ContactOut

Unpopular opinion: I’d Never Approve Your Marketing Budget… ?? If you’re just sticking to the conventional playbook. Last night, I attended an incredible panel discussion on Future-Proof SaaS Marketing with Igor Kranj?ec, Marko Pacar and Tanya Ariana Bendis absolutely nailing it. They broke down what it takes to build successful marketing strategies in today’s world. There was a lot of talk about SEO, traffic conversion, blogs, branding, etc. – all essential, of course. But honestly, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to modern marketing. One key takeaway from Igor Kranj?ec was the importance of inbound marketing, which I partially agree with. But here’s my take: We’re in the era of branding through disruption. ->Disruptive product ->Disruptive marketing ->Disruptive pricing While enterprise companies can afford to play it safe, if you’re a startup – go bold. ?? Build fast-paced campaigns. ?? Brand your CEO, not just your company. ??Shake up the market. Conventional won’t cut it anymore What are your thoughts? #MayTheQuotaBeWithYou ??P.S. Thanks for having us: Leonard Eldi? , Tina - Martina Horvat, Tomislav Dedi?, Emily Novi?, Anita Krtalic, SaaStanak, Omnisearch

What is Micromanagement? ->Here’s what some amazing individuals have shared on the topic! P.S. If you recognize yourself in these slides, feel free to reach out for guidance. ?? ( ????? ??)? #MayTheQuotaBeWithYou

I'm classy like that

You're Paying People To Watch Your Best Performers Leave. -> Or even better, they're pushing them towards leaving? Micromanagement might feel like maintaining control, but it often backfires. Here's why ?Kills Creativity: Constant oversight stifles innovation and problem-solving as employees fear making mistakes. ?Erodes Trust: It signals a lack of confidence in employees, leading to disengagement and low morale ?Reduces Growth: Prevents team members from developing decision-making and leadership skills, creating dependency

talk about bad luck ??

How do you get yourself a free seat? Just be genuinely hilarious! Will nailed it! Since things are as tighter than a frog's butt, we're giving him a free seat! Will, you just made my day – thank you!

it's not that complicated honestly

Backlinks are key to getting indexed by Google. But they aren't the only factor that matters. We often focus on backlinks, but there are several factors Google considers for indexing—user visits via Chrome, links in Gmail, and even Google Ads campaigns. While these may sound unproven or experimental, it's worth thinking creatively. Could running ads to boost Chrome user traffic help? What if you used platforms like Mechanical Turk or Microworkers to pay people small amounts to visit your site and add it to their favorites? These are ideas we haven’t fully tested at ContactOut, but it’s interesting to explore. In practice, we’ve stuck with the basics—links, sitemaps, and ensuring our pages provide value. But when you're aiming to get millions of pages indexed, experimenting outside the box could make the difference. What creative methods are you using to boost your indexing? #athena_vc

Most startups fail because they build before validating. But you don’t need to spend months building something nobody wants. The trick is to start by generating data and pages programmatically. Here's how we did it at ContactOut to create millions of pages that drive significant traffic and revenue. Step one: Get the data. We bought pre-scraped data sets from services like CoreSignal and Kaggle. These datasets contain LinkedIn profiles, Crunchbase company data, and even flight tracking information. You can purchase entire scrapes of popular directories for a few thousand dollars up to six figures, depending on the source. Next, we used this data to create programmatic SEO pages, targeting high-value keywords—like famous people or companies. For example, we built pages for profiles like Bill Gates and other notable names that attract lots of searches. These pages drive massive traffic without needing to manually curate each one. If you’re just starting, you can scrape data yourself or hire experts through services like Upwork. But for us, it was more time-effective to let a professional scraping company handle it. By leveraging available data, you can quickly test whether your product or idea resonates with your target audience—without wasting months on development. Keep your experiments fast, gather insights, and pivot based on what you learn. Ready to get started? The key is to stop overbuilding and start validating with real data. #athena_vc

Here's a little trick to get you a head start in Q4