Q1 2022 Marketing Swings
Last year my quarterly marketing swings analysis was one of my most popular series, so here we go with Q1 of 2022.
Marketing Q1 2022 New Swings:
Started a Podcast (CLTV University) 6/10: In March, I launched a podcast around Customer Lifetime Value. I invited experts from small businesses to billion-dollar brands. The DL numbers are still small, just a few hundred, but it’s 2 months old so I am still optimistic. Last month we started to get our first trials who noted they heard about us from my podcast.
Started a Newsletter (Growth Corner) 7/10: Those who have been following me know I post a lot of growth insights, and I figured I would repurpose that content in a newsletter. Two perks here: 1) For every new signup to the newsletter I would personally engage and welcome them with a video and thus showcase the Bonjoro product, and 2) when it made sense I would link to Bonjoro content around testimonials or video use cases in the body of emails. So far it’s going great. Not a huge list, around 500 people, but some amazing logos (like Fortune 500 companies) and some incredible engagement. My emails are averaging 70%+ opens and 15% CTR (early emails in the drip hitting over 20%), so I think like the pod it still has promise as a long-term asset.
Deeper Integrations (AC and Shopify) 6/10: We have leaned into deepening our integrations with major tools like AC and Shopify. With AC, we are already built into their tool via the CX Apps feature, but this quarter we added Custom Objects so people can now trigger automations off interactions or engagements with video, which is ace. With Shopify, one of our premium partners, we are building a Shopify App, which should go live next quarter. With these deepening integrations we are co-promoting with partners and getting access to a massive ecosystem. This is only a 6/10 because we are in the early stages. Fingers crossed this becomes a 10/10 over the next two-quarters of promotion.
Adjusted Pricing (added a new product) 8/10: Last month we launched our first new product within Bonjoro (Video Testimonials), and as such, adjusted our pricing. So far this move is looking very good. ARPU is nearly doubled. Although we did increase prices on our Pro and above plans because we added access to a whole new product, we also started to bundle users, so for some teams, it actually got cheaper. So not only is ARPU increasing, but team usage is increasing as plans that formally had 1 user included, now have 5.
Testimonials Teardown Series on Youtube 5/10: I launched a teardown series on Youtube where I look at how different brands use customer proof and provide feedback. The goal was 10,000 unique views in Q1 but we got 2,000, hence the 5/10 rating. Overall, this didn’t land as intended but I still think the content is valuable and we will work on how we can continue to incorporate it. We have had about half a dozen customers reference this series when checking out our testimonials product.
Testimonials Playbook (30 page PDF) 7/10: One of our best pieces of marketing content a few years ago was our Video Funnel Playbook. A live ungated PDF that was a deep dive into the usecases around using video in a funnel. We tried to replicate the magic with a testimonials playbook, giving best practices, example questions to ask and tons of context. Overall I am pretty bullish on this one. It’s already being mentioned as a source of “How did you find out about Bonjoro?” and although the numbers aren’t huge, we can use this not only for marketing but onboarding and loads of other places.
New Social Channel 8/10: Every year I choose a channel to really dig in deep on. Last year it was Linkedin and it went great. I will continue to engage on Linkedin. This year I was debating between Twitter and Facebook. But after some remarkable results with Facebook Groups early in this Q (over 1500 engagements and 600 comments in my first month on just Nothing Held Back and SaaS Founders alone), I like the idea of Facebook as a growth channel. In NHB I got over 100 inbound messages and dozens of people saying they were going to check out Bonjoro. I doubled checked a few and can confirm at least 5 trials and 3 paid accounts. Still small, but I think Facebook groups are looking very promising.
Expert Series 7/10: We tried a new concept this quarter where we invite tons of consultants or top influencers onto an expert series to provide insight on something valuable to our customers. For instance, we just did this piece with Hubspot consultants. Not only is this content easy to make, because they do the writing, but it gets massive amplification as all these prominent people reshare it. Not everyone does, but even 25% of the writers resharing is a great lift. Also, in many cases we are focused on integration partners with these expert series pieces, so we also expose our brand to highly influential people.
Made an animated short film (NA): We worked on this a fair bit this quarter so I want to mention it, but it's not released yet so zero idea of the impact. But we are building a short animated film around the premise of “Let your customers do the talking” in conjunction with the release of Video Testimonials. Super amped to release this next Q.
Recurring Swings:
Podcasts 10/10: Our steady growth lever for nearly two years now. Until it stops being our third-highest source of attributed accounts each month, even though we have only recorded 4-5 new pods this year (vs. 200+ in 2020), it stays 10/10.
Linkedin 8/10: Linkedin is powerful not just for direct lead generation. We have cemented lots of partnerships, run co-promotions, hired and recruited team members and gotten key introductions to influencers via Linkedin. One viral post I did on Linkedin early in the Quarter got 375,000 views and generated hundreds of opt-ins for my newsletter and dozens of new trials for my product. That’s powerful.
Webinars 7/10: Our internal webinars around best practices and product stuff continue to be awesome for re-activations, and we now do a partner webinar about once a week with an external player. These are phenomenal for new lead generation. Numbers still aren’t huge, but very targeted and high quality. We will 100% keep doing these.
Quora 1/10: Quora has been really good to me historically and generated millions of views and lots of opps but I have stopped posting on Quora this Q because I have been busy. Impact from Quora is very minimal (if any) this Q because I am not actively engaging on the platform. This will probably come off the next quarterly review of recurring swings.
DemandCurve 5/10: I continue to engage and post in Demandcurve because it’s a rare case of a Slack group with a great audience of more senior folks and leaders that isn’t spammy and is well curated. This Q I talked with 4-5 people who got started on Bonjoro and had about that many people buy one of my growth courses.
Reddit 7/10: Ahh Reddit. Just mentioning Reddit seems to get some people to see red. Yes, they have overly aggressive curation sometimes. Yes sometimes people are dicks. But all that said I still have had great success with Reddit (often /SaaS). Reposting content from other channels to reddit has generated over 200,000 additional views in highly targeted sub-channels. I have over 40 conversations in messages with people talking about Bonjoro or usecases I discuss. I consider that a win and will keep reposting to Reddit.