Making

by Sarah Bird, CEO | @SarahBird | moz.com

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know (And Some Stuff You Probably Didn’t)

Topics in this Presentation:

What exactly is “Moz?”

Sarah Bird: 1st Time…

Everything

Highs & Lows of Making Moz

The Company’s Future

Slides 6-20

Slides 21-32

Slide 33-120

Slides 121-136

These are so you can skip ahead when you’re browsing on your own or showing your friends ;-)

TransparentAuthenticGenerousFunEmpatheticExceptional

Hold me to it!

Moz Basics

On Advice

What is Moz exactly?

Moz Basics

$30 million/year in total revenue

140 talented team members

Moz BasicsMoz Basics

Over 25,000 paying customersFrom all over the globe.

Moz Basics

History of Fast Growth

Lots of Awards N Shit

Best Places to Work

Moz makes software that helpsmarketers

understand and improvetheir SEO, social media, links and brand

mentions.

It looks a little like this…

It looks a little like this…

This is our flagship product, “Moz Analytics”

Confession: I hate marketing.

Confession: I hate marketing.

Bad

MarketingBad

Obscures the truth

Stops me from doing what

I want to do

Floods my inboxes without my permission

Tries tell sell me on products

I’ll never, ever need

Doesn’t teach me anything

Interrupts me during dinner

Asks first

Pollutes the scenery

TransparentAuthenticGenerousFunEmpatheticExceptional

The best marketing is…

The best marketing

Educatesme

Is tailoredto my interests

Gives beforeIt gets

Is so good,I want to seeit again and

share itwith friends

Is the Scenery

(rather thanpollutes it)

Appearswhen I’m

looking for it

Is clearabout what it

can andcannot do

for me

Entertainsme

It’s not about the software.Moz empowers businesses to succeed bycreating their best,

most TAGFEE, marketing.

…Making the world better for ourselves and everyone.

I’m a First Time Everything

How Most People See Me

How I Used to Feel Most of the Time

I used to be a cleaning lady.

Chains!

College Librarian

Studied Literature & Philosophy

So… Law school then!

Met Rand and Geraldineat a party!

On Your First Day Lawyering

You Have To Lawyer!!!

Usually, I Make Decisions Like This..

This time, I Followed My Dreams…(literally)

Joined SEOmoz in 2007 To Work With Rand and Gillian

First Weeks At Moz Were Amazing.

Shit Got Real

No Effing IdeaWhat We Were Doing.

First Board Meeting

Those Were the Droids I Was Looking For…

Second Board MeetingDo-Over!

Dear God…

Have I convinced you we had no idea what we were doing yet?

Don’t worry. We figured it out eventually.

Lots of great stuff happened in the early days too…

Who Am I

2008: First Attempt At SEO Analytics

What if we could track all of your SEO metrics over time? And graph them for you?

Why “SEO Analytics” Failed

We used poorly understood third party data to make the product.

Why “SEO Analytics” Failed

You gotta validate that shit!

We used poorly understood third party data to make the product.

We decided to kill “SEO Analytics” 9 months after launch.

Dreaming Big in 2008

“Why is my competitor ranking there?”

I can see the keywords my competitors care about

I can see how bot friendly their site is.

But who is linking to them?

What if we could answer that?

Mission Accomplished: Linkscape Launched in 2008

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Today, we index 837+ billion links.

If you love data, set it free.

The Rise of APIs

We can build faster

We succeed when our

competitors succeed

Our metrics are the

standard

Make Money

Linkscape was the start of our product framework.

Product Success Pyramid™

Profit

Product Success Pyramid™

???

Profit

Product Success Pyramid™

???

Collect Underpants

Profit

Product Success Pyramid™

Data

Product Success Pyramid

We need lots of high quality data to help marketers.

Moz gets you ungettable data.

Insights

Data

Product Success Pyramid

Insights point out next actions and

save time.

Insights

Data

Product Success PyramidData, without

insights, induces anxiety

& creates an exclusive

club of data gurus and subject matter

experts.

Insights

Data

Packaging

Product Success PyramidOur customers are

not all the same.

Our technologies can be repackaged to deliver the best

experience and value for each persona.

Moz is and always wasa community first.

Rand blogged about learning SEO.

It was a community, not a business.

SEO = Search Engine Optimization

Moz = Sharing/Open Source [dmoz, Mozilla]

Ever wondered...

From 15,000 visits/month in 2007to 2,000,000/month today

Content is Co-Created and Curated

Practicing What We Preach

800k marketers come to Moz to support each other, and

try to become their best professional selves.

Come for the content.Stay for the Software.

The natives are digital.

We don’t have sales people.We have community managers.

Their job isn’t to sell.

It’s to foster an inclusive and generous environment to learn about marketing.

How Moz Makes Money

I hate asking for money.

I hate answering the phone.

Customers find our community through Google and social shares.

Customers find our community through Google and social shares.

(Add screen cap of the DA learn SEO page)

They enjoy our free content.

And hopefully sign up for a free trial.

85% of Moz free trials are fromorganic sources

The Moz subscriptiondefaults to monthly, and starts at $99.

Signing up is easy!

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) is on the low end

Much Lower Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Highest CLTV/CAC Ratio

We break even in 1.6 months

1 - 2 Innovation Punch

1 - 2 Innovation Punch

Float like a butterfly.

1 - 2 Innovation Punch

Sting like a bee.

1 - 2 Innovation Punch

Technology innovation!

1 - 2 Innovation Punch

Business model innovation!

The First Time I Thought About Quitting.

And Rand thought

about firing me.

Role Transitions

Lawsuit Episode

learning SEO.Even the little stuff was hard.

TAGFEEsaves the day!

The Second Time I Thought About Quitting

I can’t go on.

Fuck it.

That’s my job, yo.

Picard Wisdom

Dreaming Big in 2012-2013Again!

We should build anSEO Analytics product!

Ugh. We biffed it.

Triple Face PalmFor when the fail is so strong,

reality starts acting up.

It’s not all bad! There’s a lot going right too

The brand is strong.

Better results for less money

Launching New Products

There is a lot more to do.

Moz is on this crazy journey.

It’s kinda like Star Trek.

“…To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to

boldly go where no one has gone before.”

“ …To empower businesses to succeed by creating their best,

most TAGFEE, marketing.

Marketing is not getting any easier.

The web continues to fragment.

This is still Day One.

And about the Reality of SEO’s New

Risks Penalty?

Cannibalization?

Drop in Demand?

Technical Issue?

Competition?

New SERP Types?

Realities of New Marketing Risks

Realities of SEO’s New Risks

“I learn by going where I have to go.”- Theodore Roethke, The Waking

There is a lot of work left to do.

But hey, there’s a first time for everything.