How I created a traffic acquisition engine for GoSkills.com
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Marketing Director
SEO Specialist
UX Designer
Ahrefs
Google Drive
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TLDR: GoSkills hired me as its head of marketing to create a traffic acquisition engine that did not rely on deal sites, like Groupon, produced high quality site traffic and increased its organic search presence.
Title: Head of Marketing
Skills: Content design, outreach, user research, freelancer recruitment and management, writing and editing, strategy, content marketing, SEO, copywriting, UX, email marketing
Tools: Figma, YouTube, Influencer marketing, CMS, Ahrefs, Semrush, Reply.io, Social media, Paid ads, AdEspresso, Facebook Business Manager, Hotjar
Collaborated with: Product, development, creators
Context
At the time, GoSkills was a course marketplace, where people could buy a single course for a one-time fee. (Since then, they’ve pivoted to a subscription model, but we’ll get there…)
While they offered an array of professional courses, its Excel courses were most popular by far. In fact, they put GoSkills on the map. They were the bulk of the site’s revenue, but there was a big problem…
The Big Problem
A mismatch between current customers and ideal customers
Almost all course sales came from deal sites, like Groupon, AppSumo and StackSocial. Customers from these sites churned immediately; rarely even starting the course they had purchased.
This was especially problematic because GoSkills wanted to pivot to a course subscription model to increase revenue and customer LTV, but the consumers they were reaching were not their ideal customers.
That was my hunch anyway -- that their current “customers” were not willing to pay a subscription fee for on-demand courses, since they were only purchasing the courses because they were dirt cheap.
You know what they say, “The data doesn’t lie.”
So I set out to prove my hypothesis by conducting extensive user research.
I started by setting up a few different automated outreach campaigns with Reply.io. Replies came directly to my inbox, so I could personally read what everyone who replied said.
Simultaneously, I installed Hotjar on the website and set up:
Heatmaps
Screen recordings
And visitor polls
Hotjar was quite informative, showing us that our price point was too high and that current customers/site visitors didn’t actually want a subscription; they wanted to purchase one course for a one-time fee.
So if GoSkills wanted to increase revenue, then it had to make a choice: Reach (and appeal) to a new audience or trade in the subscription for one-time courses.
They opted to work toward the subscription model, which led them to hire me as their first head of marketing, with the goal of creating a traffic acquisition engine that did three things:
Did NOT rely on deal sites, like Groupon
Produced high-quality traffic
Increased organic search presence
Before I delved into creating the strategy, I took all of my learnings from my user research and developed a rough ideal customer profile (ICP).
If you’re wondering my process for creating buyer personas, read my article on Tuts+ >> The Definitive Guide to Buyer Personas for Beginners | Envato Tuts+
My Traffic Acquisition Strategy
Step 1: Develop content 100x better than everything else already published, and distribute the hell out of it.
My goal was to make our free content so damn good that readers couldn’t help but believe a course subscription might just be worth it and give us a try.
So I set out to create a world-class content marketing program, which revolved around three types of content...
Create a robust, user-friendly resource center.
BEFORE I redesigned the blog.
When I started at GoSkills, its blog was a mess.
It only featured short, promotional, fluffy articles with poor visuals, and its overall design was overwhelming, difficult to navigate and highly unreadable. Because of this, GoSkills’ blog received little to no traffic.
The Process:
Redesign the company blog.
My first order of business was redesigning the blog so it was enjoyable to read and easy to navigate between the different categories.
Because the GoSkills website and blog is custom-coded, I couldn’t implement the resource center myself (although had it been WordPress, I could’ve).
So I worked with the developers to implement the designs I mocked up in Figma. The mockups included a single blog post page and a resource center homepage design.
Everything in my designs had a reason for being there. I explain some of the most important elements of the designs in the visuals below.
AFTER my UX designs went live.
Recruit influential writers and YouTube influencers.
While the resource center was being coded, I reached out to prominent freelance writers, recruiting from sites like The Muse, Inc and Sumo. I also reached out to up-and-coming, influential YouTubers, like Francesco D'Alessio, so I could implement video into the mix.
Example video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/FrD6tsH8UX8
PS: Flash forward, years later, D’Alessio’s YouTube channel “Toolfinder” has 421,000 subscribers, and his name is searched 7,600 times a month. He’s also turned into a “tutor” for GoSkills, who is reaping the benefits of his personal brand.
Publish content worth saving.
To start, I committed to a cadence of one in-depth post per week and one 10x content piece per month. It’s important to note I had a budget for multiple writers, which allowed me to publish consistently high-quality content.
After the first month of implementing this publishing schedule, traffic to the site increased a whopping 29 percent, and it continually increased MoM. Dwell times increased dramatically as well.
Read this if you want to learn the content creation process I employed at GoSkills >> How to grow your traffic by 29% next month with content marketing
Fun Fact: I input goskills.com into SerpStat, and the top posts driving the most traffic are posts I scoped and assigned out to freelance writers when I worked there. Can you say evergreen content?!
Add 10x content to the mix.
Marquee content, or 10x content is content that goes the extra mile -- it’s interactive, it’s valuable, sometimes downloadable and always save-worthy.
Example: 200 Insanely Useful Excel Shortcuts
The first marquee content piece we published was, “200 Insanely Useful Excel Shortcuts.”
It included an interactive page on the site, where visitors could download a PDF cheatsheet version. We also posted an infographic of the top 80 shortcuts on the blog, and we gave visitors an embed code to include it on their site if they wanted.
Our first 10x piece went viral in the Excel subreddit, leading to Lifehacker and Business Insider syndicating it.
The Results
Increased traffic by 29% in one month from this one piece of content
Ranked in Google the NEXT day after publishing for “Excel Shortcuts” (8,100/month search volume)
Received 237 upvotes and 35 comments in Excel SubReddit
Syndicated on Business Insider and Lifehacker
Create pillar pages.
When I worked at GoSkills they had 10 different course categories, and I was responsible for creating a pillar page for each one, with the goal of this helping our BOF pages rank better (because we look like an expert on a topic in Google’s eyes with this content).
The Live Pillar Pages
Note: I did not write these pillar pages myself. I outsourced these pages to writers I recruited for this purpose. I was the final editor of this content though, and I did scope out the pages for each one to ensure writers knew what I was looking for, requiring fewer edits in the end.
Step 2: Get an obscene amount of organic backlinks to increase domain authority (DA).
By inventing a scholarship for women who want to be the boss.
GoSkills wanted to increase its brand awareness among college students as well as secure a significant amount of backlinks in just a few short months in order to increase its domain authority (DA) and rank higher in Google.
My solution? Invent a scholarship for female college students who want to be their own boss someday, hence the title “#BetheBoss.”
The Process
Develop the details.
First, I needed to figure out the logistics of the scholarship. I asked myself:
Who can apply?
I settled on female entrepreneurs because “women in tech” had been a huge issue at the time, and so the focus was timely and easy to resonate with.
How do they apply?
Applicants had to submit a business plan to apply, and answer a few questions.
Where do they apply?
Those interested can apply through the scholarship page found on GoSkills website.
How many scholarships will be awarded each year?
I decided that we should have two $2,000 scholarships awarded yearly, so we maintained the backlinks we earned all year long.
When are the deadlines?
The deadlines are set as: Sep. 15 and March 15 -- perfect timing for fall and spring semesters, when students are scouring for scholarships.
When are the winners announced?
The winners are announced a month later to give the team an ample amount of time to review the applications.
How are applications reviewed?
The applications are reviewed on merit -- or rather how good the applicant’s business plan and answers to their questions were.
What is the award amount?
$2,000
Design the landing page.
After the details were approved, I began designing the landing page.
First, I wrote the copy.
Next, I designed the landing page in Figma.
https://www.goskills.com/scholarship
Lastly, the developers coded the landing page that is still live to date.
Reach out to colleges across the country to let them know about our scholarship.
Last and certainly not least, I hired a freelancer to curate a long list of U.S. colleges that featured scholarships on its websites. Due to the size of the project, I recruited the help of a marketing consultant to help with outreach.
We developed the email copy, then he set up an automated outreach campaign using Reply.io.Hundreds of email replies arrived in my inbox daily.
The Results
109,000+ quality, do-follow links
Contributed to increasing DA from 26 to 61
We sent nearly 1,000 emails, 850 of which were delivered (a 97% delivery rate). Out of those, we had a 44% open rate and around 92 unique replies.
By the first deadline, GoSkills received 100 scholarship applications, and the first winner has gone on to do big things with her startup.
GoSkills still has this scholarship live to date, showing the true value of my idea.
Metrics: The data doesn’t lie.
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Posted Dec 6, 2024
GoSkills hired me as its head of marketing to create a traffic acquisition engine that produced high quality site traffic and increased organic rankings.
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Marketing Director
SEO Specialist
UX Designer
Ahrefs
Google Drive
Sketch
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