Strategy
Hiring an SEO agency after getting burned: the 30-day test
Find which of 4 patterns burned you, then hire the next SEO agency on a 30-day strategy month you own.
What Databox CEO Peter Caputa gets right about content-led growth and social selling.
Peter Caputa, CEO at Databox, is running a master class in content marketing and social selling — you just have to pay close attention to what he's doing.
I started following Peter about a year and a half ago when my boss at the time shared one of his posts with me. The hook of the post was something like: "SEO is only for the big boys now, start ups shouldn't bother."
It outraged me.
After all, I'd just left HomeLight where I'd successfully gone toe to toe with Zillow in SEO on a start up's budget.
I didn't agree with him and had a big debate about it.
But he got my attention. So, I followed him.
Since then, he's been in my LinkedIn feed almost on a daily basis and I've taken a liking to him and his other ideas. I also have an intimate knowledge of Databox now — though I'm not a client (yet).
That's just standard social media marketing though.
The real genius is in who he's targeting.
1. Databox is an analytics platform for growing businesses.
2. Agencies (like me) work with a lot of growing businesses.
3. Databox built a FREE product for agencies: Benchmarks.
4. What do agencies want? More clients.
5. What do agencies struggle with? Getting people to talk to them.
6. What does Benchmarks do? It helps agencies get clients.
But its hard to implement. There's a learning curve if I want to adopt the benchmarks approach.
So, what does Databox do?
They build a FREE CLASS teaching agencies how to use Benchmarks in their sales and marketing. It teaches people like me how to use it to get people on calls, how to use it to create original research for my content marketing, and how to use it to improve my existing relationships with clients.
Databox teaches ME to sell and market Databox.
By targeting agencies and helping them with their sales and marketing, they create an exponential growth flywheel for THEMSELVES.
1. I buy into Databox and hook up all my clients —> exposing them to Databox.
2. I use Databox in my sales process —> exposing all my prospects to Databox.
3. If I close any of them, I get MORE invested in Databox and speed it up.
Peter markets to me (1) —> I market to clients (10) —> Databox grows (100).
If Databox can get a large percentage of agencies onboarded, they'll weave their way into thousands of businesses by proxy.
These are the kind of 10X growth flywheels you need to look for in your business. It's certainly got me thinking about my own.
Led content and SEO at HomeLight from Series A to a $1B valuation.
I've worked in SEO for 16 years, and I've always measured it in revenue. I was employee #27 at HomeLight, where I led content and SEO and grew the team to about 30 people as the company went from Series A to a $1B valuation. Before that, I ran enterprise SEO programs at BrightEdge and Catalyst. In 2023 I started Narrative Bent to do the same work for proptech, fintech, and B2B companies with long sales cycles.
Blog leads a month in 10 months, in a rough housing market.
Demo requests from 1 webinar we built and promoted.
The content and SEO program our founding team built.
We'll review your content program for free.
A 30-minute diagnostic of your search and AI visibility with the people who'd run your program.
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What Databox CEO Peter Caputa gets right about content-led growth and social selling.
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