A couple of days ago, a guy wrote to me in a personal message asking for advice. He said that he had assembled a team of developers, and they were all ready to make websites. But, there was a question about finding clients that needed to be resolved before starting a business. It’s stupid to believe that it’s enough to start a business and clients will follow.

Do you need a sales manager for a web studio?

I did not ask him about the work experience of the team members, about the portfolio and other things to which the answer is obvious. I wondered what kind of specialists he had assembled and who he was going to work with. As it turned out, the guy in his team has 2 layout designers, one designer, several copywriters (this number always alarms me), a specialist in setting up targeted advertising, an SEO specialist and a project manager. He himself is involved in organizing the process. Who do you think is missing here?

But the team is missing a person who will sell services. These guys are artisans. I hope they do a good job, but you have to be able to sell it. And for this, the team simply needs a sales manager. And if there is no such thing, the search for a client often falls on the shoulders of the organizer of the entire party.

I will try to talk about existing channels for attracting clients for a web studio, and will show several creative approaches that we have personally tested.

Where and how to find clients for a start-up web studio

1. Word of mouth

There is no more loyal and ardent client than one who came on the recommendation of friends (acquaintances, partners, etc.). Just don't lose their trust! To do this, always work for results and think about the future, and not about how to make money today.

One of the best options for spreading your reputation through word of mouth is recommending your client to their friends or partners. Clients will only recommend you if they themselves are satisfied with the cooperation. Accordingly, concluding a new deal in this case will be much easier.

2. Social activity: forums, chats, communities

Participating in discussions on forums, communities, chats, etc. helps increase your recognition as a developer or your brand. Someone will read the comment and move on, someone will discuss with you, and someone will write in a personal message and order a service.

Also, if you competently influence the discussion, you will show your professionalism, increasing interest in yourself.

I had a case when I was just starting to communicate on forums. I came across a request from one travel company to evaluate their website and make suggestions for improving it.

I wrote down all the ideas and thoughts. What I said was far from true, and some of the statements can be disputed. But the result is obvious. The company was interested in my comment, after which we made a good deal.

3. Thematic webinars, conferences and events

This method allows you to express yourself in the professional market. Share with colleagues, make connections, or speak at a conference for entrepreneurs to gather contacts of potential clients.

To obtain the expected result, it is necessary to be as precise as possible. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to correctly draw up her portrait. And only then prepare and send out invitations to the event.

There are plenty of platforms for online events. Example from Youtube

4. Studio blog

A great tool that makes you recognizable, shows your expertise and, of course, sells. One of our subscribers read a case study on website promotion on our blog and after a couple of days became our client.

‒ What should a studio blog be like?

‒ Ideal in terms of content usefulness!

- It needs to be constantly developed.

A blog needs to provide value to readers. Only in this case will they subscribe to you, add some pages to bookmarks and come back for more. You will receive your own database of email addresses, which you can use in the future to organize mailings about promotions, unique offers, etc.

Stop! There has already been talk about another channel for attracting clients.

5. Email marketing and newsletters

They say email is dying... Perhaps in the future this may become true, but not now. Sending out promotional offers also bears fruit. It is important to correctly compose a commercial offer and the subject line of the letter in order to increase the percentage of its reading.

Don't forget about your old clients! They are still alive! :)

6. Contextual advertising and targeting

This is the standard way to find clients online. The first thing that comes to mind after creating a website is .

Clients from search come interested. All that remains is to offer them something radically new. You have to be different from other studios. Breaking templates, non-standard presentation, that is, everything that catches your eye works well.

If you make a typical landing page and run advertising on it, the visitor will scroll through the site automatically without noticing either your experience or your achievements. He simply seeks only what excites him the most.

Draw the visitor's attention to your offer and he will remember you much better. This can have a positive impact at the time of making a decision to cooperate with you.

7. Freelance exchanges

I think this channel is more suitable for a beginner freelancer and artisan. Here he can develop a portfolio, reviews and grow to a more serious level. In addition, on exchanges, freelancers learn to conduct a dialogue with a potential customer, estimate the amount of work, adequately assess the cost of services, etc.

Many freelance exchanges protect your transactions, which is also very important for both the client and the developer.

Among the most popular I can mention:

• Weblancer;
• Freelancehunt;
• Kwork;
• Workzilla.

There are others who are worthy, but we are talking about what we have tried ourselves.

8. Registrars of individual entrepreneurs and LLCs

There are organizations that provide assistance in registering new LLCs and individual entrepreneurs. New entrepreneurs turn to them for help. One might assume that they need a website.

Visit several of these companies and agree with them that they will recommend you to new entrepreneurs for a certain percentage of the transaction amount.

9. Partnership

Partnerships with business incubators work great. Today there are quite a lot of incubators such as “Make Money”, “Business Youth”, “Genius marketing” and others, less known, but also more accessible. Their graduates, who have just received the “take and do” attitude, are ready to act and there is a high probability that they will order from you. After all, the mentors themselves recommend you.

Be careful when collaborating with students. Many of them are now looking for part-time work and are ready to perform different tasks. Are you ready for this person to represent your studio among potential clients?

10. Walking tour of the offices

It is believed that a personal meeting with a potential client provides more opportunities to present your service in full color. Indeed, many sales managers prefer a personal meeting and sell successfully.

But such an approach may turn out to be not only wrong, but even impolite. Incorrect, because the decision maker is often absent from the workplace, so you waste a lot of time. And your appearance at a third-party company without prior agreement and without warning will be considered impolite.

To successfully reach clients, it is good to use cold calls first. Otherwise, you have to be a unique salesperson to sell straight away like that.

11. Cold calling

This customer acquisition channel remains one of the most effective. Thanks to the proper organization of the sales process, every day managers make great deals with large companies.

The main thing in cold sales is experienced employees who work for results. How to become like this? There is a lot of educational information. I am ready to recommend you the book “45 Tattoos Sold” by Maxim Batyrev. In it you will find at least 45 ways to sell your services, spending less effort and nerves on it. This book teaches you how to overcome customer objections, make them offers you can't refuse, and issue invoices for payment.

12. Office flyers

Unlike a personal visit to a company’s office, delivering leaflets is a completely harmless event. Leaving a leaflet in the office should attract attention. Therefore, the designer should work on it. The one who opens it must make sure that he needs your services. Even if he thought differently before that!

Where web studios find clients - 12 channels for attracting clients

Nowadays, many people want to become independent businessmen, for example, to promote their web studio, using the almost limitless possibilities of the global Internet. Indeed, sitting at home at a computer, it is possible not only to earn your living, but also to found an entire corporation. Infosphere specialists - programmers, designers, system developers and copywriters - are especially lucky in this regard.
If you have a great desire to start an Internet business, but you don’t have the skills and resources to participate in the next financial pyramid or stock market games, you can open .

One of the successful business models of Internet entrepreneurship is the opening and promotion of a web studio on the Internet.

By recruiting a team of remote employees and providing them with orders, you can receive a stable income and develop internet advertising agency to the limits of your imagination and energy. If necessary, you can sell your established business and get an excellent addition to your capital.

First, you need to seriously think about what exactly you can offer to future clients. What skills and abilities should a web development studio have as a player in the market for creating and promoting websites? Let's denote the basic ones:

• Firstly, the ability to create websites on different engines (ideally several), advise the customer on CMS (content management system) management, i.e. updating information on the website if necessary.
• Secondly, to provide web design services that go hand in hand with the creation of websites - this is drawing beautiful templates, backgrounds, animated banners, editing presentations and videos, and preparing pdf documents.
• Thirdly, the client needs to create comfortable conditions for doing business using the created website, and agree on further technical support.

The need for a comprehensive set of services is precisely what drives the demand for cooperation with web studios on the part of companies. After all, single freelancers are often unable to solve complex problems.

Although you can choose a narrower specialization, you do not cover the entire range of services in the internet marketing niche. At first, without experience, it is even better to master one service qualitatively and then gradually expand your offerings.

What business niches could there be for a web studio:

• Website development. From inexpensive business card sites to landing pages and luxury projects with chic graphics
• Website promotion. Promotion most often involves the work of a programmer on the initial settings of the site, and then work on filling the site with articles for key queries, SEO optimization on the site and purchasing links
• Internet advertising. You can hire a specialist to set up contextual advertising in Yandex or Google
• WEB-Design. Specializing in design work, you can cover the spectrum from business cards to banners and websites.
• Copywriting. Writing selling texts and simple articles for website promotion is a constant urgent need for business.
• SMM Agency. Probably the most difficult business. Here, not all professional agencies are able to provide normal service. Promoting a business on social networks is a difficult process to predict and requires experience and knowledge of psychology.

How to promote a web studio and find clients for online advertising

It is not difficult to assemble a team that will fulfill customer orders - numerous freelance exchanges will come to the rescue, where many programmers, web developers, and specialists in various fields communicate and exchange experiences in anticipation of clients. The studio owner can only conduct a thorough selection of candidates - a portfolio and reviews of former customers will help here.

It is advisable to register a web studio as a legal entity as soon as possible - you can start with the individual entrepreneur format, in which case taxes are paid according to a simplified scheme. The best option is a limited liability company (LLC), which must be registered when expanding the business (but here you will need co-founders). Clients trust a serious organization with documents more.

Most often, the first clients can be found among acquaintances and friends. At an inexpensive price (you are not yet confident in your team) you can get a client and evaluate your results. If a studio has shown itself well, then it is usually recommended to friends and partners. This is how a client base is formed - the most valuable thing in the arsenal of any businessman.

For the prosperity and stable operation of a newly founded company, it is important to think through the content of the business plan and carry out competent planning, as well as regular promotion of your own website using Internet technologies.

BY THE WAY, WE ARE! WITH RESULTS GUARANTEED..>>

So what are the options?

• Direct promotion. That is, so that you can be found in Yandex search. Here you will have to hire an SEO specialist, as well as an Internet marketer and a specialist in contextual advertising.

• Post information about yourself everywhere, where possible: on Yandex and Google maps, on portals and forums, message boards and website directories in your region.
• Attract promoters for a percentage from attracted clients
• Negotiate with online business publications so that they posted a PR article about your company on their resource
• Look for business groups on social networks and participate in discussions, show your expert status
• Create quality content— write reviews of your successes, create videos and post them on the Internet

Perhaps complete success will not come immediately, but if you don’t make mistakes, deceive clients and hire lazy people, then your web studio will develop and generate income!

Who among us would not like to become the owner of a profitable business? Dreams of a leather chair and running a company can be realized, you just need to choose a relevant idea.


In the age of information technology, it makes sense to use the Internet. Various services can be provided via the Internet, including website creation.

How to open a web studio? The services of such companies are in demand; now people often think about opening their own websites. Moreover, resources are created to start a business or find clients. The Internet has long become a separate direction in which the modern generation is delving into.

Is it profitable to open a web studio?

Almost any type of business becomes profitable if it is launched by a competent entrepreneur. First of all, you need to think about the services provided.

The larger the assortment, the better. Clients can be interested not only in turnkey website development; there are other areas:

• development and finalization of design;
• sale of ready-made templates;
• website layout;
• creating quality content;
• setting up advertising campaigns;
• assistance in website optimization;
• comprehensive website promotion.

You can come up with many other additional services, identifying competitors, holding promotions, adding affiliate programs and much more.

Stages of opening a web studio

It is much easier to act according to a planned plan, so it needs to be drawn up in advance.

This is not about a business plan for a web studio, but about your actions. You need to think through every step on the way to opening such a company:

1. Start by creating a list of services provided. Determine their approximate cost, look at competitors.
2. Official registration is required, it is better to open an individual entrepreneur. Why is this so important? Because serious clients do not work with individuals.
3. Without a team of professionals, it will not be possible to provide services. There must also be an accountant.
4. You need to open an account in a bank for a legal entity. Also in different payment systems to accept electronic payments.
5. Services must be provided under a contract, and it is better to create one in advance. Make templates for different types of orders.
6. Think over all the technical components, where domains will be registered, what kind of hosting or even a dedicated server will be used.
7. A web studio simply will not be able to attract clients if the company does not have its own, high-quality, well-promoted and optimized website.
8. Technical support must be arranged in advance. Workers can be found on exchanges, for example, on.
9. The first orders are the hardest to get, so it’s worth lowering your prices and working just for reviews first.
10. Then you need to make every effort to promote, organize the work process, process orders, and so on.

This small plan will help you take your first steps, but it is not complete. In the process of opening a web studio from scratch, there are still many different difficulties ahead. Look for better solutions to overcome barriers.

Web studio business plan

The drafting of this document may vary depending on your goals. If you plan to attract investors, you will need to make a detailed business plan. If it is compiled for yourself, it will also work.

The main thing is that it reflects the most important points:

• Company name;
• format of activity (individual entrepreneur, JSC);
• legal address;
• list of founders;
• date of creation of the company;
• form of management;
• field of activity (IT technology);
• cost of services;
• expenses and authorized capital;
• detailed list of services;
• number of employees on staff;
• project development plan;
• list of bugs to be corrected;
• description of the procedure for transferring finished work;
• customer sources;
• risks and competition;
• business profitability (in-depth calculations of income and expenses).

Decide for yourself how extensive the business plan is to draw up. Is it needed at all? Of course, since at this stage all the important points are thought through and ways to solve possible problems are found.

How to promote a web studio?

Any type of business requires development. If you don’t make an effort, you may not even find your first clients. If you are planning to open a web studio, you must understand how advertising for such projects works.

Many people start a business, especially if it is related to development, already having some kind of portfolio and current projects for which there is work and without forming a legal entity. It happens that someone has an excellent base of contacts, in the person of acquaintances or from a previous job, someone is even more lucky and the doors of some offices open for him when he calls, but there are other cases where there will be absolutely no advertising. impossible to make a start.

I had just that case...I was 20 years old, I had no projects, no necessary contacts, much less any experience, including in web development. I mastered the computer at the age of 18, and that was 2 years of working with hardware and networks. With only desire and a small amount of savings, I started work. At the same time, I quickly went into a financial disadvantage, since I could not use my labor to start and complete the first orders. There was a classic scheme - first SRL registration, then the office, equipment, employee search, etc.

Naturally, there was no management experience, much less promotion. There were very good assistants and logic. Then, in a logical way, I made my first “media plan”, guided by the principle that the web studio’s customers are not on the Internet, but offline. It so happened that my reasoning was justified and very soon we began to receive our first orders.

Web studio promotion

If today I were writing a plan for promoting a web studio, this would be the order in which the priorities for promotion would be:

It’s not clear how to earn recommendations from scratch. But for the most part, web studios are opened by people from the industry who already have work experience and some contacts and recommendations. This is how it snowballs, with each project this effect will grow. For this you need . If you have excellent social connections and the right contacts, this will be a big plus, but this does not negate the condition that in order to be recommended you must good, work hard and hard.

2. Tenders

Monitoring and participating in tenders can add a lot of experience, large clients and projects to the portfolio. We need to do this not just anyhow, but seriously monitor and carefully think through tender applications. Well, get acquainted with all the intricacies of tenders.

We only participated in tenders a couple of times and even unexpectedly won once, but participating in tenders was just for fun, we wanted to make sure that not everything was so bad and that we could actually win the tender. But in my value judgment, in order to receive tender orders on the flow, you need to give up conversations with an inner sense of justice and honesty, and catch a wave of orders.

3. Portfolio/Developed sites

You don’t even need to mention the portfolio; this is the first thing that interests customers. But the developed sites, and especially if you good, worked hard and hard can work great for you. Client sites usually receive good traffic and are often contacted by potential clients who like some of your work. Therefore, the more projects developed and the more popular they are on the Internet, the greater the chance of converting this traffic into new sites.

The portfolio is the studio website itself. My opinion is that it should not show the full extent of the web studio’s knowledge in web development and be an example of current technologies, no matter how strange it may seem. It should be simple and convenient for potential clients, the most important thing is the texts, a lot depends on them on the website of the web studio, even if it is not indicative in comparison with competitors who put their whole soul and modern technologies into the site.

4. Google

Just as from the point of view of the web studio, the customer is offline, from the point of view of the customer, the web studio is online. This one of the easiest ways to find a web studio is popular. You need to be in the TOP5, better yet in the TOP1, and not let your portfolio down - for most visitors to a web studio’s website, this is the second page after the main (or target) page.

5. External activities

I don’t think that this activity will bring more clients than advertising, but it has some kind of social impact. We don’t have many thematic events, but you need to participate in them, as well as be active on the network, for example, a blog with useful tips, etc.

And already my experience, how it turned out.

- Cold calls

I didn’t even know the term “cold calling” at that time. I made the first calls myself so that I could clearly set the task for the sales manager (who at that time also had no work experience) and give specific recommendations.

Every day there are at least 50 calls, from which almost every day there were some kind of meetings or negotiations. Thus, we called about 3,000 companies from the database we collected from yp.md and allmoldova.com and received about 10 orders using this promotion method. Monstrously low CTR :). But the experience was worth it! Some companies from this base returned to us after 1-1.5 years (!), there were very few of them, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Interesting experience. It was before the New Year holidays, when the shopping centers are crowded with people looking for gifts for the New Year. This advertising is completely inexpensive and completely ineffective for a web studio)).

True, there was not a single order or call from her. But oddly enough, many people heard it, firstly, it was noticed by my friends, who once again got it into their heads that I started working on websites, and secondly, our current clients noticed it. Although I myself tried to listen while walking around the shopping center to my advertisement and it was very hard to hear.

- Leaflets

In total we had 3 options for leaflets. The first leaflet was the most effective. The leaflets were distributed through the Office newspaper, i.e. they came directly to company offices and at several exhibitions at Moldexpo.

From the first leaflet we received quite a lot of orders; in just a week, the amount of advances received far exceeded the money spent on their distribution and printing. Subsequently, the effectiveness was much lower, since the leaflet was distributed through the same sources.

The email newsletter brought in a significant number of orders. Moreover, these were not the smallest contracts, but mostly medium and large orders, including those with long-term cooperation. Several times, having used this method of promotion, I stopped it completely and forever, I already wrote about this in the material "". This is the easiest way to get new orders and at the same time kill the company's image.

Radio advertising was an addition to all promotional methods, without any special expectations. She helped create the image that we were not only sending out flyers, soliciting orders through cold calling and email campaigns, but that we were also open to other advertising activities. The commercial influenced contracts already signed, those who were reached by this commercial from the past or current clients, against the background of this advertising, they ordered improvements to projects, promotion on the Internet, etc.

- Direct marketing

Of all the methods, I thought this was the most effective, because if you organize everything well, you can send a letter, fax or call directly to the person making the decision in the company about website development. But this method turned out to be the least effective - not a single order and the development of one contact takes a lot of time.

Not everyone keeps information about themselves and their contacts in the public domain, at least that’s what they think, and when you have studied a potential client and approach him with some kind of commercial offer tailored specifically to him, this greatly annoys such a client . Although he understands that all the information is “in the air”, and he is still not on a desert island and shines everywhere, since these are the rules of business... But when you call him and know everything about him, and he hears about you for the first time, It can sometimes be difficult to break through prejudice.

Of course, with personal connections or at least a small acquaintance, I think it works, but alas, I did not have such contacts. Perhaps there was little experience and insufficient qualifications for direct marketing, because we did everything based on logic and intuition, and only later found out that it was “direct marketing”.

- YellowPages

I don't know if this will work for a web studio in 2013. But in 2008 and 2009, we had orders from this directory. I've talked to clients who came from YellowPages and that's what they said. I decided to make a website, opened the directory, saw your phone number there in a beautiful frame and ordered a website. It’s strange, I would never buy any service or product, but someone acts this way.

Then came the next period:

Recommendations, Google and portfolio. There was simply no need to conduct advertising campaigns; in the first year we were able to make about 100 projects that came to us from the above advertising, and then clients simply came to us through recommendations, through links on the sites we made, or found them on Google and contacted us.

Other texts on this topic.

A year and a half ago (March 2017), I began to actively implement a content marketing strategy to promote a web studio. The results of long and painstaking work will be described in the post. I will confirm each of my statements, each number with screenshots from Yandex.Metrica and other website monitoring systems. I will talk about the content marketing methods that I used, show examples of articles that collected the most traffic and brought the most clients. The case will be detailed, visual and interesting.

The benefits of content marketing or why they abandoned links

We (me and the studio owner Igor Filipenko) decided to promote the site with content for several reasons:

The web112 website is the basis for implementing our content marketing strategy

Here I would like to immediately note that one detailed case study on promoting web112.biz using content has already been published. I wrote it too. Only it was written from the point of view of an employee (or rather a partner) of a web studio and for the web studio’s blog. This case is different. It is written for the blog of a specialist who primarily focuses on optimized content. Here I highlight other points. Plus, there is information here about how the implementation of our strategy continued after November 2017 (when the first case was published).

However, some of the data in these two posts coincides (for example, information about the technical condition of the web112.biz site, which will be located just below). If you have read the first case (and I highly recommend reading it), keep in mind that there is not much repetition. This page has about 90% different information. The data here is more recent, covers a larger period of time and the main emphasis is placed on other points.

So the web112 studio website:

1. Adequate mobile layout (from the point of view of Google, Yandex and the user)
2. No technical errors
3. Good download speed
4. Secure HTTPS protocol
5. Pages describing services are beautifully designed as landing pages

And now the important question...

Would we have achieved the results that will be discussed later in the article if the site had not been optimized from a technical point of view?

I'm sure not. It is possible to optimize an information article on a crooked website (I myself proved this in an article about). But the results are much more noticeable if the site meets all the requirements of search engines.

What problems was content marketing supposed to solve?

The main task is only one - increasing the number of clients of the web studio.

I note that a potential client of Web112 is a business owner (often a large one). For this reason, our content marketing was aimed primarily at the b2b segment. Longreads and short texts were supposed to attract attention and convince people who own factories and large trading companies. Many of these businessmen have already contacted the developers and were dissatisfied with the results. They know what they want and understand the difference between a site built on a website builder and a large multifunctional portal.

The content we planned to create had to influence the studio's orders:

• Directly - a representative of the target audience gets to the site from an organic search, reads the post and immediately places an order using the form at the bottom of the page.
• Indirectly – articles attract traffic for information queries, earn the trust of search engines, which leads to an increase in positions for commercial queries. Another option: a potential client follows a link from an informational article to a landing page with a description of the service and only then makes an order.

At the same time, it is important to comply with the condition - content marketing pays off the funds invested in it. Orders are good. But if there are very few of them (and there are a lot of articles), the strategy needs to be changed.

What has been done in a year and a half of work on promoting the web studio website with articles?

Volume of content

The first article was published on March 3, 2017, the last one at the moment is on July 16, 2018. Over the entire period of time, I personally wrote 32 longreads with a total volume of 357,860 characters without spaces. Yes, I did. When I was preparing to write the case, I reviewed all the blog posts and copied all my articles into a separate file (not all blog posts are my work; some of the content was created by studio head Igor Filipenko).

Here I want to point out this. Today everyone is involved in internet marketing. Literally everything. Some people work all day, some create “unique content that sells” when they have free time in the office at their main job, others think that “I can do copywriting until I find something normal.” All these people who treat content marketing the same way as banal handing out leaflets on the street (you don’t have to think much, but they pay) are not capable of leading long-term projects. They cannot and do not want to work for a long time, constantly, continuously, study someone else’s business for a year and a half and care primarily about its promotion, and not about their own earnings.

I believe that 18 months of work on one website and almost 360 thousand characters for one client are good indicators that demonstrate the difference between those who just temporarily earn money and real specialists who have been promoting on the Internet for years, take care of their reputation and know how to achieve results.

What other content marketing work have I done?

• I thought through and created internal linking.
• I took all the screenshots and selected pictures for the articles. I didn’t count the number of all the pictures, but I can say that in one post about landing pages there are as many as 29 illustrations (of which 2 are GIF animations that I created myself).
• Some articles were published by the content manager, but most of the posts were posted on the site by me. The content manager might have missed something (a picture or a link). I wanted everything to be exactly as I intended. 100% of the pictures and links that I prepared for a particular article must be on the site.
• I also put links on sites for which I wrote guest posts or simply used them for communication. Please note that I was not paid for the links. I installed them not because I am a saint, but because I have an ordinary human desire to see the results of my work. The higher these results, the more enjoyable it is. It is important that I can demonstrate the effectiveness of my links (screenshot below). I doubt they brought in a single studio client (although anything is possible). In this case, it is not the clients that are important, but the bonus to behavioral factors. It is also important that the links will remain on these sites for a very long time (and all the time they will bring targeted traffic to the studio’s website). Please note: the most grateful readers came from Medium.com.

The most important part of the case: content review

How the articles were written and what results they brought

You can write a separate article about the work on almost every post for web112: tell how the topic was chosen, how the semantics were collected, where the data came from, how the text was optimized, etc. I spent 2 or more days writing, designing and publishing some longreads.

Once again, I can and want to recommend a case that I published on web112.biz - there is a fairly detailed description of working on the most popular posts.

Here I want to focus on relatively recent longreads that have already shown good results.

Article length: 9970 characters without spaces.

Number of illustrations: 14

Number of keywords for which the post is optimized: 17 (below are some of them)

This and other illustrations with a lot of data are clickable. Click to take a closer look.

As you can see, I collected the keys using SerpStat. For 2 years now this has been the most convenient SEO tool for me.

I looked for materials for the article on CIS and foreign resources. I saved a file in Word with the main facts and theses on the topic, which I copied from various sources because I considered them important to one degree or another. This file is 5 pages and 8 thousand characters. I didn’t use all the information from there, but a lot of it was useful.

I will note a few of the most important sources with useful facts and figures:

1. A Different Kind of SEO: 5 Big Challenges One Niche Faces in Google with moz.com
2. Analytical review of the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems “The legal services market in Russia: what statistics say” (this is not an article, but a pdf report that can be found in the public domain)
3. Analysis: which website is better for lawyers and law firms to open? from lextext.ru

Please note that among the keys that made it to the TOP there are such important ones as “development of a legal website” and “creation of a website for a lawyer.”

Above is a screenshot of the results for the Moscow region.

Article length: 14325 characters without spaces.

Number of illustrations: 12

Number of keywords for which the post is optimized: 9

Some of the requests that brought (and still bring) potential clients to the web studio’s website can be seen below.

Important details for creating a longread:

1. In preparation for writing this article, I created a simple WordPress site on a subdomain of one of my resources. I did this in order to provide the post with the latest and most relevant tips and screenshots. WordPress is a very convenient content management system for creating simple using it takes no more than an hour to complete a website. However, I don't know many authors who can do and do what they write about. A good, thoughtful rewrite of other people’s instructions – yes. Writing a detailed manual from scratch, based solely on your own experience - in 99 cases out of 100, NO. I am very glad that readers of the Web112 blog receive not bare theory, but proven, up-to-date advice from a practitioner.
2. In the meta tags and the text of this article itself, I used a deadly SEO weapon - the date. I have spoken about this more than once in my posts and speeches– in a huge number of niches, date is a simple but effective way to collect additional traffic.

Volume: 12846 characters without spaces

Number of illustrations: 16 (including 2 GIF animations, which I also created to better demonstrate the advantages of certain sites - screenshots were not enough).

Number of keywords for which the post is optimized: 15

Some of the requests that brought (and still bring) potential clients to the web studio’s website can be seen below.

Important nuance! Below you see beautiful (with a bulleted list and a picture) snippets in Yandex results with links to the post in question. I assure you: this is not an accident. How did I do this? Everything is simple there. You have a link to the article: read, study, I think you will understand.

A few other useful facts about working on content

Last year (2017), the article about popular CMSs collected the most traffic. This was not least due to the presence of a date in the text and meta tags. I wanted the longread to continue to attract readers in 2018, some of whom would convert into clients. To do this, I changed the date in the meta tags and added an additional block where I talked about the latest data about content management systems. Thus, I not only adjusted to the search engines, but also to the users (I really gave them information from 2018).

I did the same with the article about the structure of a selling landing page (changed the dates and added a fresh, relevant block). What did this lead to? You will find out very soon.

Results of promoting a web studio using content marketing

Sales

The main result is that we (I remind you that the merit is not only mine, but also the head of the studio, who worked closely with me all this time) achieved our goal. There were more clients, and their orders recouped the investment in content approximately several times over. Why approximately?

Because it is not always possible to say exactly what brought the client to the site and what motivated him to place an order. Sometimes this is obvious because the client himself reports it:

Sometimes you can guess by indirect signs. We open Yandex.Metrica, we see that someone visited the site using the request “website development for a lawyer” and stayed there for 30 minutes. On the same day, a call comes in: a businessman wants a cool resource for his law firm.

In any case, if we take into account only the orders of those clients who directly said that they contacted the studio because they liked this or that article, it turns out that content marketing brought orders worth more than 800 thousand rubles.

There are two important nuances here.

1. The case, which was published on web112.biz, deals with orders worth 200 thousand rubles. At the time of publication of that case, the amount was exactly that. You understand that a lot of time has passed since then, during which the content was useful.
2. An order is not pure profit. It cannot be said that content marketing brought the studio 800 thousand in income. Net profit is significantly lower.

Traffic and other SEO results

That's how I grew up search traffic since I started working:

You can double-check with one of dozens of SEO tools. Unlike some, I do not hide the name of the site I worked on, because of a contract, or because of competitors, or because (insert a plausible excuse that allows you to PR without any risks). Although I understand that I probably made mistakes for which they will be criticized.

Here's how much targeted traffic the 5 most popular posts at the moment brought:

In first place is an article about CMS (which means that the trick with “refreshing posts” worked).

In third place is an article about the structure of a selling landing page (which once again means that the trick with “refreshing posts” worked).

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in the TOP 5 there is not a single post written by the head of the studio. It’s not because he created bad content (Igor published some very cool cases and wrote other useful articles). The fact is that (here I repeat) there is a noticeable difference between a person who simply writes well and a specialist who has been professionally engaged in content for several years.

It’s funny, but in 6th place in terms of traffic is a post about website promotion using posts. I checked the results, hoping that we would surpass Texterra, but alas:

Anything else worth mentioning?

A few points.

1. I wanted to put a lot more data into the article. Still, I understand that if you add information for each keyword and attach all possible reports from Yandex.Metrica, Yandex.Webmaster, Search Console, SerpStat (and I can do this), almost no one will want to read the longread to the end. The case should be not only informative, but also interesting.
2. I will repeat once again: I did not want to duplicate the facts from the case that I published on the studio’s website. If you are missing any information, look there. I think you will find the missing links.
3. In 2017, for the title pictures we used stock images (which, by the way, we paid for) and screenshots from films. In 2018, after my active requests, a template for branded illustrations was created. I am extremely happy about this fact. With them, the post attracts more attention (the number of refusals decreases) and inspires more confidence in the studio.

Eighteen months of work on a web studio website: conclusions

The first few months of implementing a content marketing strategy showed zero results. Not a single person from the search. But now, after a year and a half, it is clear that many posts have been generating traffic for more than a year and, apparently, will continue to generate it for a long time. The results are not immediate, but long-term and stable. Previously, after contextual advertising was turned off, the influx of customers practically stopped. Now they are turning it off, but clients still come.

Personally, I'm pleased with the results. Doing content marketing in the b2b segment in such a competitive field as web development is easy. Achieving results that can be posted like this and proven with screenshots is much more difficult. However, I succeeded. I think a huge role in this was that I was creating SEO content for good studios. I knew for sure that no one was being deceived there, I knew for sure that web112’s sites were of high quality (it seems that this is not quite the right word, but that’s what I want to use). I was sure that the studio would work for many more years (which means there was a lot to be done).

Update 2019: how content marketing works 6 months after the case is published

When I wrote this case in August 2018, I said that my longreads have been bringing traffic for more than a year and I’m sure that they will continue to do so for a long time (and you don’t have to invest a penny in their promotion).

It is now February 2019. Is my content marketing strategy working? Look at the screenshot below. There are the most traffic articles at the moment. These are the same longreads as six months ago.

As you can see, the content is still working. No investment in advertising or links.