[Best of Season] AMP 056: How To Grow From 0 to 1 Million Customers With Noah Kagan From SumoMe and OkDork

03/08/22 • 21 min

CoSchedule started the Actionable Marketing Podcast (AMP) in 2015 and has recorded and published more than 300 episodes. CoSchedule has worked with some of the smartest minds out there that share their stories with you through this podcast. This season, CoSchedule brings back some of the best of the best evergreen content.

Have you ever wondered what the process would be like to start something from scratch and end up with a million users? Our conversation is going to help you set better goals and achieve more than you ever have before.

Today, we’re talking to Noah Kagan, the chief sumo at sumo.com and AppSumo. He also hosts Noah Kagan Presents, which is an awesome podcast, and has a steady stream of stuff on okdork.com.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

How Noah handles the marketing at Sumo.com and what has the most potential.
How Noah ended up at Mint, where he helped grow the company from zero to more than a million users.
Why Noah doesn’t believe in hope in the business world.
The process Noah used to put his plan together, come up with ideas, figure out how much traffic he had, and more.
Common mistakes that Noah sees other people making.
Why copying methods described on other people’s blog posts doesn’t work.
The greatest piece of marketing advice Noah has received.

Links:

Quotes by Noah Kagan:

“I believe in hope in fantasy and fairytales in the real world or in the non-business world, but in business, no.”

“If you're not making mistakes, you're probably not experimenting enough.”

“At the end of the day, it really just comes down to you got to do it yourself... go and experiment yourself, go and promote something.”

Today, we’re talking to Noah Kagan, the chief sumo at sumo.com and AppSumo. He also hosts Noah Kagan Presents, which is an awesome podcast, and has a steady stream of stuff on okdork.com.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

How Noah handles the marketing at Sumo.com and what has the most potential.
How Noah ended up at Mint, where he helped grow the company from zero to more than a million users.
Why Noah doesn’t believe in hope in the business world.
The process Noah used to put his plan together, come up with ideas, figure out how much traffic he had, and more.
Common mistakes that Noah sees other people making.
Why copying methods described on other people’s blog posts doesn’t work.
The greatest piece of marketing advice Noah has received.

Links:

Quotes by Noah Kagan:

“I believe in hope in fantasy and fairytales in the real world or in the non-business world, but in business, no.”

“If you're not making mistakes, you're probably not experimenting enough.”

“At the end of the day, it really just comes down to you got to do it yourself... go and experiment yourself, go and promote something.”

Previous Episode

[Best of Season] AMP 081: How To Do Remarkable Customer Research With Rand Fishkin From SparkToro

Where do your customers hang out? What kinds of things do they like? What publications do they read? Customer research involves a lot of leg work, so does this information even matter? How can you leverage such insight for SEO?

Today, we’re talking to Rand Fishkin, founder of SparkToro and author of Lost and Founder. He is a powerhouse in the content marketing and SEO world.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

Background, origination, and purpose of SparkToro
Reaching/Researching Audiences: Slow, frustrating, and inaccurate process
Companies spend money contracting agencies for a list of top customers, blogs, podcasts, and events
Bones of Audience Intelligence: 1) Identify audiences across channels; 2) Know audience density; 3) Use trustworthy and valuable metrics
How to obtain, benchmark, filter, and analyze data
Data Points: Which to focus on and where to get them
Social Network Profiles: Report follower count and engagement
Biases generate unrepresentative data influenced by SEO
Significant sample sizes and diverse groups are needed for true coverage
Examples of missing specific audiences
SparkToro lets you find people who practice specific fields
Does current audience intelligence data represent the market as a whole?
Improve SEO by helping audience accomplish tasks, and identifying and broadening link sources

Links:

Quotes by Rand Fishkin:

“If you’re looking at a social network profile, don’t just report on follower count, go look at the last 20 or 50 posts...report on how much engagement did each of those get.”

“Go out there, build a company, make mistakes, just don’t make exactly the same ones I did.”

“You get biased by your existing understanding of the field.”

Next Episode

[Best of Season] AMP 057: How To Create Content That Ranks For 11,000+ Keywords With Julia McCoy From Express Writers

How much attention do you pay to keywords in your content?

For too many people, the answer is “none” or “nearly none.” While having engaging content that attracts human readers is vital, ignoring keywords is going to make it difficult for those human readers to find your content in the first place.

This bad advice to ignore keywords has made it so some marketers really don’t know how to use keywords effectively at all.

Today, we’re talking to Julia McCoy, the CEO of Express Writers. She’s not only an amazing writer but also considered a thought leader in her industry. She talks to us about using keywords well when creating content.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

How Julia got into freelance writing, what made her start Express Writers, and what she does there.
An overview of the content strategy at Express Writers.
How Julia helps older content maintain a high ranking in the search engines.
Why targeting low-competition keywords works.
How Julia finds the keywords and what tools she uses.
How Julia defines good content for Express Writers.
Tips on weaving keywords into great content.
Why long-form content is important when it comes to ranking.
Where to focus first if you’re a content marketer getting started with keywords.

Links:

Quotes by Julia McCoy:

“Just having engaging writing is number one. You have to write to be read. Number two, you have to be super thorough on the topic.”

“Once we have that keyword, it’s not just about the keyword, it’s about creating content where that keyword is the topic."

“Consistency is key. Whenever you start, give your audience something to look forward to.”