Marketing Examples - Marketing Examples #050

#050 - A crash course in getting press and building links

(Press • 3 mins • Read on website)

Hey everyone.

I'm honestly pretty surprised. We made it to 50 editions.

95 people read my first ever one. Now we're above 30,000!

Anyhow, today's story is about a women called Carrie. She's the co-founder of Rise at Seven, a creative SEO agency.

Over the last year I've been consistently blown away by how easy she makes getting press look.

And it's not “press for press's sake”.

The reward is high quality backlinks which help her clients rank for ultra-competitive search terms.

Lets start with an example

Missguided is a fashion retailer who started working with Rise last year.

Carrie looked at their site for 5 minutes, saw they sold dog jumpers, and knew there was a story there.

So she found some similar looking regular jumpers, and wrote the headline:

Missguided launch matching jumpers for you and your dog this winter

The media loved it. The campaign pulled in 80 links. And Missguided soared from #30 to #1 for the search “dog jumpers”.

No big budget or photoshoot. Just the idea to link two pre-existing products with a clever headline.

Another example

November 2019, Game came to Rise.

They'd just launched a new webpage full of gaming chairs. The challenge was to rank this page in time for Christmas.

Now, getting press to link to a bunch of gaming chairs is near impossible. So, instead, Carrie dreamt up The Christmas Tinner.

A 3-course meal in a tin for hardcore gamers. And it was this page that then linked to their gaming chairs.

The Christmas Tinner went viral.

“SEO juice” passed down. And within 3 weeks Game's gaming chair page was ranking for over 400 keywords.

Honestly, I could tell a dozen more stories like this. But I think it's more important to understand the process.

Carrie tells me the trick is learning to think in headlines.

For example, last Easter she worked with a sex toy startup. The first thing they do is figure out the headline:

The world's first Easter egg with a sex toy inside

Then they work backwards until it becomes reality.

Most people plough ahead with an idea. And, only when it's too late, realise there's no “hook”.

Once you've got your story the final step is pitching it. Here's Carrie's crash course:

1/ Journalists are busy. So make their life easy.

2/ The email subject is my headline. I outline my article in the body. And embed my best image.

3/ Journos open laptops at 8:30. So send outreach at 8.

So there you go

14 months ago Rise launched with one client at £2k / mo.

Today revenue is £2M / yr. And yes, that is crazy!

It reminds me that nothing moves the needle like genuine creativity.

Because one 5 minute idea can have more impact than 100 guest posts.

Thanks for reading. And thanks to Carrie for sharing her wizardry.

Marketing Examples - Marketing Examples #050

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