A few weeks ago, Andrew Warner of Mixergy interviewed me on a number of topics. We started by talking about launching a startup marketing strategy, got deep into the tactical process of earning an audience, and ended discussing some of the challenges I’ve had at Moz this year.
(Andrew via Extra Pack of Peanuts)
Andrew is one of the best interviewers I’ve ever encountered. He challenges me to follow-up, never shys away from tough questions, and digs in with a phenomenal amount of empathy for his audience. You can sense, when listening to Andrew interview someone, that he knows what his audience wants – he knows when they’re skeptical, when they want more detail, and when they want to move on. I get interviewed quite a bit, but no one is as good as Andrew, which is why I’m embedding the interview here on the blog.
Here’s some of the topics we discussed:
- Should you do marketing before you have product-marketing fit?
- Does SEO even matter anymore?
- Where should the marketing process begin?
- How can a marketer go about finding early adopters?
- What are the steps to get from first outreach to true marketing traction?
- How can marketers provide value to an audience with content/SEO/social?
- Is it possible to invest in software or tools as a marketing tactic without getting carried away with a side project?
- Is it OK to sacrifice some visibility to earn more engagement/signups/community (we talk specifically about Quora’s tradeoffs)?
- How is long tail SEO changing?
- Should marketers be using Google+ and how?
- Do I get frustrated by having to do all sorts of marketing work to stay connected to the field while also running a company?
- We talked about an example of when I felt very intimidated?
- Am I going to burn out?
- Why is it sometimes less fun to be at a bigger startup than a small one?
- What’s my dark secret to being so prolific?
The interview’s about an hour long, but it moves along fast, and Andrew never lets up on making me give really actionable, transparent stuff.
p.s. You should follow Andrew on Google+, and he really should post more 🙂