Hit the 100 subscribers milestone for 3 week old newsletter

I attained the 100 subscribers milestone for my newsletter yesterday.

The past 3 weeks were quite eventful for MarketingMetrics when 2 of my posts hit the front pages of several major business-related subreddits. The posts received 700+ upvotes in total and 9 awards. Here’s what I learned from it:

The Launch

I officially launched my blog on Jan 12th, 2021 on Reddit. I received 4 subscribers on the very first day.

But if I had to attain the 5k subscribers goal I had to gain around 14 subscribers each day. I knew it wasn't going to happen on the very first day or even the end of the first month.

So my aim was to learn as much as possible in the first few weeks and carry out as many experiments as possible and build a system that will work as an assembly line for content creation.

What that essentially means is, in the initial days of any blog or content channel, people throw different contents in front of the audience and test them out for acceptance. And the best subject+format+value proposition is then used to grow the blog.

How I decided on a subject area?

After my initial few blog posts, I realized that I needed to stick to a theme for my content that is narrow enough for me to perform in-depth research while wide enough to generate at least 30 pieces of content.
After some thoughts, I went for landing page conversions as my subject matter. For any content-based business subject matter is the most crucial early stage decision. It's more like a business idea but the validation techniques are very different.

I went for these subject areas because of my expertise in already having worked on UX and analytics for a long time. I also knew (after running a SaaS business and failing to grow it) that conversion is a major hurdle faced by most businesses at an early stage and growth stage. A/B tests are not always the solution. There are lots of variables to take into account and advice in this area is very limited.

There are contents available on this topic but they are usually very advanced and not easily consumable by founders and marketers. As these people are busy with lots of other priorities and don't have time to go through hours of content on the topics, they need someone to distill the content and deliver it to them in small pieces that are relevant for them. I saw an opportunity there.

The blog format

The format I selected for this was to explain marketing and conversion optimization tactics using simple examples that are easily digestible (a link is at the end of this post).

I write well-researched blogs where I pick a framework from books of legendary authors on marketing and combine them with recent examples from startups and how those frameworks helped the startups with targeting and messaging in the early stages of growth. I write these posts focusing primarily on the landing page copy+design of successful startups which is my area of interest.
Meanwhile, I tested two other formats where I wrote essay type posts with tactics listed out in them to achieve specific objectives (like from which sources startups get maximum traffic?) but that didn't work too well. I also wrote about my own problems optimizing pages but that had limited success.

My value proposition

The value I decided to offer my subscribers is to keep them updated with a list of techniques that can help them attain higher conversions from their landing pages (by emulating other similar businesses and customizing it for their own business). I know this is a pain point for many entrepreneurs who don’t know how to combine data from analytics, session recordings, user research etc. and write copy that can maximize conversions.

Outcomes

So for the 2 most popular posts in my first month, I focused on framework from a popular book plus example format and kept refining it.
It has worked well with my audience in Reddit so far as reflected by upvotes and awards. I also won a consulting assignment based on these posts which was a bonus.

Next steps

I'm working on a few products that will be useful for my audience. Since I get a chance to interact with them and understand their problems on a regular basis, it's easier for me to decide and prioritize the features of my product.

I've already received 10 beta users for my yet to be launched product and I'm planning to launch the product by end of Feb, 2021 and launch it on Product Hunt when I reach 500 subscribers.

Hope you found this post useful. I've included a link to my free newsletter where I share updates about my journey, freebies, and my findings on landing page conversions.

Link to my newsletter: https://marketingmetrics.io/marketing-frameworks-series

Link to the reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/l7t3ty/if_we_dive_deeper_into_the_landing_pages_of/