E.G. I tried a search for ā€œhidden gemā€ social accounts followed by people who use the word ā€œpublisherā€ in their profile/bio:

You can also try doing this manually by taking a list of your customers/prospects emails and sending them through a service like Clearbit or FullContact to get their social URLs and then analyzing what they follow/read/watch/link-to/etc. SparkToro has a ā€œCustom Audiencesā€ feature that does this, but if youā€™re long on engineering talent and short on budget, you can also do it yourself.

As to creating the watering hole vs. going to others, Iā€™d think about opportunity cost, ROI, and timeframe ā€“ how long do you have to build that community/watering hole? If itā€™s a few years, Iā€™d definitely go for it. If you need faster results, I might do more of the digital PR approach and leverage other peopleā€™s platforms for a while.

In terms of self-service vs. servicesā€¦ Itā€™s a tough battle, especially in areas where customers are used to having managed services. Thatā€™s often not because products lack the right features or ability to self-onboard, but rather because folks want a person or team they can talk to and interface with. As much as self-service web hosting and publishing platforms have become popular, thereā€™s still a lot of demand and need for people help. I might consider whether you can maintain a long-term hybrid model that doesnā€™t exclude customers who need that human touch.

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Hi Abhi - No Hard Feelings, Radical Candor, and Making of a Manager are all great books for these issues.

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Hi Vivek - I think it needs to A) start from the top (you and your fellow founders/execs), B) be recognized and rewarded, not punished (as it is in most orgs), and C) amplified internally and externally on a regular basis (i.e. call out folks whoā€™ve been candid and vulnerable, talk about what makes their contributions such, but only do it with their permission). Hope that helps!

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Hi Abhi - Iā€™d recruit from ex-journalists and fiction writers. Thereā€™s a ton of folks in those worlds struggling and out of work, but they donā€™t often position themselves or pursue more technical and content-marketing sorts of roles. The other thing Iā€™d do is make sure your requests on topics and focus arenā€™t so boring and stale as to drive people away. Many marketers think they need to write on certain topics for SEO or keyword matchingā€¦ Let your writers go beyond that stuff, be creative, be inventive, choose their own (relevant) topics, and youā€™ll attract far better candidates.

And yes! This is definitely something you can outsource. Thereā€™s loads of great copywriting firms and contractors out there, and almost all provide samples you can read and determine fit from.

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Hi Aditi - I know I keep referencing this post in this thread, but thatā€™s only because itā€™s relevant :slight_smile: https://sparktoro.com/blog/where-should-you-start-marketing-a-new-business-or-product/

Things Iā€™d do: gain a deep understanding of your customers, their pain points, their interests, what they talk about, read, watch, listen-to, follow, and engage-with. Go find publications that resonate with them and figure out why. Then determine whatā€™s missing ā€“ whatā€™s not being done well that IS of interest to them.

As for what to avoid: donā€™t assume you can build a content marketing engine quickly. Itā€™s minimum 6-9 months to see ROI. Be prepared for that, and donā€™t get frustrated if your first few months are crickets while youā€™re trying to figure it out.

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Hi Vengat -

Biggest advantage of being non-VC backed: You donā€™t have to only target billion dollar markets or huge growth opportunities. You can do things that donā€™t scale. You can do things with lower margins. You can make incremental (instead of only exponential) progress and reap the rewards. You can invest in serendipitous, hard-to-measure channels. You can do things you LIKE to do, instead of only things that maximize investor returns. You can focus on surviving for a long time, instead of growing as fast as possible no matter the cost. All of these are huge advantages.

Early-stage SaaS businesses with impressive marketingā€¦ unfortunately, I donā€™t maintain a list. Off the top of my head, Iā€™ve liked stuff from https://textio.com, https://checkmyads.com, https://meetedgar.com/, and others I canā€™t currently find/recall (sorry!)

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Hey @Rand,

Thanks for taking the time to address all the questions so thoughtfully!

Whatā€™s immediately evident in the questions here is how much your work has informed and shaped the way founders think about so many different aspects of starting up.

Today, too, each response gleams with years of insight. But I guess that just partly explains why your work has made mattered so much over the years. The other half is, of course, how personal and earnest itā€™s been all along. This lovely reflection is but one example:

All that said, the one thing I do miss from the early years of Mozā€¦ the excitement. The low lows arenā€™t there, but neither are the high highs. If weā€™d achieved at Moz what we have in SparkToroā€™s first 6 months, Iā€™d be jubilant, elated, bouncing-off-my-chairā€¦ I do kinda wish I could still feel that way about hitting business goals. Now itā€™s more a sense of relief and ā€œOK, got that done, time for the next thing.

Thank, again, for joining us and sharing your lessons so generously. Hope to have you join us for another session in the future! :slightly_smiling_face:

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And a huge thanks to @wingman4sales, @Shay, @ncameron, @aballabh, @Vengat, @raviramani, @Kvivek05, @aditi1002, and @jimmyrose for taking the time to join in today and making this a wonderful discussion! :rocket:

Weā€™ll see you around for the next AMA soon. Stay tuned for more details!

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Iā€™d love to hear why you took funding at all for SparkToro. I assumed you would have done well out of Moz and been able to roll it into the next venture!

What was the thinking behind going after funding at all?

Edit: Oops looks like I was too late. I was waiting for my Relay invite :frowning:

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Hi Jimmy - no worries! Short answer is no, I did not do well out of Moz. Have a few hundred thousand in savings, but thatā€™s it. Without an exit, and with no buyer for the stock, thereā€™s no path to a financial exit, so all that stock is worth something on paper, but not IRL.

That said, SparkToroā€™s funding was also a form of validation for us AND, even more importantly, I wanted to pave the road for alternative kinds of funding for startups outside the classic venture model. Fingers crossed, if we prove successful with SparkToro, more investors will consider making investments this way (and more startups will think about fundraising this way, too).

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Damn man Iā€™m sorry to hear that. And thank you for your honesty. I hope in the future something changes for you there.

Thatā€™s one hell of a funding model, especially the ā€œwe must first return all of our investorsā€™ capital via profit distributionsā€. Very cool way of looking after the people that invest.

Makes me think one day Iā€™d like to be an investor in something like that.

Congrats Rand and hope Sparktoro goes well. Iā€™m a paying user and have found some pretty cool insights so far

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Thanks, Rand! Makes sense. From what Iā€™ve learned, this intersection is difficult to achieve but definitely possible by staying very close to the customer problems and finding the mediums through which you can reach your customers. And I feel itā€™s also hard to identify/cultivate if a founder is attempting something for the first time. But youā€™re right. ā€œDry analysis of opportunity vs. returns canā€™t compete with actual desire to invest.ā€ Experimenting to get to this personal alignment can be so important in the early stages as the founder is the marketer.

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Thanks for sharing that, Rand!
I love this:
ā€œThe low lows arenā€™t there, but neither are the high highs.ā€

Those first, close encounters with uncertainty do produce a unique combination of emotional toll and purpose. The former dominating the latter, mostly. Not something one ever forgets.

Thanks a lot for taking time to responding to all the questions. Cheers - Rajaraman.

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