Groove's 0-100k in MRR Blog – Content Spotlight #004

First a quick original quote for this content spotlight, directly from the man behind the blog, Alex Turnbull:

“We spent a lot of time thinking about how to position  our blog, and ultimately we decided to write the blog that I would’ve  wanted to read the first time I started a business. Because many of our  customers are startups and small businesses, the blog really resonated  with them. Anybody can do this, though. Content marketing is a lot of  work, but it doesn’t have to be complicated: figure out the problems  that your audience has, and develop content that solves those problems  for them.  

— Alex Turnbull, Founder of Groove

Okay, Groove puts out so much incredible content that it's really hard to choose one single aspect to promote in this spotlight. Simply speaking, they are a torrent of valuable information for any startup, from soup to nuts. Most took notice however when Groove initiated the "Journey from $0-100k in monthly revenue" (which is now the journey to $500k/m, seeing as they broke their goal in a damn fast sprint).

The simple spot to start is at the very bottom of the blog. That's where the story starts. Actually with this post. But let's get straight in to breaking down why this is so fantastic.

What makes this so special?

1. Creativity

First off, we should start with the concept. It's fresh, even in this clouded startup market. That's essential. A completely transparent chronology of the startup journey, from initial market to $1m+ yearly revenue. Anyone in a startup (which is a lot of people) would want to read this.

The trojan horse and elephant in the room though from a content marketing perspective is that their target market is startups who want a simple help-desk software. Not only did this blog have viral appeal, it had viral appeal to their target market – the holy grail.

They got all the big parts right too immediately out of the gate, from copywriting, to visual aesthetic. Just check out the initial gate to their blog, before you click the link to read more:

Testimonials from some really big names in Andrew Warner & Hiten Shah, albeit added later after they had a bit more buzz. This was the same call to action that they had initially on the blog, just edited to $500k/m instead of $100k/m as is their new goal.

The beauty of this is:

• It immediately shows value
• The copywriting pops out at you, "aha" to "oh shit" might be one of the best personifications of the startup experience I've ever seen, speaking straight to their audience
• The timeline makes you feel invested in their growth, we naturally as human beings want to see things like this grow
• The call to action is perfect "send me lessons on growth" – from a company that has $130k/m in revenue, you better bet a budding new startup would hit that button
• The social proof proves the worth of these lessons that they want to send you

For all these reasons and more, this is a perfect call to action – and splash pages like this have been proven to work as entry-pieces to any blog enticing signups.

2. Execution

From the jump Alex, the founder of Groove, had some massive names in the startup community commenting on his posts – from Hiten Shah to Gary Vaynerchuk. It even led some people to comment "next post explain how you got all these big names to comment on your first blog post!" Which they did.

They went again to the time-line theme, every post was an etch in the stone of time as the revenue grew, and the audience took notice. Each post grew in relevance, each post cascaded more and more email signups, each post pushed them further to their goal as they provided value to hundreds and thousands of people.

After a point they knew they had to weed out the biggest resources (which is funny to think about because every post is pristine) but they created a "Best of" list, which shows the most viewed posts on their blog.

The execution of this blog is so fantastic that I've seen extremely experienced and influential content marketers rip off call to actions and concepts verbatim.

3. Exposure

Every single post has over 150 comments and ~2000 shares. This kind of stuff is unheard of to get out-of-the-gate. It wasn't without insane planning, extreme creativity, and expert execution that they pulled this off. I recommend everyone read this post to get more insight into what they did to get this success so quickly.

It's for the perfect targeting, unique creativity, and un-parralled execution that this has always been one of my go-to content marketing examples of a successful consumer-facing blog. I don't know if there is a better B2B example of a blog (per blog post published), even amongst companies such as HubSpot or Moz, and that's high praise.

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