Erich Stauffer

Category: Marketing

  • Vice President, Digital & eCommerce

    As your VP, Digital & eCommerce, I will be responsible for leading the ownership and growth of your eCommerce business, digital marketing strategy and customer experience.

    As this is a cross-functional role, I will collaborate with marketing, creative, operations, and external agencies. As a critical member of the leadership team, I will be responsible for developing the strategy and execution to drive growth of your eCommerce business and create a best-in-class digital consumer experience.

    Responsibilities

    Ecommerce Strategy and Vision

    Develop and execute the long-term ecommerce strategy aligned with the company’s overall goals and objectives

    Identify emerging trends and technologies in the ecommerce space to ensure a competitive advantage with a test & learn mindset

    Establish clear KPIs and metrics to track and evaluate the effectiveness of ecommerce initiatives and digital marketing channels to ROI goals

    Revenue Growth and Sales Optimization

    Drive new customer revenue growth through the development and execution of effective growth marketing and sales strategies for all digital channels (Affiliate, Paid Search, Paid Social, Paid Influencers, CTV, Podcasts, Media Buys)

    Drive existing customer revenue growth through the development and execution of retention strategies to maximize LTV

    Drive the campaign calendar alongside marketing + product launches to ensure a consistent focus on new revenue growth

    PNL management from revenue to media expenses including forecasting

    Own the data & customer analytics setup to easily make data driven decisions to maximize LTV, product journeys, attribution modeling, and understand incrementality

    Website Product Management and Optimization

    Oversee the design, functionality, and user experience of our DTC site to improve conversion rates

    Collaborate with internal stakeholders: UX + Creative + Marketing to enhance website performance and optimize user journeys

    Conduct regular audits and analysis of website performance, identifying new technologies and customer experience improvements and implementing.

    Team Leadership and Development

    Lead and mentor a high-performing ecommerce team fostering a culture of collaboration, growth, innovation, and continuous improvement

    Set performance goals, provide feedback, and ensure the team has the necessary resources to achieve objectives

    Identify talent gaps, recruit top talent, and implement training and development programs to enhance team capabilities

    Partnership and Vendor Management

    Develop and maintain strategic partnerships with external vendors, agencies, and technology partners

    Collaborate with vendors to enhance ecommerce capabilities, leveraging new technologies to drive innovation

    Negotiate contracts, manage vendor relationships, and ensure proper SLAs are met

    10+ yrs of experience in marketing and/or digital within eCommerce across an omni channel environment; Beauty and/or CPG experience preferred

    5+ yrs of experience managing functional staff; high growth environment is a plus

    Ability to continuously drive innovation while delivering results

    Critical thinker with ability to convert data-driven analytics to gain consumer insights, drive activation, optimize user experience, and improve efficiency

    Experience with designing and driving effective digital campaigns (social media, email, SMS, paid, UGC) and within modern marketing channels

    Shopify experience including detailed knowledge and understanding of a modern architectural framework

    Track record of building high-performing and engaged teams; ability to manage, engage and retain teams

    Strong interpersonal skills; ability to communicate effectively across a remote first work environment with distributed teams

  • Director of Marketing, Operations, and eCommerce

    If you’re a growing company needing a motivated individual to network within the community develop and manage events, grow business and encourage the team in these activities, someone who is organized and maintains a task-oriented mindset with strong communication throughout the team, look no further.

    As your director of marketing, operations, and ecommerce, I will help oversee growth and events within your company. I have a vast knowledge of marketing, am able to quickly learn, and I have a love for moving in a fast paced environment. I will help you create new initiatives and bring my creative ideas.

    Experience

    I have experience with social media management, including but not limited to Facebook, Instagram, daily posts, Canva and creative Design ability, creating posts and management of events will be required for this position.

    Organizational Development

    • Loves process! Can lead process working sessions & then take those learning to map out a holistic process in a PPT and be able to get alignment from key stakeholders.
    • Has experience with very complex timelines with multiple stakeholders
    • High EQ-read the room/zoom
    • You have project managed campaigns before, so you understand the milestones, but can see bigger picture here to see how timelines and processes intersect
    • Team management experience

    Core Responsibilities:

    • Lead working sessions and lessons learned with cross- functional teams to understand what’s working/not working and capture those learnings
    • Map out complex marketing process for 1 Walmart campaigns via PPT and excel and get alignment from all cross-functional teams
    • Train cross-functional teams on the ways of working. Gather learnings from pilots and then iterate on process. Work in an agile model.
    • Create a clear DACIN model for teams to drive clarity on R&Rs
    • Support both Client Solutions and Omni Capabilities Ways of Working. The scope is big, so being able to prioritize what matters most and communicate what needs to be on hold for now (with a clear action plan on when it can be done) is key!
    • Own the planning timeline for all 1 Campaigns and ensure WMC is kicking off key milestones in time. Ensure your team is setting up those programs in Workfront.
    • Work closely with the Project Manager and Operations team to ensure WMC timelines are integrated into a holistic schedule.
    • Partner closely with Senior Director to define needs across his team/business weekly and provide visibility in workstreams.
    • Lead necessary x-functional leadership meetings and provide clear and actionable recaps.
    • Manage and train on Ways of Working and ensure adoption.
    • Develop a clear POV on R&Rs between your directs roles in Client Solutions and Omni teams.
    • Prioritization of your teams workload, get alignment from leadership and provide visibility to teams.
    • Ensure Workfront adoption & optimization across CS/OC teams. Own reporting ways of working.
    • Partner closely and develop great working relationships with leads in client solution and omni teams to streamline ways of working.
    • Be a key team member within the marketing operations team ensuring we are all clear with WoW across your respective workstream. Work with other ops leads to drive a consistent WoW across the WMC Marketing Org.

    Qualifications:

    • Bachelor’s Degree and 8+ years experience in project management, operations and process mapping within a marketing org.
    • Has experience onboarding teams in new ways of working and change management
    • Knowledge of creative marketing campaign process
    • Great at building PPT decks: design, mapping out the what, how and why, but can also map out timelines in excel
    • Extremely detail oriented and organized in thought and execution
    • Ability to set and communicate clear expectations
    • Ability to understand and thrive in a fast-paced environment
    • Ability to work effectively and achieve results in ambiguous situations
    • High EQ

    Interested in hiring a Director of Marketing, Operations, and eCommerce? Connect with me on Linkedin or email me to schedule a call.

  • eCommerce Marketing Project Manager

    If you’re looking for a Marketing Project Manager, a Marketing Coordinator, or a Director of Marketing Operations for your eCommerce brands, websites, social media platforms, and marketplaces, look no further than Erich Stauffer.

    I am an experienced e-commerce project manager with 15+ years of ecommerce, marketing, and project management experience in: 

    • SHOPIFY product management
    • SHOPIFY reporting & analytics
    • Monday for project management
    • Klaviyo Email & SMS, including reporting & analytics
    • Canva
    • Google Docs

    Website Management – (Shopify or Magento)
    – Add/update products
    – Swap out imagery as necessary
    – Update announcement banners, etc
    – Implement 3rd party apps as needed
    – Work with outside dev team as needed to make coding changes and landing page updates

    Wholesale/Marketplace Website Management (Faire/Amazon)
    – Adding/updating products
    – Swapping out imagery as necessary

    Marketing Support
    – Create a monthly/annual marketing calendar with key dates
    – Creative direction on email/SMS campaigns (choosing assets, directing copywriter)
    – Work alongside a digital ads agency to make sure they have the assets + copy they need

    Social Media
    – Plan/Strategize monthly social calendars for IG, FB, Tiktok, and Pinterest alongside a freelance content creator
    – Curate a cohesive IG feed, write captions, and schedule into Later
    – Monitor the social accounts for comments & DM’s (2x daily)

    Project Management
    – Manage deadlines for marketing campaigns and making sure a team of freelancers complete tasks by due dates.
    – Coordinate with retail/customer service manager
    – Oversee product launches and managing all steps from start to finish (photography, copy, graphics, etc)
    – Assist with employee onboarding process (passwords, access to docs, etc)
    – Act as the point person under the CEO for all approvals for marketing projects
    – Run weekly analytic reports for Shopify & Klaviyo revenue
    – Lead the weekly team calls keeping the meeting on schedule and reporting status on all projects

    Interested in hiring an eCommerce Marketing Project Manager? Connect with me on Linkedin or email me.

  • Director of Marketing Operations

    As your Director of Marketing Operations, I will be responsible for the development and management of the cross-functional Go-To-Market planning processes and timelines, creative production timelines, and project management workload for your company. As the Director of Marketing Operations, I will lead the Marketing Project Management function and be responsible for the development and successful application and adoption for the Marketing Technology Stack. I, the Director of Marketing Operations, am a strong production and process minded leader, with the ability to lead and maximize the talents of the marketing department and cross-functional teams while efficiently managing multiple high-volume projects with overlapping and/or conflicting deadlines. I will support the successful integration of your company’s promotional calendar with the Marketing calendar, and lead all accountability measures for Marketing, CRM, and Digital/Ecommerce with their partners across the organization, including the Program Director and eCommerce Operations Director.

    My Responsibilities

    My Processes

    • Develop a vision and strategy for the cross functional Go-to-Market process, timelines and milestones and manages the Cross-Functional vertical calendar, ensuring it ladders up the company promotional calendar.
    • Be an operations leader across multiple departments for your company: Marketing, CRM, Digital, Creative and Ecommerce teams.
    • Develop continuous improvement plans, ensuring all departments and processes evolve as the business demands, while maintaining adequate structure and frameworks to allow for business and team growth.
    • Exercise cross-department thinking as it relates to resourcing and time-management, building a resource utilization model and a capacity model to manage throughput (volume & velocity) of total department workload
    • Conduct working sessions to identify process pain points across teams, and develop roadmaps and timelines for improvement.
    • Develop standard operating procedures (SOPs) and service level agreements (SLAs) in partnership with the Director of Web and Data Operations and the eCommerce Operations Director to ensure accountability and compliance across teams.
    • Develop sustainable workflows for photography sample gathering, photo shoot preparation, and communications.
    • Develop communication platforms for updates, utilizing an agile methodology as well as waterfall methodology where applies.

    Project Management

    • Manage the day-to-day work for the Project Management Team, assigning projects based on capacity and implementing creative and marketing touchpoints to support daily/weekly intake of new projects.
    • Oversee a team of Project Management contractors, managing the budget and timelines for their contracts based on seasonal capacity spikes and special projects.
    • Understands business objectives in partnership with the Integrated Teams and leads and mentors Project Managers in prioritizing workloads and project intakes.
    • Implement process and procedural improvements to create a new standard of excellence in both Project Management and my overall quality of work.

    Leadership

    • Manage the Operations Budget line for Technology systems and create run-rates for expected growth and needs. Pitch annual budget needs to senior and executive leadership.
    • Develop initiatives for long-term growth in partnership with the Marketing and Digital VPs and Marketing VPs.
    • Develop newsletter and communication platforms to keep leaders and teams up to date on process and technology roadmaps.
    • Report data findings and develop dashboards for Executive Leadership team (ELT), and presenting updates in weekly action meetings to SLT senior leadership team (SLT) members.
    • Drive teams and leaders towards decisions and actions and recaps and drives continuous growth in a concise and understandable format.
    • Additional leadership partners include: Merchandising, Promo Planning, IT Services, Store Operations, and Merchandising Presentation. As well as various outside vendors and partners.

    Technology

    • System administrator for Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Facebook, Instagram, Tealium, Adobe Realtime CDP, Segment, Shopify, Adobe Commerce, Magento, and any future technology solutions for the Marketing Department.
    • Implement a new marketing frameworks consisting of Portfolios, Programs and Projects in a scalable format across both businesses and all marketing and cross-department work.
    • Develop workflows for creative reviews.
    • Develop an integrations roadmap for all tech stack, transferring data 2-ways and building a secure platform in partnership with IT Services.
    • Overhaul roles, responsibilities and security settings to gain efficiencies and continuous improvement on IT compliance.
    • Manage the marketing calendar through administrative methods to keep the calendar updated and develop continuous improvement plans to adapt to the growth in campaign development.
    • Mine for opportunities to streamline workload through automations and AI capabilities.

    My Qualifications

    • 15+ years of experience with Marketing Operations, with preferred Creative Operations experience
    • 5+ years of experience managing a marketing budget.
    • Ability to lead through ambiguous and competing priorities by developing a data-driven point of view that supports the department goals.
    • Fluency in Adobe Creative Suite, optimization technologies, and work management platforms, specifically Atlassian Jira project management tools.
    • Experience researching, identifying and implementing innovative technology tools for departments. Ability to develop at scale.
    • Experience in IT integrations with 2-way data mapping across multiple technologies.
    • Extensive knowledge of Marketing planning and operations across multiple departments, print production, asset management processes, digital transferring and archiving of files.
    • Experience developing and maintaining process maps for efficiency and quality assurance.
    • Experience in presenting to Senior Leadership, organizing data and information in a digestible and actionable manner.
    • Proven ability to effectively drive efficiency to hit deadlines in a fast-paced environment.
    • Work collaboratively with other team members to deliver high quality marketing strategies and ensure seamless execution.
    • Proven examples of how technology drove business health and efficiencies that optimized the operating spend.
    • Ability to prioritize, assign and monitor team workloads for on time, on brand, on budget asset delivery.
    • Agency and client management experience.

  • QVCA – The 4 Elements of Successful Social Media and Email Marketing

    QVCA stands for, Quality, Value, Consistency, and Authenticity. When you go to post your next social media post or send the next email for your business, ask yourself:

    • Q – Quality – Is this a quality post or email? People expect quality and your content lives for years online.
    • V – Value – Does the post provide value to the viewer or reader? Does it entertain, delight, or educate?
    • C – Consistency – Give people what they expect when they expect it. Create a schedule and stick to it.
    • A – Authenticity – Be real, know yourself, know your viewers and readers, and be yourself your brand.

    If you follow QVCA with all of your social media posts and email marketing you will be more successful than creating shoddy posts that sound like noise, are sent haphazardly.

  • What is a Shareasale Datafeed and How Does it Work?

    As an IT and marketing guy I’m often asked to setup new software or help integrate one system with another. This post is about Shareasale datafeeds: what they are and how they are used – from an IT point of view. If you still need professional help, there is a link at the bottom.

    Summary:

    • a datafeed is just a file that affiliates can download that contains links and info on our products
    • once the datafeed is downloaded, affiliates can use it with special widgets on their site
    • some affiliates specifically look for merchants who have a datafeed they can download
    • if the datafeed is visible in our Creatives under Datafeed, then affiliates can download it
    • it is not an integration, it’s only a file that can be updated at any time, overwriting the old file

    What is a Shareasale datafeed?

    The Datafeed functionality allows merchants like us to upload lists of products to their ShareASale account and provides us with the ability to manage multiple stores and product level commissions as additional options. The Datafeed upload completely replaces the existing product listings in our merchant’s account with every upload. Any items not included in the uploaded file will be removed from the product listings. The full overview of the Datafeed specifications can be found at this Shareasale datafeed setup link.

    Why use a datafeed?

    It allows any affiliate that wants to feature a product on their page or through one of Shareasale’s content tools to display our products on their page. Some affiliates specifically look for merchants with datafeeds.


    How long have they been around?

    At least since 2013.

    How do I check to make sure a datafeed is working?

    It appears to be something only an affiliate can see, but the documentation makes it seem like it’s not an integration, it’s just a file that affiliates download and then use as a source file on their sites. So as long as it’s in your creatives and approved, then it’s “working”.

    Why would it not be working or how to update the file?

    We could find that either Shareasale has an issue with the file or the affiliates themselves have an issue with the file once they go to use it. Once we have feedback, we can upload it again at any time and it will overwrite the file that is currently in Shareasale. Here are some common datafeed problems to watch out for and here are some examples of how to create a product datafeed.

    Conclusion

    I didn’t know anything about Shareasale and I didn’t take the time to learn it before, but when I did take the time to learn it and build context I was finally able to know what a datafeed was used for and to tell whether or not the datafeed was setup correctly. This blog post is meant to help others like me who are tasked with setting up a Shareasale datafeed know what a datafeed is and how to check it so I have more context about what they are for and how they are used.

    Professional Affiliate Setup Help

    If you’re reading this you may be a merchant on Shareasale that is looking for an affiliate management company to help you get setup and build a network of affiliates to help market your products. This is not a sponsored post, but I have worked with Priest Willis and his team at Affiliate Mission and have been pleased with their work, their communication, and their integrity. I highly recommend Affiliate Mission for affiliate management and marketing services.

  • How to Write Blog Posts Like General Motors Makes Cars

    General Motors pushes a new car off of their assembly line once every minute, but it takes 2 months in total to make a car. How is that possible and how does that apply to writing blog posts?

    To use another example, the online retailer, The Grommet, launches a new product every day, but it takes them two months to prepare for a single launch. How can both timelines be true?
    A New Way of Thinking about Blogging
    What if I told you that you could publish a new blog post every day by only working one day a week? Would that interest you? What if you didn’t have to do it in one day, but could stretch it out?
    The reason why General Motors and The Grommet and you can do all of these things is because of the power of batching work. Instead of building one thing at a time, each sub-task is batched.
    The idea is that each sub-task can be optimized by not having to get your workspace and mindset setup for working a particular task before putting it away and switching to the next part of the process.
    Playing Devil’s Advocate
    However, there are also studies that have showed that when a human is tasked with making something with multiple steps that in the short run it’s actually faster to finish each item instead of batching.
    There are also advantages to building something to completion if time is a critical element. If you only have a short time to do something, it’s better to get 1 thing done than 1000 unfinished things done.
    However, I have found that there is a difference between physically building something to completion and doing the mental work of creating a blog post due to the cost of task switching between the different steps.
    How to Batch Creating Blog Posts
    Writing a blog post is actually a series of several different, distinct steps:
    1. Determining what to write about – this could include browsing BuzzSumo, news sites, or Google Trends to see what people are interested in; it could also include asking customer support or the social media marketing team for what questions they’ve been getting or seeing online lately
    2. Researching a topic – once you’ve determined what to write about, it’s time to research the topic to see what sort of angle you can bring to the story. You want to add value to the conversation. One way to do that is to find an answer to a problem someone has (where our product is the answer).
    3. Writing the first draft – this process could involve two steps of writing an outline and then going back and filling it in or you could write it all down as fast as possible. The goal of this step is not to write a finished draft, but only to write as much as possible and as quickly as possible.
    4. Editing the first draft – after you’ve given yourself some time, come back and (or have someone else) review your work. Don’t be afraid to delete things you’ve written. Your words are not your babies. Some writers even go so far as to delete their entire first paragraph. Edit for grammar.
    5. Editing the second draft – after some time has passed, go back through and edit for readability and SEO. Make sure it flows in the right order, has the right sub-headers, and has the right amount of keywords and internal and external links, and also make sure it has a call to action.
    6. Finding images to use – I add this as a distinct step because it’s a different mindset and skill to find an image for use with a blog. There are different ways to do this from searching Dropbox, to asking the Marketing department, to taking a photo yourself, to making an image, to stock photos.
    7. Publish the blog post – when a blog post is published, there are several things to consider such as what the title of the blog post is, what URL is used, what the description of the blog post is, what thumbnail is used, what tags are applied, and when the blog post will be published.
    8. Promoting the blog post – this step could be as little as handing off the URL of the new blog post to the social media marketing department or it could be doing the posting yourself to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. You could also make a custom graphic of the post for Instagram.
    9. Repurposing the blog post – [optional] once you have the blog post created, then you can record yourself with some b-roll cut in reading the blog post in your webcam. The resulting video could then be uploaded to YouTube. In this way each blog post could also become a video.
    10. Aggregating the blog post – [optional] once you have a series of blog posts, they can be combined into an ebook and sold on Amazon or used as a giveaway to attract new email subscribers or as a free gift in an email newsletter.
    If you did all of these steps in one day, you would likely be worn out from all of the task switching. But if you could spend one day doing step 1 and found 20 things to write about, that would be one month’s worth of blog posts. On day 2 you would spend all day doing step 2 for all 20 blog posts. By the end of the second week you’d have 20 blog posts published one month in advance and scheduled on social media.

     

  • My SEO Strategy

    SEO - search engine optimization mindmap on napkin with cup of coffee
    SEO – search engine optimization mindmap on napkin with cup of coffee

    Occasionally I get questions from clients and post my answers publicly here. This simple question, “What are your ideas for SEO,” prompted me to write this blog post so I could help other people in addition to my client.

    What is SEO?

    While the letters are an abbreviation for “search engine optimization”, there are many definitions of what this means. To simplify it for this blog post, I’m going to divide it into two distinct terms:

    1. On-Page Optimization – what you do on the website to attract search engines.
    2. In-Bound Marketing – what you do off the website to attract search engines.

    On-Page Optimization

    On-page optimization involves making sure the structure, meta information, and schema information is optimized for the site. Examples include using only one H1 tag, the page title, and meta description contain your primary keyword.

    In-Bound Marketing

    In-bound marketing involves getting backlinks to your website or page from relevant sources in a variety of different ways. Examples include asking a relevant directory or blog author to post a link back to a relevant page on your website.

    How Should I Get Started?

    The ‘low hanging fruit’ is to do a site audit to determine the state of your HTML tags, meta tags, and site schemas. After that, move on to backlinking to your existing content from your existing social media and then build out from there.

    Proper HTML Tag Structure

    “HTML” stands for hypertext markup language and is simply plain text that when rendered in a web browser, changes the look of the text it’s surrounding. It has markup tags for both heading and style:

    1. H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 are all heading tags. “H1” should only exist once per page.
    2. Strong and Bold (b) are examples of style tags that search engines may use to know what is important.

    By using the keywords you want to rank for in the heading and strong/bold tags, you’re letting the search engines know that this page or website is about those keywords and so they should pay attention to them.

    Proper Meta Tag Structure

    There are many different types of meta tags, but we’ll focus on these two: Title and Description:

    1. Title: this is what displays in the top of the web browser, not necessarily what is shown on the page.
    2. Description: this is the short paragraph that displays under the title in search results.

    Both the Title and Description tags should contain your keywords, but they should be readable to the user, not just a list of keywords. And in case you’re wondering, the “Keywords” meta tag is now largely ignored by search engines.

    Proper Site Schema Structure

    Site schema is information that makes it easier for search engines to read the information on your web pages so they can serve relevant results to users. There are three main kinds of site schema: Schema.org, Facebook Open Graph, and Twitter Cards:

    1. Schema.org: a collaboration between Google, Bing, Yahoo! to standardize structured markup.
    2. Facebook Open Graph: integrates your website with Facebook by allowing it to become a “graph” object.
    3. Twitter Cards: allows photos and videos to be displayed as Tweets using data from your website.

    Don’t worry if this is overwhelming. Most modern website templates contain SEO-optimized HTML tags, will prompt you for title and description tags, and will already contain the proper site schema structure.

    How Do I Know What Keywords to Use?

    All of SEO is predicated on the notion that you know what problem you’re trying to solve. Usually that problem is, “I want to rank for X” where X is the keyword they most associate with their business or the highest potential for income.

    If you don’t know what keyword(s) to go after, then the first step is to do keyword research. There are several ways to do this such as by using Google’s Keyword Planner Tool (part of Google Adwords) or by using an autocomplete tool like Ubersuggest.

    1. https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
    2. https://ubersuggest.io/

    How Do I Get More Backlinks?

    The best way to get more backlinks is to create more content. The best kind of content is the kind that answers people’s questions or is entertaining (i.e. is valuable to the reader). Seth Godin calls this type of content, “remarkable”.

    Once you have created content, you now have something to link back to from social media or relevant directories. If you’ve solved a problem for someone in a forum, you can legitimately link back to that post without fearing spam complaints because you’re being helpful.

    How Do I Know What Questions People Have?

    The first place to look is in your own email inbox or customer support portal. What questions do you get from your current or prospective clients? Is there a response you find yourself writing about over and over? Other places include:

    1. Quora: this is literally a website full of questions.  Quora is like a more respectable Yahoo! Answers.
    2. Forums: online forums can be found by searching for your keyword + “forum”. Look for the sticky posts.
    3. Buzzsumo: this site shows you the most popular articles about a given topic using social shares as it’s metric.

    Once you know what keywords you’re trying to rank for, what questions people have about those keywords, and your site structure has been optimized for SEO, it’s now time to create SEO-optimized content to share.

    How Do I Create SEO-Optimized Content?

    SEO-optimized content is predicated on using a site that is SEO-optimized on-page (SEE “On-Page Optimization” section above). It’s key components are that the keyword is used in the title and the content is valuable.

    • Keyword is used in title: make sure the primary keyword is used organically in the title of the page or post
    • Content is valuable: make sure the content answers a question someone has or provides entertainment

    If you offer a service, explain how someone could solve the problem themselves. Be as detailed as possible. Show every step along the way. It will show how knowledgeable you are to those who want to pay and help those who don’t.

    What is My SEO Strategy?

    My strategy is to ensure the site has been SEO-optimized on-site, ensure all content has been backlinked to from social media at least once, and then begin creating new SEO-optimzed content to share on social media.

    Only once I have done those 3 things will I begin the long courtship with other websites, directories, and forums to get backlinks to the content I’ve already created. To adapt an Albert Einstein quote:

    Try not to become a [site] of success , but rather try to become a [site] of value.”

    Who is Erich Stauffer?

    I’ve been writing about SEO since 2009. A lot has changed over the years, but some things have not. Valuable content that answers the questions of the reader is good for both search engine results and the customer.

    If you’re interested in hiring me to consult with you about your SEO strategies, packages start at $200 per session for one-on-one SEO advice on your specific situation. I look forward to helping you with your business.

  • How to Get Started as a Freelance Marketer

    Recently I got asked how to start freelancing doing marketing with a focus on social media, email marketing, and blogger outreach:

    Hey Erich! So I’m trying to venture out on my own with freelance marketing specially focusing on social media, email marketing and blogger outreach. Joy mentioned you might be able to give me some tips on how you got your clients so I thought I would ask!!

    Yeah, I agree with Joy. That’s a great idea. When I first started all I had was a website and that worked for a while, but that’s not enough anymore. You’ll have to be much more direct.

    I’d recommend identifying the type of customer you’d like to work for, something very specific you can do for them, and then be laser-focused on contacting them.

    For example, let’s say you wanted to sell your services to a business owner you know. You ask around, search the Internet, and you find their email address. Then you upload it to Facebook as a custom audience and make an ad that only appears on their Facebook feed.

    Another approach is to start to tell people stories about how you solved a problem and that you’re looking for other people to help in the same way. Use these stories on your website and in conversations with people you meet.

    That brings us to the third leg: networking. Find out where your customers meet outside of work and go there. Get involved. Tell your story. Offer value upfront. Give your best ideas away for free. If you have enough ideas, write a book down (10-40k words is enough) and have it printed at createspace.com. Now you’re an expert. You wrote a book on the subject.

    Host a live teaching event and charge people to show up. This is not to make money, but to show that your time is valuable and to filter out people who don’t have money.

    Lastly, there are lists where you can sign up to bid on marketing jobs such as thumbtack.com. Hope that helps.

    If you liked this post you might also like, How to Learn to Become a Blogger.