Kaizen’s Founder and CEO answers the internet’s questions in Growth Hacker AMA

Ah, the internet. So good at finding us answers to questions we didn’t know we’d ever have to ask.

And so is Pete Reis-Campbell, CEO and founder of Kaizen. In fact, he is regularly likened to the internet due to his quick response time and use of keywords.

So I decided to put his internet-like capabilities to the test, and entered him for Growth Hacker’s series of AMAs, where he was asked questions on a range of marketing, SEO and entrepreneurship aspects. Here’s a roundup of some of the best questions and Pete’s answers:

‘Could you please talk a little bit about your performance-led approach to PR?’

The challenge with Digital PR is that it’s a creative skill and it’s very rare you stumble upon an original idea, so the benchmark is set high. Our approach is all about anticipating failure in advance and putting in technology or processes to avoid it. So for example, we will do things like:

• Come up with 100 ideas and pitch our 3-5 strongest ones based on a ‘golden rules‘ checklist criteria we’ve made after launching 800+ campaigns. For example, one rule is if the goal is link building, the idea can’t just be UK specific as it limits the pool of journalists we can pitch to.
• We create multiple design assets for each content piece as every journalist’s tastes differ. The Telegraph tends to ask us for a picture gallery, rather than a long infographic. Daily Mail automatically no-follows in-text links so it’s better to pitch them an interactive tool they can embed.
• We use an A/B testing approach in combination with Sales CRM software (YesWare) when doing our outreach to monitor open, click, reply % rates. We’ll review the data and ditch an A/B outreach angle or iterate upon it
• We try to be transparent. We did a study of 2,000 pieces of content recently to get a real sense on what types of PR work best and the quantity/quality coverage you can expect.

‘Which SEO tools are you using to monitor your site?’

We tend to use specialist tools to monitor different elements of SEO performance. Our stack includes

• AWRCloud (rank tracking)
• Screaming Frog (technical SEO audits)
• AHREFS (backlink tracking, content discovery, keyword research)
• Vuelio (for building lists of journalists for link building)
• Statista (data + research)
• Buzzstream (outreach management)
• Buzzsumo (content discovery)

We’re also about to launch in ALPHA our own link building reporting software – CoverageTracker.

‘In your opinion, what are the most efficient strategies for acquiring backlinks?’

My preferred approach is the least efficient, but the highest quality way – Digital PR! I’ve spent the past 5 years launching 800+ pieces of data and research we’ll do in-house about a certain buzzworthy topic, creating assets to showcase it (such as an infographic or video) and then pitching it to Journalists. This presentation outlines the most basic process to follow: https://www.slideshare.net/kaizensearch/how-learning-pr-tactics-made-me-awesome-at-content-marketing-47228608.

Before getting into Digital PR, like most people in the industry I was taught that purchasing links is the only way but you’re just creating poor quality content for the web that runs the risk of damaging somebodies business for short-term results.

‘What tips would you give to a website that is starting now – from scratch – and wants to be competitive in SEO terms?’

I think the best approach when you launch is to pick a less competitive, but high margin part of your business and zoom in on ranking for that first. Build a list of keywords around that, and then shorten the list to be focused on terms which are the most likely to convert immediately – the money terms.

a) keyword research on niche, low competition terms that are most likely to convert
b) create landing pages for them, audit your competitors that rank already to get a sense of the benchmark you need to reach
c) think about how you can go a step further – it’s astounding to me the lack of SMEs still that don’t offer online booking, pricing upfront or are transparent. Build features or content that answers the most common customer enquiries.

You can find all the Q&A here: https://growthhackers.com/amas/ama-with-pete-reis-campbell-ceo-founder-of-kaizen#post-comments-249631

Do you have a question for Pete? Get in touch!