What am I missing in my efforts to grow ?
I launched a STEM publication for girls (and boys) 2 years ago. We are an ad-free subscriber-supported business model. We have put out 12 issues (print and recently a digital version) that have reached kids in 20 countries. We are growing mostly by word of mouth, as our subscriptions have not reached a level where we can pump money into marketing. So we do social media and content marketing for lead generation. But I am really struggling to find ways to grow faster than our current rate. Does anyone have any advice/ideas for me? Is there anything obvious I am missing?
Thanks a ton!
Podcasts and PR. Send 5 outreachs a day to people who are talking to your prospective subscribers. 20 or 40% response rate means you have 5 to 10 potential places to share your work... a week.
Happy to help with your outreach. Should only be 3 sentances.
There was a time when I did quite a bit of cold emails trying to get media attention. This was after seeing the hundreds of subs that came rolling in after a simple HuffPost article! Unfortunately, I could not find the right pitch or the right people to cover it and I gave up on those efforts. I will take you up on your offer to help with the outreach. If you have a framework or examples, I would love to take a look and try this once more. Thank you so much!
email me andrew@hypeletter.com
Start networking with platforms that offer deals on educational content, particularly homeschooling websites. Reach out to science teachers and education/homeschool bloggers and offer guest posts or other collaborative content. Create memes or IG posts that your existing users will want to share.
Yes ! This was exactly what I was thinking about and have already started looking and reaching out to educational sites to see if they would be keen to share our articles as guest blogs.
Creating memes and viral content- boy if that came so easy for me, I would be so thrilled :-) I am looking for other collaborators though .
Hey Sarita
Looks like you've had some success already, well done! Do you have a link you're willing to share to your website?
What is your customer persona, LTV and target cost per acquisition for new customers?
Based on your notes here I would look to increase the frequency and success of referrals by directly soliciting referrals from your existing base (with a reward). If this is successful you can then implement a formal referral process or scheme.
In regards to content marketing. I've just posted a very long list of ideas to promote your content marketing, so review that and post a reply with any questions you may have: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/100-simple-powerful-ideas-to-promote-your-saas-startups-content-marketing-in-2019-what-s-yours-22ef76cd37
Social, my suggestion is to de-prioritise this, and use it mainly to drive traffic to your content marketing which is more likely to support sales.
Hi Olly,
Thank you so much for your comment! You can find us at www.smoremagazine.com
My typical customer is a parent who has a tween/teen girl obsessed with science and is looking to nurture that interest. Another stream for us is the school and public libraries.
Like I said our customers come to us when our content gets shared on social media, or a parent talks about us to their friends so our CAC has been around 5 and our LTVs are around 125 (basically next to no marketing ). I have been trying to figure out a simple referral based system to incentivize people but I am not really sure how to go about it. What incentive do I give them? They are already paying for the annual subscription upfront.
We are working on scaling up to create more content that we have seen works well with our audience.
I have checked out your link and it was super helpful!
Thanks again
Sarita
This comment was deleted 3 years ago