Watch the Episode 1 above hosted by Jonathan Katz and meet Peter Yeargin of Sage.
Peter Yeargin is a technology entrepreneur based in Philadelphia. He is the CEO and the Founder of a start-up business called Sage. Sage is an expert marketplace that is currently in the midst of a very big pivot to an SEO software as a service tool offering SEO optimization capability for content generation.
They had 25 paying subscribers in four weeks! How did they do it? Read on.
What is Sage’s tipping point to fully go through the pivot?
Peter shares about a blog launched back in February where instead of the usual blog content, they used a scientific approach behind the keywords in each blog entry. They measured it and after five months, the blogs were generating internet traffic.
At the end of August, they started talking to some potential customers of SEO optimization who easily signed up at rates around $10 to $50 a month.
What is the tech impact?
The shift needed a complete redesigning and rebuilding of their tech platform. There is a lot of manual work including testing, validating, and coding the new theories formed through new customers.
Customer Acquisition Strategies
Most of Sage’s current customers on SEO are startup founders, small and medium business owners, and a few brick-and-mortar business owners. Basically, anyone who has a website that needs organic inbound traffic is their target market.
Having an interesting go-to market and customer acquisition strategies is the key to having a really strong LTV (Customer Lifetime Value). That’s why Sage can offer an LTV:CAC ratio above the normal 3:1 ratio.
(Note: LTV:CAC ratio measures the relationship between the lifetime value of a customer, and the cost of acquiring that customer.)
In addition, they involved a lot of automation in their processes to remove the human element which at a high level, is a key underpinning.
Teaching and helping people grow
Sage is having great success with their new SEO offering but they are not going to stop being an expert marketplace. They are getting about 3,000 unique users a month and only a third of those are from paid advertising. That said, more than half of their users are from organic traffic and social media acquisition.
Sage existed with a purpose - to help people solve really hard problems - and they will continue to do so. Just like how a lot of people are struggling with SEO and generating inbound traffic, Sage is now offering them too.
Technologies Used To Help Sage Grow And Sustain Its Success
To monitor inbound organic traffic and to know what keywords you rank in.
Notion for team communication
An easy to use intuitive tool for your internal notes, tasks, and databases.
Zapier for automation
Integrates helpful applications like Zoom, Calendly, Google Workspace.
Other tech tools: Hootsuite, Hubspot, Mailchimp, and Mail Shake
Overcoming Tech Challenges
Picking your technology stack early on is always hard and no matter what you choose, you're going to have trials and disadvantages. It is very important to explore every aspect at the beginning and decide. It is very difficult to change technology stack once you have a platform built.
Want to get every detail and tips from Peter? Watch the video above!