Grammarly's calculated content strategy
The legal process is the least fun aspect of selling a startup—you’d probably rather be working on your business than meticulously gathering ancient docs. Time is everything, and you don’t want to waste it.
This is a great read on how to leverage your time during a sale. We’d focus on the points around setting expectations. The last thing you want is to get wrapped up in a lengthy process with no end in site, so set your term sheet’s termination date to exactly how long it should take to close. You can always extend it!
🖊️ Do you ever have to search embarrassing grammar questions like when to use “affect or effect”? If you said yes, you should be embarrassed, but at least you’re not alone! Thousands of people search this phrase every month, and it’s no coincidence that Grammarly’s featured snippet is the first answer you’ll see. Over the past 10 years, they’ve invested in a calculated content strategy centered around “topic clusters” which brings them over 10m organic visits each month. Topic clusters group content that answers granular questions (like “affect vs effect”) with similar issues, providing excellent internal linking structure. How do they know it’s working? 84% of their organic visits come from unbranded searches that don’t include their name at all.
🕹️ When we think of the tech giants of today, B2C businesses like Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook come to mind. Many young founders choose to launch B2C startups, having grown up seeing the success of these massive businesses. But Justin Kan, who founded and sold B2C gaming streaming platform Twitch, says there is objectively more risk in B2C. He believes to be successful in B2C you have to ride a macro trend, whereas B2B outcomes are more in your own control. B2C also requires massive adoption from a large audience and “going viral, which is easier said than done. B2B businesses have a more clear path of execution with known ways to execute on GTM.
🏁 Slack and Microsoft Teams’s race to be the number one workplace collaboration tool continues, and we can learn something from the clash of these titans. Slack initially shot out of the gate by riding the consumerization of IT movement, which enabled smaller development teams to choose their own tools (favoring sexy startups like Slack). But there may be a new shift around the corner. Microsoft Teams ended last year with 20m DAUs, (way more than Slack’s), signaling that the ease and convenience of bundled solutions like Teams may make “good enough products” win over the “best in breed,” like Slack.
🌟 It’s not hard to find literature on SaaS retention tactics, but once you’ve tried all of the basics, what’s next? These seven “non-retention” strategies from OpenView to reduce churn might be worth testing. One of the more interesting suggestions is the use of rewards and loyalty programs. These programs are typically associated with acquisition, but they also encourage habitual product use, making them fantastic for retention purposes. Another novel idea is reducing churn by encouraging cancelled customers to reactivate. The author suggests sending automated emails to recently churned customers, but if you’re really serious about reactivation (and the customer ARPU justifies it), we suggest ditching the automated templates personalizing each.
🥘 Since we started with the topic of saving time, let’s end with it. How many meetings have you left thinking “well that was a waste of my day”? Steven Rogelberg was so fed up with these kinds of meetings he wrote an entire book on how you can make them more productive. One of the most common complaints people have about meetings is attendees showing up late. To make sure you don’t contribute to the problem, Rogelberg suggests shortening meetings to 25 or 55 minute increments to provide a gap between back to backs. If you’re running over more than that, schedule a follow up. He also advises to keep meetings as small as possible—too many cooks in the kitchen will distract from the topic and waste time.