🔍 The Masterclass SEO x Paid Social Playbook

My bad. I'm a little rusty after the holidays and accidentally duplicated two sections in the last newsletter. But it's a new day and a new day to sweat bullets before hitting send...

Today, we're covering how Masterclass built an education empire worth $2.7B on the backend of SEO and how they use paid social to retarget that organic traffic.

If you got three minutes, then let's have a little fun....

Let’s call a spade a spade. Some of us procrastinated at the end of 2022 during the holidays, you know, from Dec 23rd to Dec 30th when you don’t know if it was Tuesday or Friday. And in the back of your head you know you’re supposed to be building out systems and processes for your 2023 marketing strategy.

But you didn’t. And now you’re taking espresso shots every other hour while watching Youtube tutorial after Youtube tutorial trying to connect the dots.

Well, I’m sleeping like a baby because I’m using all of ClickUps’ templates to power my marketing team.

They’re already built. Ready to be used. And free.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Social Media Content Plan

• A/B Testing

• Campaign management

• Content marketing plan

• Marketing Report

• Marketing Budget

Or you can dig through the hundreds of templates they have here.

Plus, if you want to upgrade and start streamlining your whole business through ClickUp then use the code: MKTGEXAMINED for 15% off.

2023 Will thank you.

First, the SEO stats behind this empire:

• 12.2M Monthly Visits
• $3.9M In Monthly Organic Traffic Value
• 606K Backlinks
• 51.5K Referring Domains

This makes search their number one source of traffic.

But the key is how they optimize this traffic based on search intent.

Search intent is the “why” behind any search query.

Every person who performs a search on Google is searching for one of four things:

1. Information - Here people are searching for specific questions or want to dive into a certain topic.
2. Navigation Here people are searching for a specific website.
3. Transaction - Here people are searching for a specific product and already know what they're looking for.
4. Comparison - Here these people need more information or convincing but are looking to buy a product.

By understanding the “why” you can map out “how” to drive action.

Behind the “why” there are specific keywords.

Use this table to understand which keywords fuel the individual’s intent:

A look at its top pages on Ahrefs shows that outside of its Home Page every top page meets the informational intent of the user:

A look at Masterclasses' top pages on Ahrefs shows that outside of their Home Page every top page meets the informational intent of the user:

Then they kick it up a notch.

Masterclass creates content that helps the individual get things done aka articles that provide them with the right information to do so.

And they have a library of 10,000+ articles doing the same damn thing.

Essentially, ask (Google) and you shall receive (Masterclass).

This means one thing:

Top Of Funnel Marketing = Fueled

Masterclass bridges each article to a specific course, taught by a specific instructor, centered around the topic that relates to the information they were looking for.

Because the extension of the right information is the right product.

(I might sell that line to Drake)

So, every information-dense article is linked to a scaled version of information — a Masterclass Course.

So, let me lay down the situation: 

You search searched for specific information.

You read the article and then clicked through to the specific course relative to the information.

This journey just took you from problem-aware to product-aware.

But you didn’t buy…

So, Masterclass said, "I'll see you again and you won't see it coming."

And there you are on Youtube, then Facebook, then Instagram, and boom - Masterclass retargeted you with specific creative related to the specific course you showed initial interest in.

Here’s what it looks like:

• You searched “Difference Between Egg Yolks and Egg Whites?”
• You clicked the Masterclass article
• You clicked through to the Gordon Ramsey Cooking Course
• You didn’t buy
• You get retargeted on Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram with different video ads specific to the Gordon Ramsey course

And that's how *Chefs Kiss* Masterclass casts the line, sets the hook, and reels you in.

Sorry for the fishing analogy, I'm going fishing in a few weeks.

Here's a quick recap:

• Search intent is the "why" behind every search
• Each search satisfies one of four search intents
• MasterClass creates thousands of articles centered around informational intent
• These informational articles act as the bridge to the right product
• This click-through is retargeted on other platforms with specific creative

If anything, the intent is everything.