Omer (00:10.000)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talk to Alan Silvestri, the founder of Growthgorilla, an agency that provides, in their own words, no BS content promotion for B2B SaaS companies.
If your content promotion ends right after you click, publish and share the content on your social media profiles, then you're not making the most of the content that you've worked so hard to create.
The truth is that content creation is just half the job.
To be truly effective with your content marketing, you also need to invest just as much time in promoting the content.
Content promotion doesn't just help you reach new audiences.
It also helps you to improve your SEO when you can get other sites to link to your content.
But doing content promotion is hard.
Even many SaaS companies that are investing time in content promotion get it wrong.
Their outreach and promotion is ignored and and they end up wasting a lot of time and effort without much to show for it.
In this episode, we'll talk about the common mistakes that SaaS companies make with their content promotion and then we'll walk through a process on how you can do content promotion in a way that helps you stand out and get better results.
We get super tactical and provide step by step information so by the end of this episode, you'll have what you need to create your own content promotion plan and start getting better results.
So I hope you enjoy it.
Alan, welcome to the show.
Alan Silvestri (01:54.890)
Thank you very much for having me.
Amer, it's great to be here.
Omer (01:57.610)
Do you have a favorite quote, something that you can share with us to inspire us?
Alan Silvestri (02:01.850)
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, I would say my favorite quote is probably from Marty McFly from back to the Future and if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.
Omer (02:11.770)
Love it.
Yeah, that's a blast from the past.
Okay, so tell us about Growth Gorilla.
What do you do, who do you help and what's the main problem that you're trying to solve?
Alan Silvestri (02:23.260)
So yeah, we do content promotion and distribution for B2B SaaS companies.
We mainly help small to middle size companies that are profitable and that are basically like already producing a lot of quality content, but that don't have the time or resources internally to essentially promote this content, which means building backlinks essentially to get the content to rank.
And so yeah, we're essentially solving the problem that these companies have where like, typically you have the VP of demand gen and then you have the content publishing and production team.
But yeah, normally, like, you don't have a content promotion team that can essentially take this content and pitch it like around to other websites.
Right.
So this is kind of where we come in.
Omer (03:09.810)
So, yeah, let's talk about that because, you know, I think there's, there's different schools of thought here.
There are some people who kind of do very well.
Some people don't do any content promotion.
They just create content and publish it and hope for the best.
There are other people who probably go out and I'd say do the easier stuff.
Like let's post these.
What's what content we've created.
Let's post it on, you know, social media and sort of easier places where we can put those links.
And then there are people who actually actively do outreach to get promotion.
And some of that may be driven by saying, okay, let's, let's get some backlinks, let's improve our SEO.
Other parts of it is just really about, you know, we've invested all of this time and money in creating this content, and if we're not also putting as much effort into promotion and distribution, then it's kind of a wasted effort.
So let's start with, like, why bother doing this?
Alan Silvestri (04:20.740)
So typically, what we've seen with a lot of companies that are working already on their blog content for the most part, is what I like to call the content graveyard.
So what this is is essentially so if you can picture like a staircase kind of line.
So this is kind of like the content production work for SAS companies.
So it's linear.
So they publish maybe two articles this month, then they publish two.
Yeah, two more articles next month to the next month and so on.
Right.
So they keep publishing the same amount of content maybe every month.
And it's a linear graph that goes up.
The problem with this is that link building and content promotion with basically everything that's correlated to SEO, is not linear.
It's more of an exponential graph.
Right.
And so what most people do is they basically just maybe work on this for a couple of months.
They don't see a lot of results.
They get discouraged.
And so what they do is just basically they quit.
Right.
And they quit because they think that they have put out maybe 80% of the effort, but only gotten 20% of the results.
So what do they do instead when they get to this point?
Basically they just keep publishing content in the hope that it will maybe rank somehow.
But like most people that are into SEO and marketing know nowadays that it's very difficult, especially if you're in a competitive niche.
It's very difficult for the content to rank on its own.
And so basically what we do is we like to come in essentially with companies and try to help them see that if they stick long term to link building content promotion, they eventually will ride the curve and get to the results that they want to achieve.
So it's basically just a matter of committing to the long term instead of looking at the short term.
Omer (06:16.010)
Okay, great.
So let's sort of dig into.
Before we talk about, you know, your process and the way you tackle content promotion.
And I want to dig into a lot of tactical information there.
You know, ideally, I want somebody listening to this at the end of this to be able to say, great, I understand enough.
I got an action plan.
I can go and do this myself if I want to.
Alan Silvestri (06:41.520)
Yeah.
Omer (06:41.920)
But before we sort of talk about how to do it the way you kind of preach, we should talk about what.
What are some of the mistakes that.
That most people make when they try to do content promotion?
And I'm going to.
Before we get into that, I just want to kind of set some context here.
You know, I get a lot of emails, people who are pitching to be on the podcast, lots and lots of, you know, really bad emails asking for backlinks.
And even with your.
When you first reach out to me, which was over six months ago, the way you sent the email, the subject line, the content of the email, there was something about it that, for me, it just stood out very differently from 99% of the types of emails that I get.
And even then, I still said, thanks, but no thanks.
And then you were like, yeah, cool, no problem.
And then.
And then, you know, you still were kind of looking for ways not to kind of follow up, but provide value.
Like, I think, you know, one of the things I think you said was, hey, you know, I work with a bunch of SaaS companies.
Maybe they could be on your show.
You know, can I introduce some.
Some of them to you?
So right from the beginning, even though you didn't get a yes, you set a very different kind of expectation of.
Yeah.
Yes, in my mind, in terms of tone.
Yeah.
In terms of how you were reaching out.
And eventually that led to, you know, me saying, hey, look, just come on the show.
I think there's something interesting here that I think we can share with other people.
Alan Silvestri (08:18.210)
Yeah.
Omer (08:19.090)
So that.
That's kind of my perspective and why I invited you to be on the show.
After all that time and now I think hopefully when people understand that, it'll set some context when we talk about what not to do and then, you know, how you do things differently.
Alan Silvestri (08:37.570)
So cool.
Omer (08:38.530)
So let's talk about the mistakes that, you know, most people tend to make.
Alan Silvestri (08:43.300)
So yeah, like essentially the way that I see this is there's like two kinds of buckets of mistake that people do.
The first is the things that people do before they are ready to promote the content.
And the second is the stuff that they do after the content is published.
So essentially when they're ready to promote it.
So let's talk a little bit about the first bucket.
So essentially like all this is mostly stuff that has to do with the on page.
The way I see that, it's very important.
So before you start with any kind of content promotion link building, you need to make sure that the on page and the technical side of the SEO of your site and content is on point.
So there's actually a study from Ahrefs that they've done where they essentially showed how 91% of pages don't get traffic from Google.
And there are like three main reasons for this.
The first one is that the content doesn't have backlinks and this is what we do essentially.
The second one is that the content doesn't target keywords that have a search traffic potential.
And so essentially nobody is looking for those keywords.
And the third one is that the content doesn't match the correct search intent and content type.
So what search intent and content types basically is.
So for example, you search for cold email templates on Google.
So what you can expect to see and what Google will show you is probably a list of articles that have like top 10 cold email templates for this and for that or like the best cold email, like examples, right?
So you're not gonna find homepages, you're not gonna find directories, like basically, yeah, for that search.
So this is what the content type and search intent is.
So trying to exactly match what Google wants to show to the people that are searching for those keywords.
So these are both like extremely important.
So before you start promoting the content and emitting links to it, you need to make sure that you have this done correctly.
So once you're ready to promote the content, then.
I see three main mistakes here as well.
The first thing that I see a lot of people do is that they are having a hard time finding a balance between a quantity, quality approach during the outreach.
And so you either have people that do super personalized campaigns with maybe just 10 emails but they don't get results so they stop.
And so yeah, the second type of people, maybe they do too many non personalized.
So this is basically spam and automated emails.
They don't get result so they stop.
So ideally I think, yeah, basically it's all about finding like the right balance between how many targets or emails you send and the depth of the personalization.
So for example, for new companies I would say that it's okay to do things that don't scale, but the thing that matters the most is that they are consistent.
So don't give up after you send 10 emails, just send like 10 more the next day and try doing that for at least a month.
So then you're going to have some data to be able to see and say that the outreach doesn't work for established companies that have more money so they are willing to invest in more tools and try to like to automate stuff.
Basically I would say try to automate, yes, the repetitive tasks but, but keep the things that are like higher touch and more personal.
Keep them personalized and done manually.
Omer (12:22.660)
Yeah, yeah.
The quality and quantity thing is, I mean most people, well, I think most of the ones that I get sort of lean towards the quantity, definitely not the quality.
And it's sad because if you're going to take that approach, you're just going to get such a low response rate.
Alan Silvestri (12:45.960)
Yeah, definitely.
And it's super bad as well for the deliverability of the emails as well.
So you constantly need to spend time with like tracking tools and tools that improve your deliverability because you're sending thousands of emails per day and so you constantly need to be monitoring the inbox to make sure that it doesn't go to spam.
So yeah, it's a mess.
I think that it's definitely not worth it.
Omer (13:09.240)
Yeah.
And I think, yeah, I think deliverability is a really good point.
And I know I've seen like, you know, some of the things, sneaky things that some people will do, like they'll set up a different domain for.
So you know, if you're a dot com they'll get a dot net and use that to send out their email or something.
Alan Silvestri (13:27.960)
Yeah, nothing against that.
I mean that's something that we do as well.
It's just a matter of still not being spammy.
So we do that.
But the main reason that we do that is because you never know like, like basically in which mood people are.
So even if I send like 10 emails, maybe I get one that is very angry that day and like basically they decide to mark my email as spam.
So we don't want to risk it with our clients.
Right, right.
But that's.
Right, yeah, that's just like something technical that is not even very like complex to do.
But yeah, the things that I'm talking about are like, yeah, like creating 50 different emails for a campaign and sending like 6,000 emails per day.
So that's like the extreme.
Right, right.
Omer (14:14.190)
And then on the, on the quality side, you know, I think that you can certainly make a case if you're saying, okay, I'm a, I'm a sales guy and I'm reaching out to prospects and if I close a deal it's going to be worth, you know, five figures a year or more.
Alan Silvestri (14:36.440)
Yeah.
Omer (14:37.000)
Then you can take your time.
Right.
It's probably smart then to take the time to customize and make them high touch type emails.
But it's difficult to keep doing that when really all you're trying to do is promote content.
Alan Silvestri (14:52.520)
So the thing is that we've seen with a lot of clients as well is that if you put in the effort to personalize the email and secondly, like you reach out to the correct sites and this is one of the other mistakes that I want to talk about as well is that you'll find that besides backlinks and content promotion, the other things that you get basically out of this relationship are going to be much bigger than the backlinks like in most cases.
So we've had clients that have had like partnerships forming through our kind of emails and yeah, a few other things that were very good for them for the business as well.
Omer (15:29.700)
Yeah.
And I think that that sort of leads into the second point about the mistakes that you see, which is really about like you told me earlier, like about tactics versus long term, that are you focused on a tactic that's going to get you a link or are you focused on the long term and trying to build a relationship?
Alan Silvestri (15:49.520)
So yeah, what we do is so we've always focused on the long term and this is both in the sense that we create a long term strategy for our clients.
So we don't do month by month and basically just like taking the like, like orders from clients.
So essentially like getting clients that basically want like three links to this page and four to the other page.
So like what we do is we create a roadmap for the clients and where we essentially plan out the entire next 12 months for them and that's going to be the plan for the year.
So they know exactly which pages we're going to be working on to increase their kind of overall traffic, signups and demos basically.
And yeah, the second long term kind of approach that we do is also in the emails we always try, if possible, to get something else basically.
Yeah.
Kind of out of the, like the relationship.
So we have a lot of clients that are software companies.
And so what they do in a lot of cases is that my offer, like free subscription to the target, and that can be both a good way to incentivize the link, but also a good way to get a new potential testimonial or customer for the software.
Right.
Or somebody else that maybe has an audience and can talk well basically about the product.
So this is all stuff that helps in the end.
Omer (17:14.250)
Okay, great.
And then what's the third?
You said there was a third mistake that people made during promotion.
Alan Silvestri (17:20.410)
So yeah, the third main mistake I think is targeting the wrong sites, as I mentioned before.
So yeah, that's the problem.
And something that happens when most people focus too much on tactics and details and just links instead of looking at the bigger picture.
So when you do this, what happens is that essentially any site that you might find is a good target for you.
But the problem with this is that it's not necessarily true.
And specifically so if you're looking to avoid all of the spammy private blog network, all of the people that are selling links, essentially the best thing that you can do is be very picky with the sites that you reach out to.
So the number one tip that I can give here is to reach out first off to legitimate businesses.
So yeah, try to avoid essentially bloggers, like mommy bloggers or individual bloggers, where it's kind of clear just by looking at the site that their main source of income is the site itself.
Because when you do that, it's pretty obvious that the first thing that they're going to do is ask you for money, because that's kind of like how they make money selling links, basically.
So if you want to avoid that, the best thing that you can do is try to make sure that the site is a business that is focused on selling their product or like services to other people and not to making money from their site selling links, essentially.
Omer (18:43.000)
Yeah, and that's a good point.
I remember last year working with somebody who was doing link building and I was shocked when I saw the numbers of people who were responding and immediately asking for money.
Alan Silvestri (19:02.040)
Yep.
Omer (19:02.440)
And I was like, wow.
Number one, it's like, I think if you know, correct me If I'm wrong, but if, if Google ever catches you doing that, you're pretty screwed.
Alan Silvestri (19:11.720)
Yeah, I mean, so yeah, it's pretty difficult for Google to catch you because they would have to read your emails essentially.
Omer (19:18.360)
Right.
Alan Silvestri (19:19.000)
But yeah, I mean, like let's say for example, that a site owner is selling links like, yeah, basically links from his site.
Maybe he has some other 5, 10 different sites where it's doing the same thing.
Right.
So what Google can do theoretically is that they can see patterns in how these five or ten different sites are linking to the same targets.
Right.
So this can be a sign and something that might get you penalized.
But yeah, it's something that like in any case, it's better to avoid.
We do it sometimes only when it's clear that the person is not like actively selling links from his site.
But we do it only when it's just like the blogger or the admin essentially that is asking for a fee to cover their time to add the link.
And when it's gotten down to a negotiation with us.
So if like most of these people, they would just reply to the first email with a price list and that's like where you need to run away from that.
But if you get down to a proper negotiation, maybe you ask for a link exchange or you offer a free trial of the product and they are like, no, sorry, like I'm not interested in that and maybe I don't have time because blah, blah, blah.
So then like they might be interested in a form of payment to cover the time to do that.
But yeah, that's the only case where we do that and we try to limit it as much as possible, obviously.
Omer (20:48.120)
Yeah.
So, okay, so let's, let's talk about your process and how you work with B2B SaaS companies on content promotion.
Alan Silvestri (20:59.640)
Yeah.
Omer (21:00.200)
So maybe start with like giving us kind of like a high level overview and then we can dig into each of the areas.
Alan Silvestri (21:06.200)
Sure.
So yeah, basically our process, we have a pretty like unique process I think compared to like what everybody.
So most people when they do link building, they think either guest posting.
So essentially asking to other websites if they can write like, yeah, an article for them and the link is going to be inside this article.
Then some other people are doing like broken link building.
Some other people are doing skyscraper technique, which essentially is creating assets that are similar but better to other content pieces that have performed well and try to essentially steal their backlinks.
So you reach out to the same people and, and basically you're like, hey, can you Link to my content because it's better than what you're like already linking to.
Omer (21:51.010)
Yep.
Alan Silvestri (21:51.610)
So this is all tactics, basically.
And what we try to do is we try to focus on having a framework that is more holistic.
So instead of focusing just on these few different tactics, what we do is, is we focus first on doing a proper kind of analysis of what the clients have on the site.
So first off, we determine which kind of pages they have on the site and what their priorities are in terms of content strategy.
And so this is also where the long term thinking comes into play because essentially we want to work with long term thinking people that have a proper strategy for their content so they're not just publishing random articles.
Random, basically.
So that then we can come in, do our analysis and then essentially we try to find the best, maybe the most creative way to reach out to sites and people to pitch them the link placements in their existing content.
Omer (22:51.820)
Okay.
Alan Silvestri (22:52.380)
So we don't do new content, but we try to get link placements in content that is already out there.
Omer (22:58.620)
Got it.
So that's first step analysis.
So we're going to.
Yeah, we're going to dive into that in a second.
And then the second step is.
Alan Silvestri (23:04.610)
Yeah, the second step is basically prospecting.
That's when we find and qualify the website.
And the third is the outreach.
That's when we create the personalization and all of the email templates and sequence and we reach out to people and monitor and get the conversation going, essentially.
Omer (23:23.330)
Okay, great.
So analysis prospecting and outreach.
Yeah, so let's go back back to the analysis.
And you said you start by working with your clients to basically figure out what assets I guess you can use.
So what are the types of things that you look for that if somebody's listening to this and they're kind of mentally auditing their site, what are the things that they should be kind of making a note of as being potential assets that they could use?
Alan Silvestri (23:55.230)
So yeah, essentially by working with SaaS companies for the last three years now.
So we basically came up with a framework of what the four main kinds of pages that a SaaS site typically has.
So we take a look at what the clients have in each of these kind of buckets.
Right.
So the first one is obviously the homepage.
So this is not like a bucket, but it's the main page.
So the homepage of the site.
The second is what we call the quick win pages.
So these are typically blog articles that are on the verge of getting some significant traffic.
So they are ranking maybe at the bottom of page one or at the top of page two.
Right.
And the third one is like the main landing pages.
So if the clients have like middle, bottom of the funnel content, like use cases, case studies, white papers, comparisons of other tools, so these kind of pages.
And the fourth one is linkable assets.
And these are for example, infographics or like research articles or the classic maybe ultimate guides, and all of those kinds of content.
So once we've identified what the clients have in each of these buckets, then we prioritize them based on a few different factors.
So as I said before, we take a look at whether the content is matching the search intent and the content type for the target keyword, whether it's targeting a keyword that has some search traffic potential.
And then we do like a quick analysis to determine if the specific piece of content is first of all valuable, linkable.
So if it has some elements, then that maybe other people can find interesting and that they might want to link to.
And also if it's rankable, so if it can actually compete in the search engine results.
And so if it makes sense for us to work on this piece of content.
Omer (25:54.980)
Okay, so let me ask you a couple of questions about that.
So the four that you talked about was number one is your homepage.
Number two are kind of other key landing pages, like use case pages, integration pages.
Alan Silvestri (26:09.580)
Yeah, it's actually number.
Yeah, Number three, number two was the quick win pages for the blog articles that are ranking already.
Omer (26:15.620)
Right.
And so these, when ranking, you're basically saying in Google, if you search for whatever the target keyword is, they're showing up either bottom of page one or they're in the top 15, 20 results.
Alan Silvestri (26:26.780)
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So, yeah, Typically, like for us, a good sign when we start working with a client is also looking at these kinds of pages.
And if they have at least in between like maybe 20 to 50 of these pages that are already ranking quite well with not a lot of backlinks, that's a good sign for us because it means that the content is good and the Google is already liking this kind of content.
So it just needs backlinks, essentially.
Omer (26:49.260)
Got it.
And what's the distinction between blog articles and linkable assets?
Is that really, like, why don't you explain that instead of me guessing?
Alan Silvestri (26:59.460)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
So blog articles, the main difference between the linkable assets is the blog articles are typically and should ideally target specific keywords.
Right.
So these are typically the top to middle of the funnel content.
So they are targeting keywords and they are targeting pain points that the target customer might be looking for and that they could solve with the client's software, essentially.
So these are generally speaking, the SEO driven content.
Right.
That the clients want to rank for the specific keywords.
And the linkable assets are normally like just assets that are not targeting a specific keywords, but that they have essentially been created just as a kind of weapon to acquire links, essentially.
So if you have like an infographic that's very cool or that's very like unique in your industry, then you can get that published in like, yeah, big publications, for example, and that will get you like a lot of attention and a lot of links maybe.
But it's not necessarily ranking for specific keywords.
So that's the main difference.
Omer (28:10.790)
Got it.
So you don't necessarily go in and start creating content for people, but a client or somebody who's thinking of doing this needs to have at least a foundation of some of these key ingredients.
Alan Silvestri (28:26.310)
So yeah, definitely we like to work with companies that already have a content team and a content strategy in place, so they already know what they want to do and kind of like where they want to go with their content.
And essentially they just need basically our brains for the link building strategy and execution part of it.
Omer (28:47.420)
Got it.
Okay, how do you connect the dots between the content pieces and keywords?
Like, for example, do you have clients like provide you.
Okay, these are the kind of keywords we're targeting.
Do you do research around that?
Do you look at what these kind of articles are already ranking for and say, okay, no, this is the keyword we should focus on.
Alan Silvestri (29:09.150)
So yeah, definitely, we do have a process for this.
It's kind of like what determines the initial roadmap that we create with the clients.
So what I do in this scenario is I typically start with my own analysis.
So I use ahrefs as my main SEO tool to analyze the client site and the client content.
And so what Ahrefs tells you is either the keyword that the article is already ranking for, but it can also tell you what the parent topic for that keyword is.
So let's say that my client is targeting a keyword with this article that Maybe has like 200 searches per month, but then it refs would tell me that this kind of page can easily rank for the parent topic, which typically is bigger, and it Maybe has like 3,000 searches per month.
So why not maybe optimize the article for the main parent topic instead of just the small, narrow kind of keywords?
Right.
So there's a bunch of these improvements the client can do as well.
So I start off with my analysis with Ahrefs and I kind of determine and see which keywords they're ranking for, ready which keywords they might have the potential to rank higher for as well.
And then essentially the second step that I do is I send this list off to the clients and they essentially match it with their Google Analytics data to also give me a few pointers in terms of which pages are bringing them more conversions and signups and leads so that then we can combine essentially the strategic SEO approach with the more sales driven approach.
And essentially then we assign kind of like a priority number to these pages that are going to be essentially compiling their roadmap for the next 12 months.
And we're going to be working on the pages that have the most potential to rank higher with the least backlinks and that also are bringing in the most traffic leads, customer to the client.
Omer (31:16.200)
Got it.
Okay.
So by the end of this analysis phase, you've identified which pages to focus on, which keywords to focus on, and just general the overall strategy that you're going to take for promoting this content.
Alan Silvestri (31:30.680)
Yeah, yeah, so, so yeah, the analysis is all of this, but there's also like a secondary, like an ISIS component.
And that's basically what we do for the individual campaigns.
So once we have identified like these pages, then these become campaigns.
And so a campaign is what we will run for the specific month, for example.
And so each campaign starts off with the strategy step, and that's what I personally do.
So what the strategy step is, is essentially trying to find the best way for us to compile a list of the best targets possible.
So to do this instead of, for example, doing the skyscraper approach, so looking at the competitors links and reaching out to the same people.
So instead of doing this, which doesn't work really well nowadays because everybody's doing the same thing, what we came up with is essentially kind of similar, but we try to reverse engineer that approach.
So we take a look at the links that your competitors have.
And instead of reaching out to the same people, what we do is we look at what kinds of pages are linking to your competitors.
So that then, yeah, we can essentially use those same topics or different angles that they have to basically find other pages that are not linking out to anybody else.
So we've seen that instead of going against the competition, basically we try to go where we don't have competition.
So let's say like an example, I can give you like a practical example, maybe like an article where the.
Yeah, let's remain on cold email templates maybe.
So like if you type in cold email templates and you go to a tool like Ahrefs, you can see all of the pages that are ranking number one and then you can see their backlinks.
So if you scroll through their backlinks, basically, like you will see that some of these pages maybe are about how to use cold email, like to grow your business maybe, or they are talking about how to write maybe customer service emails or how to use emails in client communication or maybe how to like, I don't know, use email to build like relationships with influencers and yeah, like all these kind of things.
So what we do is we take like these different segments and topics and we use them on Google or in some other tools that we have to find other pages that are talking about the same things but that maybe are not linking out to your competitors.
So we can go in there and we know that it makes sense for a page that is talking about this topic to link to another page that is talking about your topic, so called email templates.
So, so yeah, we know that essentially the main pitch is already covered for us and is already taken care of because we've seen in the past that other people that are talking about these topics are willing to link to a page on cold email templates.
So then what we do, and this is essentially the prospecting phase is we basically use all of these different segments, we call them, to essentially split the prospecting into buckets.
And so we prospect for one topic and maybe we find 300 websites.
Then we prospect for the second topic and we find another 500 and so on.
So then we get to the point here where we have maybe a list of thousands of websites.
And this is when we start with the next step in the prospecting, which is checking, qualifying and all the basically the quality check.
Say.
Omer (35:10.740)
So basically this is the point where you're saying like, okay, we can either reach out to all of these people and go for the quantity approach or we can try to prioritize this and come up with a more manageable subset of this list that we can do some better outreach with.
Alan Silvestri (35:33.460)
Yeah, definitely.
So what we do typically is we do like we start off with removing all of the so called, like junk websites just by using some SEO quality metrics.
So it could be domain authority, domain rating, the site's traffic and we get like all of these from tools essentially.
So this is like the, like, yeah, the preliminary filter.
Then we also have a kind of A blacklist we call it, which is a list of all of the sites that we know that we don't want to reach out to.
These can be maybe directories, forums.
So for example, yeah, like all sites that are not like editorial in nature and where like anybody can create an account and just place like a reply with the link.
So we don't want those.
And the last step in the qualification is we do a manual check.
So this is also why we don't want to send thousands of emails because we don't have the time as well and the resources to manually check and open up thousands of sites.
Right.
So we try to get the list down to like a more manageable number, typically between 100 and 300 prospects for one campaign.
And then we do a manual check.
So we open them up one at a time to make sure that they are like basically for stuff, quality sites.
So like I mentioned before, we make sure that they are legitimate businesses, that they are still publishing content.
So it's not a dead weight site essentially that's just selling links.
We make sure that we can find the person on LinkedIn on social media to essentially make sure that it's a real person.
And then we also check for relevancy so to make sure that it fits within the segment that we're prospecting for.
So it makes sense for them to link to our page because the two topics are relevant to each other and then a couple of extra kind of things that we check for.
So this is also the stage where we get the email account of the person that we reach out to.
And here there's a couple of extra like pointers on the email account as well.
So yeah, we try to reach out to the like the best person possible.
And one tip that I can give here is to always reach out to, to somebody that actually has the access to the content.
So you don't want to reach out to the like the VP of Sales or like support kind of accounts.
It's typically like useless to just send emails to a generic account.
So we always try to find either the author of the article, if not the editor of the site, if not some marketing people maybe that can, yeah, that can actually edit the content and essentially basically add the link for us in there.
Omer (38:25.070)
Got it.
Okay, so I want to just pick up on a point you made earlier about manually checking the list.
And I think that's the part where maybe it goes back to some of the mistakes you talked about earlier.
Is that not only does that help you to do a better job with the quality.
But when you start to do the outreach, you're going to do a better job with relevance and reaching out to the right type of sites.
I mean, it's amazing.
Some of the emails I get, which is completely irrelevant, or they refer to, or they send it to an email address that I haven't used for four years or refer to a domain that is redirecting but has never been live for four years.
Alan Silvestri (39:19.280)
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, I got the same thing.
Like some guy reached out to me and he was saying, hey, like, I love your site.
And then the site wasn't even mine, but it was just a site where I wrote an article on.
And so this like, like clearly shows me that they haven't manually checked that.
Omer (39:36.480)
All right, there's a lot more.
And I think we should just explain that if people listening to this want to kind of, you know, get into the details here, just go to, you know, Alan's site, like mygrowthgorilla.com and there's a link up there which just talks about our process and you can read all about it there.
But yeah, so we've talked about prospecting, now let's talk about the outreach piece.
Alan Silvestri (40:02.460)
So, yeah, the outreach piece, essentially.
So something that like most people don't get is that like, once step one and two are done, well, the outreach is typically like, yeah, the least difficult part, I would say, because if you've done your analysis well and your content is linkable, so if it has the right maybe elements for people to mention it inside their pages, and if you've done the prospecting, wells.
So the article that you have is high quality and it's relevant to the pages that you're reaching out to, like 10.
And the other thing to mention is that if the person is a real person, so they might actually be genuinely kind of interested in the topic because maybe that's what they do for work.
So if these two first parts are done well, typically the outreach is kind of easy, let's say.
So the main thing for us at this point is to essentially first get people to open the email so that then they can read it.
To get people to open the email.
Yeah, there's like, it's not a secret sauce, but there are some pointers that people like, basically things that people can do.
So something that I like to do, and it's what I've done with you as well, owner.
It's basically take a look like for example, at somebody's Twitter account.
So I've been following you for quite a long time.
So I had already your account in there and I was following you and essentially I noticed that you mentioned something about Star Wars, I think, or the Mandalorian, I think something like that, maybe a meme or something.
So I used that in the subject line because I knew that that was something that would have gotten you to open the email because it stands out, it's different, it's kind of funny.
Right?
So I mentioned something about that in the subject line and that made you want to open the email.
So that's the first step.
So once you're done with that, the
Omer (41:59.060)
subject line was this is the way I think, right?
Alan Silvestri (42:01.140)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So once you've done that, then the second step is to get people to read the body of the email.
So even here, like I have a few kind of things I like to do.
So first off, try to avoid following a specific template.
So the thing is nowadays with email is that everything is so saturated, templates are everywhere and everybody's using the same templates.
So you really want to do something that stands out that like even just visually, like typically the, like the typical link building email is, hey, I saw your article on blah blah blah.
We have this article on blah blah blah.
Do you want to link to it?
Right.
So this is like the typical framework.
So you can even like just know that it's a link building email just by looking at it.
Like we don't reading it because you see the two links and then the question at the end.
So what I like to do is maybe just like, yeah, turn this over.
So try to do things differently.
Start off with a meme, maybe with like compliments, something funny that you've seen.
And then don't even like include the link.
Maybe just ask maybe a question to get the people to reply so that then you can start a conversation maybe.
So, so yes, very important when you do this obviously to try and be genuine because it's.
Yeah, I would say it's fairly easy to see when people are kind of forcing it and they are just like citing or mentioning something to get you to, to open the email or to read it.
But it's something that they don't know anything about.
For example, I knew about Star Wars, I watched the Mandalorian, so I was happy to use that inside your email.
Right.
But if it's something that I wouldn't know anything about, I wouldn't have felt confident in using that basically inside the email.
Omer (43:48.620)
Yeah, yeah, totally makes sense.
Now we talked about the mistakes around quantity and if you're Just trying to play that game.
Let me send out thousands of emails and I'll be happy if I get a 0.00% response rate or something.
Or there's the other side of it, the quality piece.
Now what you just described there is great, but if somebody's thinking of doing that, they're probably thinking, sounds great, but I haven't got all day to write 10, 20 emails.
So what's the trick there?
Alan Silvestri (44:24.990)
Well, there's no actual trick.
So let's say that our campaign is between 100 and 300 prospects and that's basically the only campaign that we send in one month for the clients.
So the trick, which is not a trick there, is essentially to find the right framework that works for you for personalization.
So let's take this example that I shared just now, for example.
So let's say that the tactic is looking at Twitter and then finding something in the Twitter account of the person.
So first off you would create a template that works for you.
So let's make the template different.
But yeah, let's still use the templates.
So yeah, like having a template that's different from like everything that's out there.
Omer (45:09.870)
Yeah, so I think I just stopped you there, Alan.
Just say, just one tip is like if you go and Google cold email templates, look through all of those and don't use any of them.
Alan Silvestri (45:21.670)
Don't use them.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
That's the main thing.
So, so do something that is different from what you see on all those websites, especially the link building websites.
And then once you found that out, you created maybe your own template that you like that is more like you, because you want to be like funny and unique as well in your emails.
So once you've found that out, then you know exactly the elements that you need to essentially kind of enrich the templates.
So let's say that my first line is, is something that I saw like on Twitter so I can tell my link prospectors, guys, and that's the team that we have that essentially does like all of this kind of research part.
I can tell them to open up the Twitter accounts of these people and look for something that we can use so that they would add that to the customizing or like, yeah, basically the custom fields there.
The second thing is maybe once you found like that kind of unique thing, then you can find or think about how that thing maybe correlates to the topic that you're reaching out to them for and maybe make a joke.
So you know that the second line is A joke.
So once you've sort of created this framework, like there's not basically like a lot of thinking that you need to do is kind of like a systematic approach that you just need to execute.
Right.
So this is kind of like the way that I see it.
Focus on finding a list that is very relevant, very high quality and not too big so that it's manageable for you to still do these things that are like high touch, but not super like extremely personalized.
Like basically where like in every case you need to spend an hour to do the research.
Right.
So it takes us like about like maybe 10 minutes to create one email like this.
And so we just need to do that for 100 or 300 prospects in a month.
And that's, that's all there is.
Omer (47:26.140)
Okay, great.
So that I think that's, that's smart having having your own template that doesn't look like anything else and personalizing snippets.
Alan Silvestri (47:36.140)
Right.
Omer (47:36.460)
Rather than writing the email from scratch for every time.
Alan Silvestri (47:39.890)
Yeah, and typically the problem that we see there with personalizing snippets is that most people think that personalizing the snippets is only stuff like the first name or maybe the site name or maybe the article topic of the article that they're reaching out to.
But you can be way more creative with this.
So as I mentioned, using something on Twitter, scrolling through their feed and finding something like that, or use a meme.
So yeah, you can be like extremely creative even in the customization of the emails.
Omer (48:11.770)
And then when you do the actual outreach, once you've sent the first email, what kind of follow up do you do?
Alan Silvestri (48:19.290)
Yeah, so we are like extremely basics with the follow up.
So what we typically do is we follow up.
Yeah, one, like maybe two times at max.
Because especially because this is a link building slash content promotion email.
So we don't want to bother people, we don't want them to mark the email as spam.
So if they are not interested.
So yeah, as I said, like if step one and two, so the analysis and the prospecting are done.
Well, like typically there's only three things that can happen.
Like yeah, the first one is that they say no or they don't reply.
Second is they say yes and they give us the link or they give us some partnership or some other kind of opportunities.
And.
And lastly the third one is that we can get down to a negotiation.
So when we get down to negotiation, that means maybe that they're asking for something in return.
And basically, yeah, we hope that that is not money most of the time.
But yeah, it still happens.
So we try to avoid that.
But if it's something genuine, like maybe give me a shout out on social media or a link exchange, we try to be careful with those as well.
But if something that doesn't hurt if done in the correct way with the correct sites, or maybe as I said before, a free trial of the software, like an affiliate link, a discount code, something like that, it's all stuff that can happen and that can help during the negotiation process.
So as I said, yeah, I mean just focus on doing the first step well and then like during outreach, I personally don't find the need to be too aggressive with the follow ups, especially in these kinds of emails.
So I know people that do like 4, 5, 10 follow ups.
But yeah, we've tried that in the past.
It didn't work really well.
And so we've seen like the best result just by focusing on a smaller amount of follow ups like this.
Something that I can mention about the follow ups is so typically if we do two follow ups, the first one is a super quick email that can be either just hey, name, did you see this?
So just like this second follow up is typically something where basically we want to try and re engage the person.
So we might send over some other articles and the articles can be maybe ours or some other people as well.
So just something that is relevant to the main topic that we were pitching to, but it might not even be ours.
So just like showing them that we want to give them value and that we're looking for ways to connect essentially.
Omer (50:56.070)
Love it, love it.
That's great.
Okay, great.
So I think we covered a lot in the last 45, 50 minutes, so we should wrap up on that.
As I said, we'll include a link in the show notes to the page that you have on your site for the process and people can just click the link and go there.
Alan Silvestri (51:16.430)
So yeah, the process page is actually the super basic kind of version of what I explained here.
But I do have one article on our site that is our exact playbook.
So it really talks in depth basically about all of this.
And then I also wrote an article on Pitchbox, which is the outreach tool that we use where I explain more of the nitty gritty of the automation and the systems that that we use for outreach as well.
Omer (51:43.960)
Okay, great.
So let's do this.
Once we're done here, if you send me links to those articles, I'll make sure that all of those get included in the show notes.
So People can easily access them and read more if they want.
Alan Silvestri (51:58.599)
Cool.
Omer (51:59.160)
All right, let's wrap up and do the lightning round questions.
I've got seven quick questions for you.
Ready?
Alan Silvestri (52:06.200)
Yeah.
Omer (52:07.080)
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Alan Silvestri (52:10.120)
So I would say best piece of business advice is specialize and find your niche.
And that's basically what I've done.
So, yeah, basically I'm focusing on SaaS companies only, and I'm only doing basically one thing.
So I'm very niche, very specialized, and I think that helped us quite a lot.
Omer (52:28.280)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Alan Silvestri (52:31.080)
The Almanac of Naval Ravikant.
And I really like the way that it's.
It's laid down.
So it's a super simple framework for wealth, health, and happiness, and I really like the way that it defines happiness.
So peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion.
So the ultimate goal is peace, basically.
I really like that.
Omer (52:52.510)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Alan Silvestri (52:56.830)
I actually have, like, a couple.
So it's two, basically, but it's patience and persistence.
And I think, yeah, those two work very well together.
Omer (53:06.240)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Alan Silvestri (53:09.920)
So I use a tool called Roam research for my note taking and productivity.
And in terms of habit, I would say getting my exercise and the reading done first thing in the morning has been crucial for me.
Omer (53:23.360)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?
Alan Silvestri (53:26.960)
Nothing too crazy, but I have a few ideas for some outreach tools that could basically help us streamline the operation and also be useful maybe for other people as well.
So, yeah, who knows?
We might explore that.
Omer (53:40.290)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Alan Silvestri (53:43.970)
Most people in the SaaS space probably don't know that I played and sang in a punk rock band for 15 years, so they can find my music on itunes as well.
Omer (53:52.770)
Yeah, just search for your name in itunes.
Alan Silvestri (53:56.530)
So actually, the band is called Never Alone, and it's all one word, so you can find the band.
And we have, I think, two albums on itunes and Spotify.
Omer (54:05.770)
Wow.
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Alan Silvestri (54:11.050)
So, yeah, nowadays I'm a huge DeLorean Back to the Future fan.
I actually own a DeLorean DMC12, and that's my main car that I use every day, kind of.
Yeah.
Omer (54:23.690)
Love it.
Okay, great.
Well, thank you, Alan.
If people want to find out more about Growthgorilla, just go to mygrowthgorilla.com and if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Alan Silvestri (54:34.840)
I would say via email, which is alanigrowrilla.com or twitterlangigarilla.
Omer (54:42.200)
Awesome.
Thank you my friend.
Thanks for sharing your process and going into fair amount of detail here.
I'm hopefully that's going to be helpful to people who want to go out and try this themselves and if not, just I guess they can contact you and figure something out.
So yeah, thanks for the time.
Alan Silvestri (55:03.320)
Yeah, no problem.
Thanks a lot.
It's been great.
Omer (55:05.240)
All the best.
Cheers.
Alan Silvestri (55:06.319)
Cheers.
