Pasta, meet wall. If it sticks, it’s cooked.
This is how we found some of our biggest growth channels in 2024.
Although not completely random, I’ve learned there is so much merit (and fun) to running growth experiments in a company you truly believe in.
I wrote about the interview series we started at MyFBAPrep as an experiment in authentic, AI-proof (for now) content. It was successful fuel for our content engine, and the repurposed content pieces that came from every interview recording performed well enough that we began running live interviews as well that viewers had to register for.
Today, I’m here to give you a recap of a few other growth experiments at MyFBAPrep.
How I picked our noodles: Deciding which experiments to run
Running growth experiments helped us find which channels were worth investing in, and which weren’t. However, it was still important to pick the right channel, focus, and methods to test.
To gather my list of “noodles,” I looked at our strengths and weaknesses, targeting each with a different type of experiment.
Training experiments
I pinpointed the big weaknesses on our team to dive into. There were certain channels that I couldn’t be sure weren’t working for us because of the channel or our execution/level of knowledge.
Example:
- Social media – We haven’t been able to execute social media well enough to generate leads, but this could be mostly due to the lack of time we had to invest in it, and skill we had to leverage it well.
- Paid digital – I’m all-in on organic acquisition, and always have been. Anytime a client had a paid strategy, it was run by my counterpart, rather than myself.
- Community – We also didn’t have any existing community strategy. I was testing the channel out by posting a few (hopefully helpful) comments on relevant subreddits that mostly fell on deaf ears.
For these weaknesses, I launched into training experiments. These are experiments where I would bring in an expert to set up, strategize, optimize, and refine our channels while teaching us the reasoning and procedures behind their decisions. These experiments lasted a few months, and at the end the team would be equipped enough to:
- Determine whether or not the experiment was a success, and if we wanted to continue investing in the initiative
- Know whether to outsource, hire an expert in-house, or hire someone to train
- Be able to train someone to do it for us, either as a contractor or in-house
Testing experiments
These experiements related to areas we were already strong in, where we wanted to test different ways to create, distribute, or manage our existing resources.
Example:
- Content – We have a strong content arm that regularly produces engaging content in different mediums.
- Newsletter – Our newsletter is a powerful nurture channel, from which we recieved 5 leads just this past week (Oct 10-15).
- Partnerships – We have a large partner database that we regularly do co-marketing with, including guest blogs, newsletter spotlights, social media swaps, and events.
After identifying what we’re good at, I looked at different ways to leverage or approach those areas. For example, since we had a great newsletter we decided to test newsletter sponsorships to grow our list. These experiments were designed to:
- Better leverage our strengths to multiply the results
- Improve or optimize the channels that were already working well for us
- Enhance our understanding and ability within our core competencies
A few experiments from 2024 and what we learned
Testing: Sponsoring newsletters
Since our newsletter was performing well for brand recognition and leads, we decided to look into ways to grow our subscribers. We considered webinars, asking our partners to share it, and having our outbound email service add it as a CTA to their outreach.
In the end, we decided to test out a few newsletter sponsorships, because:
- A newsletter reaches the type of audience that is interested in newsletters
- When speaking with customers, many of them mentioned staying updated with industry newsletters
- It would give us some control over how we presented/positioned our newsletter (since it would be a paid placement)
We tried one popular industry newsletter that had a moderate reach (35k subscribers) and one broader newsletter that had a further reach (65k subscribers). We got 17 clicks from the former and 15 clicks from the latter in the first few days after send. In total, we received 15 new subscribers in the two weeks following.
Interestingly, we saw a bump in contact form submissions following the initiative, starting the week we sponsored the newsletters. The red line below shows when our sponsored newsletters started going out.
Conclusion: Newsletter sponsorships are good for driving brand traffic and leads, not necessarily a CTA to sign up for our newsletter.
Training: SEO
MyFBAPrep has a powerful content arm that runs like a well-oiled machine. In order to better distribute the content (blogs, webpages, videos, etc.) we worked so hard on, we knew we had to invest more in SEO.
June of this year, we brought on an SEO consultant who was able to evaluate our technical and on-page SEO, and help us get up to speed with accessability. We met regularly to go over the initial report, worked together on the fixes alongside our web developer, and I was able to learn how to evaluate what a well-optimized website looked like. We went over the basics, such as Core Web Vitals, to deeper dives into tools like Semrush.
Our content has been on a steady upswing since I started with MyFBAPrep, and it was important to ensure it was easily discovered and consumed.
We also work to stay on top of accessibility!
Conclusion: Organic search brings in quality leads and traffic, building on years of effort into content creation, and providing compounding returns. Today, we continue to invest in our technical and on-page SEO to ensure we don’t have any keyword gaps and our website passes all the performance and accessability checks.
Testing: Custom machinery webpage
In every client conversation and interview, I hear over and over again that our white glove service is what sets MyFBAPrep apart. I’ve heard praise for our account managers, and appreciation for the leadership to be willing to customize each logistics setup to cater specifically and specially to the client, rather than trying to fit their processes into a box. No pun intended.
In an effort to show rather than tell the world how invested we are in customer success, I build a webpage featuring different FBA prep machinery that we’ve acquired and utilize on behalf of clients.
We use this page often when it comes to partner communications, writer briefs, and outbound comms to showcase how far we go for customers. The page has been visited consistently since publish, often by direct visit (followed by referrals, then organic search).
Conclusion: Although not part of our SEO strategy, this page gets visits from organic search in addition to referrals and direct traffic. This tells us that there is consistent interest as long as we can get the page in front of people.
Testing: Location pages
Originally, we had one page for our warehouse network that featured a map of the different countries we had warehouse nodes. We decided to test out adding pages for specific warehouse locations, starting with California, Texas, Florida, and New Jersey.
These were just launched earlier this month, so we only have roughly two weeks of data. However, the pages have already begun ranking for some of our target keywords. Here are the early keyword rankings and results of our NJ location page.
Conclusion: We will continue to observe the performance of these keywords before deciding to add further location pages.
Testing: LinkedIn thought leadership
Coming as no surprise to anyone in B2B, LinkedIn was one of our stronger channels for outreach. However, we weren’t using it as well as we could, in particular sharing more interactive content like videos, and leveraging our co-founder’s profile.
We started testing this channel with two things; MyFBAPrep interview clips on our company LinkedIn, and thought leadership posts on our founder’s LinkedIn.
I determined which topics and titles to write about based on:
- Requests from leadership
- Customer conversations
- Top clicked blogs on Google Search Console
- Longest time on page according to GA4
I wrote the initial draft, which was then refined by our co-founder and PR lead before posting to LinkedIn.
Our company page:
I started posting more thoughtfully on our company page in January, but there have been ebbs and flows in how much time I devoted to the channel. Starting this month, I’m bringing on an industry veteran to manage our social profiles, with a focus on LinkedIn, to see how much further she can take us.
When it comes to our founder profile, I can only say anecdotally that I’ve heard we got good results in the form of more successful outreach and inbound leads and queries. Our new social media contractor will also take over the thought leadership efforts, as she has prior experience and “knows how the sausage is made.”
Conclusion: This channel shows promise, but needs a little more investment.
Training: Paid digital (LinkedIn, search)
This is in progress, and I will update once the results are in!
Training: Community (Reddit)
This is in progress, and I will update once the results are in!
Testing: Live events with registrations
This is in progress, and I will update once the results are in!
What’s next?
My next focus is deciding what course, certification, or training I should do next. I try to learn something new every other quarter, and have neglected those learning goals so far this year. If you have any suggestions, let me know, or see which courses I’ve done in the past.
Finally, don’t forget to check out one of my favorite experiments from this year, our interview series!
It’s been a fun year so far, and I’m looking forward to our Q4 experiments.
P.S. I’ll update this post at the end of the year with the results from our paid digital, Reddit, and event experiments.
Published: October 16, 2024