GE 254: Myles Anderson Reveals How BrightLocal Gets 100% of Their Leads via Inbound Marketing (podcast)

Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: Myles Anderson Reveals How BrightLocal Gets 100% of Their Leads via Inbound Marketing TRANSCRIPT PDF

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• [00:36] Before we jump into today’s interview, please leave a review and rating and subscribe to the Growth Everywhere Podcast!
• [01:51] BrightLocal started as a search agency, providing search services to local businesses.
• [01:57] BrightLocal hit some early ceilings in terms of growth.
• [02:15] After trying a few different business styles, they settled on being a reporting platform, which worked the best.
• [02:26] They have succeeded without any outside investment.
• [02:40] They have a big offshore team in the Philippines, offices in other countries, and freelancers across the globe.
• [04:25] BrightLocal is a B2B solution. They offer a free trial. Paid plans are subscription-based.
• [04:41] There is no contract; customers pay on a month-to-month basis.
• [05:02] Typical customers are marketing agencies that serve local or regional businesses.
• [05:35] The typical customer will be charged about $100/month for the service.
• [06:07] BrightLocal has been profitable since 2012.
• [06:20] They now have 120 full-time staff across all locations.
• [06:30] They reinvest a lot of the profits back into the business.
• [06:47] They average about 30% growth per year.
• [07:25] They found that their ability to deliver new features didn’t develop in a linear fashion.
• [07:38] They add new teams, features, etc. cautiously.
• [08:39] The employees are distributed thusly: 20 people in Kiev, 15 in the UK, 3 in the US, and the rest are in the Philippines.
• [09:10] The employees were brought on steadily throughout the years. Growth was gradual, not abrupt.
• [09:42] They have three meetings a week with the team in the Philippines via Slack or Google Hangouts.
• [10:05] All hiring is done locally for each office.
• [10:30] They have also established relationships with three Universities.
• [11:10] All their sales are inbound, so they don’t really have salespeople.
• [11:24] However, they do have a customer success team that follows up on leads.
• [12:25] BrightLocal also does a webinar series and from that, they have gotten 2500 new clients.
• [12:39] They focused on building the brand in order to draw people in and from there, they focused on customer experience.
• [13:27] They try to look at how they can produce research and studies that can help their customers become more effective at what they do.
• [13:40] For instance, BrightLocal did a consumer review study about how consumers use consumer review sites to find local businesses. This data has proved helpful to their clients.
• [14:00] BrightLocal gives clients the data that allows them to improve their own businesses.
• [14:35] They don’t lock any of their content behind paywalls, email lists, etc. All of Bright Local’s content is freely accessible on their website.
• [15:20] Early on in 2008, Bright Local was a CRM system for SMB’s.
• [17:15] There were a lot of scary challenges growing a business, while growing a family.
• [17:45] You have to develop a lot of skills on the fly and quite quickly, as well.
• [18:20] In the early days of Bright Local, Myles still had a full-time job.
• [18:24] He would get his kids up and to school before heading to work at 8:30am. When he was out of work at 6:30, he would have dinner with his family and then work on his business until about 3am.
• [19:20] It took 3 years to get to 20K MRR>
• [21:05] Myles made sure to listen to customer feedback in order to make the business what it is.
• [22:44] 10-15% of site visitors have converted into customers throughout the history of the company.
• [23:15] They never had a huge number of customers and hit ceilings pretty quickly.
• [23:33] This is why they decided to pivot the business and make improvements that would draw in more customers.
• [25:48] A tool that has added value to Myles’ life is Slack, in terms of streamlining communication.
• [26:30] Myles recommends the book Rework. He also likes Disrupted and found it to be a real page-turner.

Resources From This Interview:

• BrightLocal
• myles@brightlocal.com
• Bright Local on Twitter
• Slack
• Google Hangouts
• Must-read books:
  • Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
  • Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble by Dan Lyons

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