The power of appropriate content is immeasurable in the world of digital marketing. With online advertising taking the high ground, every content creator should know about SEO. Moreover, freelancers also have a chance of making a good amount of money through content marketing. The craze for creating content has recently gained popularity which led to the establishment of many new companies. If one does proper market research, he or she can find limitless websites providing content marketing research. But, the transparency of a business procedure, better content matters more than advertising about the company. In the case of any new start-up, digital marketing plays a very crucial role but the quality of the product is more important to the customers. Buzzsumo is a start-up founded in 2013 to provide content marketing research. The fact that its annual revenue summed up to $2.5 million after the first year proves it became a huge success. The founders of the company are James Blackwell and Henley Wing.
About the Founders
James Blackwell went to the University of Plymouth for acquiring his bachelor’s degree in business studies. He graduated in the year 2009 and joined Proper Digital Ltd. as a Full Stack Web Developer in 2011. He continued his job till the end of 2013 and then focused entirely on founding Buzzsumo.
Both James and Henley started working for the project in 2013 but the first product launch took place in 2014. Currently, he is the VP Product of Brandwatch.
Henley to date is well-known as the co-founder of Buzzsumo.
The Early Days
Initially, both James and Henley were creating the first version of Buzzsumo in their spare time. Both of them had a job so they weren’t fully focused on building a new business. But, at the end of 2013, they resigned from their jobs and decided to launch the company in 2014. So, they officially founded Buzzsumo in 2014 with no investors.
Steve Rayson provided some initial funding and that is how they launched their Buzzsumo Pro product in late 2014. But, the rate of success was surprising as no one saw it coming.
Lessons Learnt
After one year of the official launch of its first product, Buzzsumo entertained more than 2,000 paid subscribers and over 160,000 freemium subscribers. The once spare time product development turned out to be a profitable start-up with annual revenue of $2.5 million.
Things started getting more serious after this. And, now the team was exclusively focused on creating engaging content for the audience. They realized the right way of pursuing a product launch is making a great quality product then going for marketing.
Strategies for Growth
One of the prime rules for maintaining a proper growth rate of the company is setting small goals. When a company is launched the monthly recurring revenue is expected to be higher because one is starting from zero. But, to maintain the same growth is harder. So, Buzzsumo fixed its target to maintain a monthly growth rate of over 10%.
The challenge becomes more difficult when the existing subscribers leave the company. This problem can only be eradicated if one provides fresh content daily. So, Buzzsumo always focuses on creating fresh catchy blogs on a day-to-day basis and keep the customers engaged.
Have Patience
The bitter truth about running a business is it depends on your luck to some extent. No business with content research tools can expect such revenue within a year. But, Buzzsumo proved that it is possible when you deal with the business in the right way. Or maybe they just got lucky.
But, once a big goal has been reached, you have to be patient because the weekly traffic takes a much longer time to grow and rise steadily. It is harder to drive new customers than selling your products to existing customers. By 2016, the top contents of Buzzsumo received more than 30,000 views and 2,000 shares. Buzzsumo by this team comprised a team of seven members.
Partnership
Within a couple of years of its establishment, Buzzsumo came into a joint venture with many companies. Some of them include Moz, Buffer, Wordstream, Canva, Uberflip, etc. Steve Rayson also received advice from some great businessmen as he was from a business background. Some of the supporters were from Eden Ventures, Brandwatch, etc. Over the past three years, Buzzsumo has grown rapidly and the main reason behind it is a very flexible team.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more