GE 304: Ahrefs’ CMO and Product Advisor Tim Soulo Proves That Content Marketing Sells (podcast)

Eric

6 years ago

Hey everyone! In today’s episode, I share the mic with Tim Soulo, the CMO and Product Advisor for Ahrefs.

Tune in to hear why Ahrefs depends on content marketing to sell its product, how they came to have more backlinks than their competitors and how this keyword ranking company does its SEO.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[00:45] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Growth Everywhere Podcast!
[02:15] Tim says if you want to ramp up the search traffic you get from Google, you need Ahrefs.
[02:50] Ahrefs will help give you valuable SEO insights.
[05:30] Ahrefs is a subscription service.
[05:40] The lowest plan is $99/month, then $179/month, $399/month, and finally $999/month.
[06:05] Ahrefs doesn’t want to become an enterprise business.
[07:10] The VC game can sometimes feel like a ponzi scheme.
[09:00] Tim joined Ahrefs four years ago.
[09:15] He was essentially the only marketer on the team.
[10:00] Growth at the company has been stable.
[11:45] Tim doesn’t need to be crafty, he just needs to let people know how awesome Ahrefs is. It’s a simple, but effective tactic.
[14:35] Ahrefs has a database of “bad” content, not just the good content.
[15:52] In terms of marketing, Ahrefs does a lot of SEO.
[16:15] They focus on keywords related to their industry and cover relevant topics.
[18:40] Ahrefs has a score rubric for content and keywords.
[19:20] This helps them prioritize the best topics.
[21:55] Tim cared less about monthly output, than he did about quality.
[25:05] Tim gets emails from people who read the Ahrefs blog and were convinced to buy into the service.
[25:30] Whenever people do the trial, they make sure to survey those people.
[27:50] Their studies work like nothing else when it comes to attracting backlinks.
[27:55] However, the studies don’t bring in a lot of traffic.
[29:02] One research study could take up to 1.5 months.
[31:22] The Ahrefs org chart is flat: they don’t have fixed positions or managers.
[31:45] Employees are allowed to do whatever excites them (within reason).
[34:45] Even though they have an article that ranks in the bottom of the top five, they are happy because the content is solid.
[36:00] Ahrefs produces more backlinks than their rivals.
[38:25] A tool that has added value to Tim’s life is Notion; it’s an easy way to organize the marketing department all in one place.

Resources from the interview:

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