A minute of silence, combating newsletter growth, social in the bin

First, a moment of silence for the 9/11 victims and everyone who suffered through this terrible moment of time 23 years ago.

The world has never been the same ever since - we see this daily with security checks, cybersecurity audits, ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the decreasing level of trust globally (be it politics, online scams, or anything in between).

May our next 23 years be filled with more positivity and fewer (to none) terrible events to remember.

A minute of silence…

As far as go-to-market is concerned, my focus has been revolving around 6 core initiatives here:

1. YouTube

The channel has been scaling more than ever, and releasing the new podcast has exploded. We just launched an episode on Gamera for B2B and publishing analytics and I’m recording 2 more shows this week with two more lined up next one.

YouTube for B2B is exploding. Videos can be repurposed virtually everywhere. Podcasts create a personal connection with existing and past guests, conversations with upcoming guests, feature announcements (fresh data points) and a ton more.

2. Newsletter

I’ve been treating this newsletters as “one of my many content channels” for years - on par with the blog, LinkedIn, X, guest articles on Forbes or Entrepreneur.

But in reality, it’s the highest signal channel I see popping up over and over and over again.

It’s cross-posted on beehiiv, on LinkedIn, and on my blog. And it’s sparking conversations that no other channel does with the same velocity.

So I’m slowly scaling the subscriber acquisition efforts, though success has been limited lately. What’s been in the works?

• A couple more email courses: Delegation Domination and Landing Consulting Clients 
• Social ads/PPC - been boosting posts every now and then with low efficiency and I ramped up a few Meta campaigns now that are still calibrating. Aiming to get to a $2.50 CPA and drop to about $1.50 consistently.
• Beehiiv boosts - this one never picked up and I’m a bit bummed. TBD.
• Joining GrowLetter’s bootcamp/community. I always approach channels as “being the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with”. No matter if it’s agency, GTM, email, LinkedIn, I join relevant communities with top performers, apply the learnings myself, and then offload to my consulting and agency clients. That’s where $100K+ annually go into communities and learning so we can always stay on top.
• SparkLoop - we grew from 2k to 10k subs last year via SparkLoop, but the subscriber quality went down hard at the end. So I had to purge the list to about 7k (now at 6,600ish). Still revisiting this as a growth channel.

In any case, first-party data is gold. If 8-figure CEOs, PE partners, investors are reading and reaching out regarding newsletter comments, it’s worth improving incrementally as a priority.

3. My blog

MarioPeshev was a leading revenue driver in 2019-2021, starting to decline in 2022, still holding up in 2023 and earlier this year. The redesign + the August update hasn’t been as grateful and we’ve been trying to rebuild this with better link building and content pillar (Guides) strategy.

As SEO was a downhill battle from last September onward, this has been on the backburner. But as DevriX recouped 300% extra SEO traffic in 3 weeks, I’m taking this one seriously again.

It’s still ranking alright for some commercial terms by the way:

Just nowhere near top 3 for all of these (and then some) over the past years. But you can see how all of these are relevant to high ticket deals with SMEs or executives.

One of the hacks I’ll be trying is moving over LinkedIn content to short answers. I did this in 2021 and it worked pretty well with Quora - doing the same format with LinkedIn and we’ll see.

4. MBA Disrupted

Book sales for MBA Disrupted have slowed down, though I get occasional spikes on Amazon.

Plus, we’re now on Barnes & Noble!

As the school year is starting and the business is getting back to normal, I’m revisiting diversification efforts for the book as well.

Plus, it’s the fastest filter for consulting inquiries. If someone seeks advisory services and balks at my pricing, I redirect them to the book. If they pass on the book, well, it’s a clear signal they won’t be scaling anytime soon.

5. Socials

LinkedIn is an absolute dead end, period.

When I say I’ve been shadow-banned, I’m half-serious.

I saw that randomly on one of my posts (posted in the feed, as all others). Definitely looks like it’s been artificially moved to a quiet place of the web that doesn’t reach people.

Thanks, LI.

X is slower too and Instagram isn’t too fast so social is mostly on autopilot now. Waiting for Oct-Nov to find out if any movement will happen at all. Right now - lower priority.

6. Communities

My Growth Shuttle community is getting slightly more active with some agency problems, scale issues, sales questions, email and LI pitches discussed in there.

I run a weekly Monday callout for the public community + 1:1 channels for the higher plan.

Reminder - book readers get free pass of the group channel so if you read it, send a social post or shoot a photo of the book over and I’ll get you in right away.

The other two communities are moving slowly, but that’s bringing business in nevertheless. It’s the efficiency that counts.

7. Satelite Networks

My network of sites serves as a barometer of SEO and consumer demand.

So we’re still scaling these and adding interviews, product features, and data reports.

This, along with some new AI tooling, is shaping up to be an important addition to the journey.

So all in all, as the agency business pipeline is filling up, our growth channels are accelerating slowly but steadily 🙂 

📰 Enjoying the Growth Blueprint? Forward this issue to fellow executives. They can subscribe here if this resonates with them.

🦸♂️ Want to work with me directly? My flat $1,800/mo async plan will be your fractional CXO resource going forward.

 📈 If you want to scale up your martech channels for Q4, DevriX’s EaaS service is here for you (starts at $3k/mo, average plans $5K - $10K for a full-service approach)

Here’s to a successful end of 2024!

Yours,

Mario

My Take

✍️ New Podcast Episode: GA4 Alternatives For B2B - Struggling with GA4 for B2B analytics, custom event handling or attributing publishing revenue? The B2B Growth Hacking Playbook digs deep into why Google Analytics 4 falls short for businesses focused on detailed user journeys and event-level analytics. I sat down with Gareth Glaser, CEO of Gamera, to discuss how his company is revolutionizing the way we track, visualize, and act on website data.

✍️ The Cloudways Prepathon - The 3-day event is designed to upskill business owners, startup founders, developers, and marketers in three divisions. I'll share some of our marketing playbooks utilizing AI on Thursday starting at noon ET, showcasing solutions and tools we use at DevriX, my advisory firm, our portfolio of clients, and some of my portfolio companies.

✍️ Passing 2,000 Subscribers on YouTube - 3 weeks ago, I was 11 subs away from 1,000 YouTube subscribers. And for the longest time (years, literally), I've been hovering between 400 and 500. I’ve now passed 2,000! YouTube has been delivering strong B2B results here. Getting DMs and screenshots from communities sharing video insights, podcast interviews, event recap

Newsletter Recommendations

📧 Close Deals - Close Deals by @danhenry86 is engaging. Short, actionable – some posts, YouTube shorts, mixed in, less salesy. Sign up here.

📧 King Kong - @sabrisuby the King(Kong) of Sell Like Crazy. Sign up here.

Business Strategy

📃 80% of Branded TikTok videos fail to capture attention. Despite TikTok’s increasing importance to marketers, most brands are not getting it right, and their videos on the social media platform are under-performing. According to new research, 84% of the video content released by brands on TikTok fails to generate strong positive emotions, capture attention, or enhance brand recall.

📃 Where Brazil’s X audience went after the ban. Last week, just 5 days after Brazil banned Musk's X in the country for failing to appoint a legal representative, Bluesky announced that it had 2.6 million new users join the platform over the previous few days alone.

📃 Apple loses EU court case. Europe’s top court on Tuesday ruled against Apple in the tech giant’s 10-year court battle over its tax affairs in Ireland. The case stems back to 2016 when the European Commission ordered Ireland to recover up to 13 billion euros ($14.4 billion) in back taxes from Apple. The Commission said at the time Apple had received “illegal” tax benefits from Ireland over the course of two decades.

📃 Speaking of EU lawsuits, Google also gets targeted. Alphabet's Google on Tuesday lost its fight against a 2.42 billion euro ($2.7 billion) fine levied by EU antitrust regulators seven years ago, one of a trio of hefty fines meted out to the company for various anti-competitive practices.

📃 Draghi’s report on EU competitiveness. Former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi's long-awaited report on Europe's competitiveness has finally seen the light of day - and its first lesson for Europe's slowing growth since the turn of the century is to stop procrastinating.

Global News

📈 The worst week in 18 months for the S&P 500 index was followed on Monday by the best day in three weeks, on very little new news, which goes to show that uncertainty over interest rates and politics will probably keep markets volatile for the next few months. That follows a month in which 94% of equity indexes worldwide had a drawdown of at least 5%, according to Goldman Sachs.

• S&P 500: $5,495(-0.61%)

📈 National mortgage rates were mostly lower compared to a week ago, according to Bankrate data. Average rates for 30-year fixed, 15-year fixed and jumbo mortgages each decreased, while rates for adjustable rate mortgages rose.

• 30-year mortgage rate: 6.39%
• 15-year mortgage rate: 5.74%

📈 The Federal Reserve will lower interest rates by 25 basis points at each of the U.S. central bank's three remaining policy meetings in 2024, according to a majority of economists in a Reuters poll that found only nine of 101 expected a half-percentage-point cut next week.

With inflation approaching the Fed's 2% target and some signs of an economic slowdown, policymakers have made it clear "the time has come" to start reducing the federal funds rate, which has been held in the 5.25%-5.50% range since July 2023.

📰 Here are some of the most prominent headlines this week:

• James Earl Jones, legendary stage and screen actor best known as the voice of Darth Vader, has died at age 93
• Rapper Kendrick Lamar will headline the Super Bowl LIX halftime show in New Orleans, according to the NFL.
• Two Delta Air Lines planes collided while taxiing at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. No one was injured in the collision.

Investment News

• Questo - the travel startup used by 500,000 people worldwide, is raising €630,000 in funding round to scale its gamified event solution.
• I Love Failure - raising €300,000 to expand its platform dedicated to personal and professional growth.
• Maskots - raising €200,000 to expand its pet care app, helping pet owners keep their animals happy and healthy. 

Note: Got a round going that you want to feature - your own business or a portfolio company? Get in touch.

There’s an exciting Flippa update I want to share with you. They’ve now created a category for digital agencies.

The global market for them was estimated in 2021 at about $4.2B and is expected to double by 2027. As part of the digital agency community for about 15 years, exciting times are up ahead!

Well-Aged PPC Marketing Agency - This business provides PPC services for North American clients and has generated a TTM revenue of $268.5K.

• Monthly profit: $15,113
• Profit margin: 68%
• Business age: 6 years

Popular Luxury Eyewear Ecommerce - This ecommerce store selling a brand of luxury eyewear includes hundreds of 5-star reviews and an Instagram account with 50K+ followers.

• Monthly profit: $27,442
• Returning customer rate: 12%
• Business age: 4 years

Amazon FBA International Expansion Agency - This agency which helps Amazon FBA businesses expand into Japan has experienced continuous year-over-year growth in revenue and maintains clients who have worked with the agency for 2+ years.

• Monthly profit: $4,487
• MRR: $4000
• Business age: 3 years

Need My Help?

I'm involved with a number of initiatives - here's what I can do to help you:

🌐 Scalable and secure WordPress? DevriX provides WordPress retainers to SMEs, publishers, eCommerce, SaaS, and more. Our plans start from $1,200/mo to $40K/mo for anything from support through engineering, CRO, performance, security, to fractional CXO services and managing the data stacks of large corps.

🚀  Want to scale and optimize your business? Growth Shuttle offers personalized advisory plans starting at $600/hr. Tap into my personal pool of business know-how and my data warehouse of industry data.

👥 Want access to my blueprints/books and a weekly Slack planning session? Join my Community and grab my Entrepreneurship book. 

📈 Looking to start a US company? Check out doola and their “Business in a Box” model. Suitable for both foreigners and US citizens and both for residents and non-residents.

📊 Have you tried buying and selling digital property? Have a look at Flippa’s marketplace. They offer a vast variety of online businesses for any buyer’s interest. Or if you’re ready for an exit, Flippa provides you with the necessary tools to list your business and close the deal.

💼 Looking for investment opportunities? Check out SeedBlink and use Nimity to manage it.

💡 Eager to incorporate my recommended solutions? Track my angel investments. Sharing, applying for open roles, or writing reviews helps a ton.  And anything else I try to publish on my blog and my courses here!