MMarketing Against The Grain
← All episodes
06 February 2024

How do you build an organic marketing engine for your business? (#197)

9Frameworks
14Insights

Listen

Frameworks in this episode

Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 1

Myth Buster19:00

Why More Campaigns Do Not Fix a Disjointed Content Engine

Companies often separate blog production from ebooks, webinars, and campaigns, causing conversion offers to mismatch the content attracting visitors. The hosts argue that observed audience consumption should drive conversion paths, while company-led campaigns should remain secondary.

  • Separate teams often create mismatched content and offers
  • Product-focused assets may ignore what visitors currently want
  • Popular discovery content should determine the next conversion asset
  • Campaign priorities should not override audience behavior
  • Aligned offers can materially improve lead conversion

campaigns were always secondary to us.

Kip Bodner · 20:00

Your cues are what people are consuming, right? The cue isn't I need you to learn about this thing.

Kieran Flanagan · 20:30
#content strategy#campaigns#conversion#audience intent

Hot Take· 2

Hot Take30:00

If Paid Growth Is Already Plateauing, Diversification Started Too Late

Organic channels generally cannot replace next month's paid acquisition volume on demand. The best moment to diversify is while paid performance remains strong, giving organic systems enough time to mature before acquisition economics deteriorate.

  • Organic acquisition takes time to compound
  • Paid media creates an addictive sense of immediate control
  • A paid-only plan is a performance marketing strategy, not a full marketing strategy
  • Diversify while current acquisition economics are healthy
  • Treat prevention as a core risk-management practice

The quicker you diversify, the better.

Kieran Flanagan · 31:00

You don't have a marketing strategy. So it's when the founder feels comfortable going from a performance marketing strategy to a marketing strategy.

Kieran Flanagan · 31:00
#channel diversification#organic growth#paid media#risk management
Hot Take38:00

Advertising Becomes Dangerous When It Masks a Weak Growth Engine

Paid advertising is powerful when its economics are sound and it sits within a diversified strategy. It becomes dangerous when escalating spend conceals the absence of other acquisition channels, eventually damaging unit economics and exposing the business to abrupt decline.

  • Advertising is useful when carefully controlled
  • More spending cannot permanently conceal channel weakness
  • A lack of diversification creates strategic risk
  • Healthy paid performance creates the runway to invest elsewhere
  • Future failure modes should be addressed while results are strong

Advertising is great when you get it just right. It is very dangerous if you have no diversification

Kip Bodner · 38:30

When things are good, ask yourself what might make them bad in the future, and how do I prevent that from happening?

Kip Bodner · 39:30
#advertising#growth strategy#diversification#business risk

Explainer· 7

Explainer07:00

Why Paid Acquisition Gets Less Efficient as You Scale

Paid advertising rarely scales linearly because the most responsive audience is exhausted first. As spending rises, each additional dollar tends to produce fewer incremental leads, making early channel diversification essential.

  • Paid acquisition becomes more expensive at scale
  • Doubling spend may produce far less than twice the leads
  • Strong current unit economics do not eliminate future saturation
  • Diversification should begin before paid performance deteriorates

You're going to be spending 200 grand on media to get 50% more leads instead of 100% more leads, right?

Kip Bodner · 07:30

this channel will at some point saturate.

Kieran Flanagan · 08:00
#paid advertising#channel saturation#unit economics#demand generation
Explainer08:00

The Three Types of Paid Advertising Measurement

Kieran separates paid advertising into direct-response, incrementality-driven, and awareness-oriented models. Each requires a different measurement approach because only direct-response advertising provides a clean link between an ad interaction and a conversion.

  • Direct response connects ad clicks directly to conversions
  • Indirect conversion campaigns optimize toward conversion events
  • Incrementality studies compare exposed and unexposed markets
  • Awareness campaigns optimize for engagement rather than conversion

I always divide paid into three core buckets, right?

Kieran Flanagan · 08:00

We call that incrementality, which is hey, I put them off in, I put these on in these parts of the US. I turn them…

Kieran Flanagan · 09:00
#paid advertising#incrementality#roas#measurement
Explainer13:30

Estimate Search TAM Before Investing in SEO

A search opportunity should be quantified before a company commits heavily to content. The estimate combines relevant topics and keyword volume with plausible rankings, click-through rates, conversion rates, and customer conversion to forecast the channel's potential contribution.

  • Determine whether search can become a meaningful growth channel
  • Separate the revenue market from the actively searching market
  • Aggregate keyword volume within each relevant topic
  • Model realistic rankings and click-through rates
  • Translate projected traffic into leads or customers

I always start with how meaningful could this channel be for me by building a search TAM, right?

Kieran Flanagan · 14:00

from that total monthly available traffic, we hypothesize from that one topic that equates to hypothetically this many customers.

Kieran Flanagan · 26:00
#search tam#seo#forecasting#organic growth
Explainer15:30

Search Demand Extends Beyond Brand and Product Keywords

Search opportunity consists of brand searches, product or category searches, and broader educational topics connected to the product. Companies that examine only transactional terms can dramatically underestimate the organic audience available to them.

  • Brand searches capture existing awareness
  • Product and category terms indicate transactional demand
  • Educational topics expose a much larger potential audience
  • Narrow keyword lists rarely produce meaningful B2B growth
  • Broader topics must retain a credible connection to the product

There's people that will search for your brand. There's people who will search for the product, the generic term around your product, the category that…

Kieran Flanagan · 15:30

We've ranked for like our 50 keywords that are related to our product and we're done.

Kip Bodner · 16:30
#seo#keyword strategy#content marketing#search demand
Explainer20:30

Build Content Backward from Product Features and Jobs

Instead of publishing broad content and later forcing in a product connection, teams can begin with a product feature, identify its job to be done, and move outward through increasingly broad educational topics. This preserves a coherent route from discovery content back to a relevant product action.

  • Map the product's important features
  • Identify the job each feature helps users complete
  • Move outward into related middle-funnel topics
  • Expand again into broad educational content
  • Connect each level back to a useful product action

one easy way for companies to do this is to create a feature map, right?

Kieran Flanagan · 20:30

work backwards and not what most people do, which is let's create content and then figure out how we can get them to be interested…

Kieran Flanagan · 23:00
#feature mapping#jobs to be done#content strategy#product marketing
Explainer26:30

TOFU Creates Discovery; MOFU Converts Attention into Demand

Top-of-funnel content helps people solve a problem without making the product central to the story. Middle-of-funnel content then offers a more specific resource or workflow that introduces the product and converts discovery traffic into measurable demand.

  • TOFU content educates people about a problem
  • The product is usually absent from the TOFU story
  • MOFU content is closer to conversion
  • Templates can connect informational posts to product demand
  • The two layers should form a deliberate path

think of tofu content as you were educating someone to solve a problem, but your product is usually not part of that story.

Kieran Flanagan · 27:00

Tofu, how people discover you, Mofu, how you convert them into demand for your product.

Kieran Flanagan · 28:00
#tofu#mofu#marketing funnel#content conversion
Explainer33:30

Turn Revenue Goals into a Content Production Model

Content investment should follow a model that starts with the desired revenue or traffic result and works backward into controllable inputs. Teams can estimate output per writer, divide effort between new and updated posts, cohort traffic performance, and calculate the staffing required to reach the target.

  • Start with a 12- or 24-month business outcome
  • Forecast the contribution expected from each channel
  • Measure how many posts each writer can produce
  • Separate new publishing from historical optimization
  • Cohort traffic generated by each writer over time
  • Translate the remaining growth gap into staffing needs

this all comes down to you need a growth model because you need to be able to start with the result you want.

Kieran Flanagan · 33:30

if you break things down to like the core inputs that make up the output, then that's how you can I think build, like how…

Kieran Flanagan · 36:30
#content operations#growth modeling#forecasting#seo

Tool· 2

Tool09:30

Use a Burst Test to Find a Paid Channel's Spending Limit

A burst test deliberately increases spending far above normal levels for a limited period. The resulting performance curve indicates where acquisition economics approach break-even and helps estimate how much time remains before the channel saturates.

  • Temporarily spend well above the normal budget
  • Plot spending against returns to reveal the saturation curve
  • Identify the point where ROAS approaches one-to-one
  • Use the estimated ceiling to set a diversification timeline
  • Expect temporary inefficiency during the test

a burst test is I overspend.

Kieran Flanagan · 10:00

The burst test is to give you the timeline that you need to diversify.

Kip Bodner · 12:30
#burst testing#paid media#roas#forecasting#channel saturation
Tool28:00

Keyword Tools Miss Demand Your Competitors and Product Can Reveal

Keyword platforms provide useful initial estimates but should not be treated as complete market maps. Competitor rankings and first-party product-usage data can uncover relevant topics that conventional keyword research would overlook.

  • Use a keyword platform for initial guidance
  • Compare topic-level rankings against leading competitors
  • Find relevant keywords competitors rank for and you do not
  • Mine product usage for emerging customer interests
  • Keep all inputs centered on customer behavior

Keyword tools are not always accurate, right? So do not rely only on keyword tools.

Kieran Flanagan · 28:00

what keywords are relevant to us that they rank for that we don't rank for

Kieran Flanagan · 29:00
#keyword research#competitive analysis#first-party data#seo tools

Takeaway· 2

Takeaway17:30

Traffic Is Worthless Without a Bridge to the Product

Educational content only contributes to growth when visitors receive a relevant next step toward the product. HubSpot used bespoke ebooks and templates matched to individual ranking posts, while Zapier connects automation education to immediately usable templates.

  • Match conversion assets to the visitor's current topic
  • Avoid promoting an unrelated company-priority campaign
  • Use templates or resources as a natural next step
  • Make the transition from education to product valuable
  • Optimize for customer conversion rather than traffic alone

what they have failed to understand is what is the bridge from that content into the product.

Kieran Flanagan · 17:30

it's not so much the content we published, it's that we figured out how to convert that content into customers at a higher rate than…

Kieran Flanagan · 17:30
#content conversion#lead generation#templates#product-led growth
Takeaway36:30

Prove Market-Channel Fit Before Scaling an Organic Channel

Early organic experimentation should establish that specific inputs repeatedly generate a useful result before aggressive hiring or outsourcing begins. Once the same tactics reliably work, scaling becomes a question of production capacity rather than channel validity.

  • Treat channel development similarly to product development
  • Avoid aggressive hiring before repeatability is demonstrated
  • Identify the few inputs that consistently drive results
  • Replicate tactics to confirm the outcome is dependable
  • Scale through employees, freelancers, or outsourcing only after validation

you have pre-market channel fit and you have post-market channel fit.

Kieran Flanagan · 36:30

When we replicate these tactics within those inputs, we see the same result each and every time.

Kieran Flanagan · 37:00
#market-channel fit#content scaling#experimentation#hiring