Samarth Francis

As the co-founder of two 7-figure D2C agencies, these are my core learnings from hiring and building up my team over the last 5 years… 1️⃣ Hire for core growth - Don’t just stack roles. Focus on what’s driving revenue—paid media (ROAS-positive channels like Meta ads). Optimise acquisition first before layering in functions like organic or influencer. 2️⃣ Keep OPEX lean- Structure teams around growth (acquisition), retention (CRM), and strategy (data & trading). Focus on critical areas first. 3️⃣ Creative resources- Use external creatives to scale quickly while building out in-house resources. Outsource where it makes sense to keep your CAC low, then expand internal teams when it’s time. 4️⃣ A-Players aligned with KPI’s- Look for top-tier talent who fit your culture and are driven by both personal and professional growth. They’ll be the ones driving your LTV up and scaling your brand. 5️⃣ Streamlined hiring process- Scorecards for culture fit and KPIs. 2-step interviews: culture screen first, then role-specific assessments to see if they can deliver results. Smart hiring = scaling faster without bloating your OPEX. Stay lean, optimise channels, and hire strategically.

40

9 Comments

"We run campaigns with affiliates, why should we work with you?" A standard question that I get from most clients who have been working on affiliate campaigns and dont understand the impact of an affiliate program. Here's what you get: 1. Unified tracking - A single platform, a single source of truth a single clearance window to manage all your partners. Do you really want to manage 20 publishers/ networks / partners on excel sheet and keep track of spends, covnersions on excel sheets? 2. Compounding effect - Typically programs take time to scale up (3-4 months) but beyond that they grow continously, much like your mutual funds ;-) . Reason is that publishers want to understand the stability of the program and see some traction in it before that can start applying for it. Also, affiliate is manual, it takes time to optimise, scale up and theres always some personal touch needed! 3. Visibility and transparency: Most affiliate neworks are able to scale up fast but get stuck beyond a few months. Clients then resort to adding more affiliate networks, leading to limited growth - more numbers is not always more growth. Reason beyond that is the networks supply strength - if you work with a blind network, beware that most networks are trading inventory amongst themselves and you are paying the cost of arbitrage and not really scaling up 4. Frauds: By-product of lack of visibility and transparency is the fraud that happens. Most frequent ones are brand bidding, click hijacking, spoofing among other. To save a few pennies are you comfortable with letting other bid on your brand and steal your organic users? Have you calculated the cost of fraud and time lost in discovering it? 5. Differentiated inventory: Are you stuck with just the same type of publishers and partners? When you work on a platform with a program based approach you work with parnters across media segment, coupons/ cashback/ loyalty / display / programmatic./ influencers and more. 6. Uniformity: We all love excecls but the sad truth to managing excels is that they dont allow us to scale up! We need softwares to scale up - thats what platforms allow you - create rules, create signals and scale up based on that. So as a client if you are okay being defrauded and open to networks bartering media and jacking up the price then continue working on campaigns. For all others who want to truly scale up in a standardised manner reach out to me and lets talk about the power of Tyroo & CJ! #performancemarketing #affiliatemarketing #affiliate

63

1 Comment

🔥 𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐎𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬! 🔥 🤔 Did you know that Meta’s lead generation solutions have a higher conversion rate than most other platforms? 🤔 𝐉𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐮𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞! 🚀 🗓 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐃𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐬⁣⁣ 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞: 25th May 2024 | Time: 12 PM⁣⁣ 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝: https://rzp.io/l/P3uMM48 🎓 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐘𝐨𝐮’𝐥𝐥 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧:⁣⁣ ✅ Dive into Meta’s powerful lead generation product suite ✅ Drive Higher Quality Leads by uncovering feature updates that will elevate your lead quality to new heights ✅ Learn best practices for generating top-notch leads ✅ Walk through the process of setting up lead generation campaigns on Meta ✅ Discover actionable tips for effective lead acquisition using Meta’s tools 🔥 𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭! 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐰! https://rzp.io/l/P3uMM48

6

10 years of content rules for SaaS content marketers 𝟭. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗕𝗼𝗙𝘂 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀 - Optimise for search - Align with search intent - Reference pain points. A lot. - Then your feature that solves it - Track your clicks on these pages - You'll exhaust these in about 2-3 months - Fill them with as much social proof as you can 𝟮. 𝗚𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗠𝗼𝗙𝘂 - The middle is messy, but it's the most fun - Your core content here product first problem solving - After this create comparisons of you vs comp - And listicles. I know, I know. They suck. But, you can't deny they work - As you get them, build case studies - Align your cases studies to specific use cases - Your goal here is to build topical authority. - That means you cover e v e r y t h i n g. 𝟯. 𝗦𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁 - The most successful teams I work with sprint hard for 2 months - Then we rest for one month. - We reassess. We realign. We water the plants. - I've found this sprint/rest helps manage team energy the best 𝟰. 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝘂𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 - Ranking content doesn't make for great PR content - PR content doesn't make for great ranking content - Use one to spike, and the other to hold a higher average 𝟱. 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀 - Just more. 𝟲. 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗦𝗢𝗣𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 - If you want repeated success, you need a process you can repeat - Update and refine the process - AI has 10x'd my output through having a repeatable process 𝟳. 𝗡𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 "𝗯𝗶𝗴" 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 - Know where to give. There are many ways to win with content. Annoying senior management doesn't have to be one of them. - Know where to hold fast. - Presenting an idea can be more important than implementing an idea --- P.S. A new edition of the tools-letter is going out to 746 content marketing legends tomorrow. They'll get all the tools I've used to put 400 blogs on Penfriend in the last 4 months. You better get over there. Link under my name.

89

53 Comments

Google Search Ads fails for Mid Market and Enterprise Audience.😳😳 There are a lotttt of SaaS companies who have tried Google Search Ad Campaigns only to burn money getting junk leads. 😫 Absolutely possible since Google is about targeting keywords intent and not the demographics.👍🏻 How do you solve for this and make Google Search campaigns a powerhouse for capturing demand from the right ICP and generating SQLs?🤔 Here are some simple steps things you should be doing👇 1. Write ad copies for YOUR ICP. ✅ Could you write in a way that resonates with your enterprise ICP? 2. Try to avoid the first position✅ Along with highly relevant ad copies, see if your first ad rank could be driving irrelevant traffic from users who reflexively click on the first ad. Try ranking on second or third position. 3. Position yourself for YOUR ICP ✅ Align your messaging on your LP with your ad copy, speak to your enterprise customer, showcase case studies/logos that resonate. And finally and probably the most important step which most of you wouldn’t be doing👇 (Consider this my Diwali Gift for all my performance marketing and markops friends)❤️ 🪔Pass on conversion data back to Google Adwords from HubSpot. 🪔Setup events under Ads for Lead, Opportunity and Customer and also pass conversion value for the three. This helps the google algo learn about the quality of leads and optimise accordingly Don’t have a paid HubSpot?❌ Use $8 pm Zapier to pass this data back.🎉 🪔Again, you can build 3 zaps to pass the three conversions (leads, opportunity and customer). 🪔Create three lists on HubSpot. 🪔Then, map the list with the Zap and pass the offline conversion data along with email and gclick id and the value of conversion for each Zap. We have had huge success for mid market and enterprise customers with this approach.❤️❤️ I would be more than happy to take you through the entire process on a quick 10 mins call. Just comment and we can set it up.👇👍🏻 PS: Happy Diwali to All 🪔🎉 #performancemarketing #googlesearch #ads #zapier #markops #saas #saasmarketing

23

1 Comment

I send 100 connection requests/week without sales nav With acceptance rate of 30% Here is how I do it : 1.I find their dream state My target audience have 10k/month as revenue goal 2. I check comments of posts that speaks their dream state Posts like (I made 10k last month) (I made 100k last year) 3. Filter them based on the profile I search I find content creators, founders, designers there So I send requests to Founders

8

Do you want to make sure you are targeting the right audience when you are launching a product? If YES, then SAVE this post now. The first thing you should do before launching ads or creating your store you must create a customer avatar. How to do it? Include: -Name -Age -Gender -Occupation -Likes/dislikes -Pain Points -Goals -Objections The better you know your customers, the more you’ll sell. It’s simple. I hope this helps, if it did then give me a follow to learn more about e-commerce. #ecommerce #ecommercedropshipping #dropshipping

2

99.9% of SEO 'experts' aren't talking about this… Having more conversations with your clients and prospects. Understand the product you are working on as much as the actual founders. This can make or break your future growth efforts. Why? Understanding this in-depth will define your whole strategy. If you don’t understand: Who they are trying to help What are their short/long-term goals The problem they solve on a deep level How do they want to position themselves in the industry What is the most important metric for them at each stage? And much, much more. How can you define a strategy effectively? Talk with your clients regularly. It’s a two-way street.

8

STOP putting all the pressure on your media buyer if there's a revenue dip. If you're a D2C founder doing < 30L/month, this one's for you. Revenue dips do not happen ONLY because of issues inside the FB ads dashboard. Here are some reasons I've encountered after working on 30+ D2C projects that may cause a dip: 1. The website was not loading on IOS devices In January 2024, we noticed a drop in A2C% from 10.74% to 5.65% and a conversion rate drop from 2.26% to 1.08% for a brand. We checked all the campaigns, ads, etc. We talked to our customers + abandoned checkouts if they were facing any issues with their website experience only to find the website is not loading on IOS devices. The impression device report on FB confirmed the same. It took the developer 5 days to debug the problem, only to find that an app was malfunctioning & causing this issue. 2. A category bringing 33% of revenue went out of stock In May 2024, we noticed a drop in ROAS from 2.75 to 1.24 and a conversion rate drop from 1.6% to 1% for a brand. (i) The media buyer noticed that a particular category's creatives had dipped and thought it was because of a creative dip. He raised a request for new creatives. (ii) I noticed that there are two variations of the category on the site. "With frame" "Without frame" "With frame" was marked out of stock on the site. We talked to the merchandising team, and only then they informed us that they were unable to source the frames as per the projections. 3. Founder removed the COD option from the site We noticed a 40% dip in revenue. The primary dip was happening at the checkout to purchase level. After doing a test order, we realized that the COD option was missing! And COD was bringing in 50% of the revenue for the brand. 10% of those were converting into prepaid, but the rest 40% were dropping off. The founder wanted to reduce returns & went ahead without consulting us! P.S. 1. Most agencies serving brands < 30L do not have marketing leads who can see the macro-picture of how all functions work together in the business. They only have media buyers, creative strategists, copywriters & designers, who are unable to look at the whole picture. Choose your marketing partner wisely. 2. Take full responsibility if you're a founder. Learn everything marketing-related yourself. So that you can challenge media buyers, instead of getting into a rut of blame. And please communicate. 3. Sometimes it's the market. Sometimes it's not the marketing team. Sometimes it's not the merchandising team. Sometimes it's not the tech team. It's the market. And the ocean you're in impacts your business the MOST than how hard you row. And the market goes up and down. And the market has its seasons. This is SO common where founders refuse to believe so. Accept it. And then plan accordingly. Comment below if you want a checklist on how to tackle performance dips & I'll share it in the next post.

25

2 Comments

ENVOY is at SLUSH this year sharing case studies in content led app growth. Let's meet up and discuss your organic app growth strategies ✨ 🚀 #appgrowth #contentmarketing

5

50K daily traffic from a programmatic SEO project 🚀 The programmatic pages we built a few months back for one of our clients started generating ~50K clicks daily. (Yes, 1.5 million traffic per month) Here’s the strategy we followed, Identified the right clusters: We focused on clusters that our target audience would search for. These are top-of-the-funnel keywords, but they significantly enhance brand recall. Relevant tools & calculators: We also identified and built a variety of tools and calculators that are highly relevant to our target audience. Well-structured URLs: Our URLs are not only well-structured but also scalable, allowing us to add more folders contextually as needed. Scalable internal linking: We ensured that our internal linking strategy is scalable, enhancing site navigation and SEO. Since it is programmatic, we should be very conscious about canonical tags to avoid duplicate content issues and consolidate link equity. Curious to see your programmatic SEO projects and learn some new strategies and tactics :) #seo #saasseo #saascontent

88

12 Comments

#advantagewithatom11 I met with Noemi Bolojan and we discussed PPC strategies for new product launch. I learned quite a few things in this short by crisp conversation: 1. Detailed framework for campaign type selection as per your budget (she called it out, this girl. You do not need a full funnel strategy if your budget does not allow it. Instead, she has a great framework to create your campaign selection) 2. Campaign Budget : Your campaign budget needs to survive 6 time zones. It needs to be in budget at 11:55 PM Pacific time. 3. Holistic: Do not run PPC if your content, inventory and pricing is not fixed. Retail aware is the future. New episode drops tomorrow EST 1 pm. Are you ready? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Follow me for 52 weeks, 52 podcasts! AdVantage with Atom11 ALL THINGS AMAZON! 🔔 Hit that bell icon!

11

1 Comment

The average SaaS I service doubles non-paid traffic in 60-80 days because we understand this 1 thing… Search intent (also known as user intent) and how to leverage it from the start When I'm talking with a SaaS growth head about helping them one of the most important aspects we talk about is their content marketing strategy and how it aligns with their most important keywords’ search intent Both your revenue-generating pages and content pieces from your Cluster/Pillar framework should align with the search intent of the main keywords it targets If they don’t: ↳ Those pages will never rank ↳ You are wasting valuable time in the wrong place ↳ Your spending money that has zero return That is why we analyze their cluster/pillar framework content pieces and their revenue-generating pages. 7 out of 10 times we find that: ↳ They don’t know what is the main keyword they want to target with the content. ↳ They don’t know what is the search/user intent of the keyword they target. ↳ They want to build links to those pages without knowing it’s pointless. ↳ They build content without a purpose and work backwards. So what we do next: ↳ We educate them ↳ We outline the keywords they should focus on ↳ We check if they have created content that can target those keywords ↳ We help them improve it and we built off-page strategies to scale the rankings ↳ We create a content plan for the keywords that they need to cover with new content ↳ We help them focus on the right stuff, while spending time and efforts where there’s ROI Why is that crucial? Because that defines: ↳ Whether you will see ROI from your investment ↳ When you will see ROI from your investment ↳ If your time and money are well spent You can build the most relevant, authoritative, and genuine backlinks possible but if your page doesn’t align with the user intent of the main keyword that is targeting you will never succeed. That might seem super simple but I see this in 60% of the SaaS companies I go over. Understand search intent and focus on the right things.

6

Something that drives me INSANE in SaaS marketing: How many companies fumble a massive opportunity to generate hype and distribution for product or feature launches. This stops now. Here’s a 5-point checklist of everything you need to have dialed to get the most out of your launches on social: (1) Pre-launch content You should be hyping up the launch for ~1-2 weeks prior. The bigger the launch (i.e. an entire new product versus a feature update) the longer the pre-launch content should be in rotation. Tease the new launch. Create educational content around it. Find ways to engage your ICP. (2) Launch content This is the core. Have some sort of launch post(s) go out on the day of. This should come from both the founder and the company accounts. As we’ve seen with Airbnb’s Brian Chesky and OpenAI’s Sam Altman—founder-led content during launches is the way to go. But, you should also have something go out from your company account. Both matter. (3) Post-launch content This is where most companies fumble. The launch content should not end after the ‘launch post’ hits the timeline. Extend the hype for 1-2wks beyond launch date. Highlight use cases. Showcase customer stories. Make sure the people who may have missed the original post can’t possibly miss the launch. (4) Launch-adjacent content ‘Launch content’ isn’t just feature highlight GIFs and hard CTAs. Create content that is around a topic related to the product, but not always hard selling the product. For example: if you're an email marketing SaaS getting into SMS marketing, you’ll want to post more stuff around SMS (that isn’t only the product launch announcement). (5) Influencer amplification A) Have influencers & investors engage with the key launch posts when they go live B) Have your team engage with the key launch posts when they go live You want to give the launch content the absolute best chance at high performance that you can. Getting the post initial momentum using your connections tends to help with that. Oh. One more thing. Shoot to have a timeline that allows you to prep this stuff. It’s not always going to be feasible, I get it. But if you can give your content team a 1-2 week heads up versus a 1-2 hour heads up … I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the outcome. PS: If this was helpful, hit repost so more B2B founders can see this. #saas #b2bsaas #contentmarketing

21

4 Comments

Affiliate marketing can feel like a thrilling adventure, where every click and conversion brings you closer to success. But as the journey unfolds, the path becomes crowded with countless tasks—tracking clicks, analyzing conversions, updating reports. Suddenly, the excitement fades, replaced by hours spent managing the details rather than growing your strategy. Now, picture having a powerful sidekick. Affiliate marketing bots are like trusted allies, handling these tasks for you—tracking every click, monitoring performance, and optimizing campaigns in real time. With these bots, your role shifts from data wrangler to visionary strategist, allowing you to focus on the big picture while they handle the heavy lifting. It’s not just about efficiency; it’s about creating a smarter, more scalable affiliate marketing journey. You save time, reduce errors, and gain insights to guide your next move. Curious about how these bots can level up your game? Start your journey to automated affiliate success ➡️ https://zurl.co/P9Mx #AffiliateMarketing #Automation #AffiliateBots #BusinessGrowth #AppyPie #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ChatbotBuilder #ChatbotMaker

6

SaaS can often have you confused with Content Marketing and Product Marketing. What falls under what? Let's find out! #contentmarketing #productmarketing #content #product #marketing

13

10 post ideas you need to convert readers into paying clients: (Bookmark this for later) 1. How-to guides 2. Industry news analysis 3. Behind-the-scenes peeks 4. Customer success stories 5. Trend predictions 6. Personal reflections 7. Tool/resource reviews 8. Myth-busting posts 9. Expert interviews 10. Case studies Pick one. Start there.

5

2 Comments