Welcome to a new issue of Zero to Marketing.

Every month I pick a new startup and write a short case study explaining exactly how I’d grow it.

Let's dive in.
Rally is a tool that lets users record their screen or slides to create product presentations.

They state very explicitly that their ideal user is someone who works in B2B and presents to customers and teammates.

A good strategy to immediately repel bad-fit customers and resonate more with their desired ones.  
I love how when you hover the mouse over the “Demo with Sam” button the founder’s profile picture pops up making it feel like you’re about to talk to a friend
As soon as I landed on the site a question popped into my mind: why can’t I just use Loom?

It’s the category leader and what most people use so Rally needs a strong differentiation strategy to give people a reason to choose them.  

Otherwise there’s a good chance I’ll just stick to the popular brand.  
Both Loom and Rally focus on creating videos to communicate with customers and teammates so it’s hard to tell the difference for a first-time visitor with no other context
On their landing page this isn’t addressed.

But it turns out they do have a good answer and they just need to make it more prominent in their messaging.

When you’re a challenger you need to address the elephant in the room immediately.  
Rally should not only create an alternative page but also explain why they’re different immediately in the hero section to catch new visitors' attention
But that’s not enough.

To truly differentiate themselves from their biggest competitor they need to push where it hurts.

This means taking the time to read what people are saying about Loom online to find common pain points and integrate them into their messaging.

That way they’ll speak not only to new prospects but also to current Loom users who might switch.  
Luckily for Rally it looks like a lot of people aren’t happy with Loom so it shouldn’t be too hard to discover patterns they can turn into good copy for their landing page
They’re using a classic freemium strategy to generate word of mouth allowing people to create a free account and use a limited version of the product with Rally’s branding on all videos created.

It’s a good idea that will work well once their customer base reaches a certain size but it will need to be supplemented while they’re still small.  

They might consider adding a gamified referral program where customers on the free plan could gain access to the premium plan at no cost for a certain period both for themselves and the referred customer.

The more new customers they refer the more time they’d earn on the premium plan.
Rally doesn’t have a referral plan right now
Let’s try to reverse engineer how their ideal customer profile could get exposed to Rally organically.

Our desired outcome is that they see a video with Rally’s branding on it. Some of them will be curious and google the brand name. But where could they see a video like that?

Probably from another founder or product manager in B2B who posts on social media about a new feature. Where would that happen?

Most likely on LinkedIn. How could we influence that?

By identifying people who have posted this type of content in the past, filtering those who got good engagement and gifting them a yearly free plan with all the premium features except for the ability to remove the branding.
For the people receiving it it would feel like an attractive $300 gift but for Rally the actual cost would be just a fraction considering it’s a software product
On social media I feel like they’re spreading themselves too thin.

They’re on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Threads and YouTube but they only have a handful of followers on each platform and not much engagement.

I’d drop Instagram and Threads. Since this is a B2B product I’d double down on LinkedIn and X. Maybe YouTube too if they have the resources.

Right now both LinkedIn and X are pushing video content giving it more reach compared to other formats. This might be a golden opportunity for Rally to experiment with short-form videos.

The key will be to plan a content strategy that resonates with their ideal customers on these platforms.

That means posting a good volume of clips, analyzing the data and iterating based on what generates interest and engagement.
So far they’ve only created a handful of short-form videos and while most of them were basically ignored one stood out which suggests it’s a top of the funnel topic worth exploring in their content strategy
Many people are looking for a Loom alternative and the top result is a Reddit discussion.

There’s a good way and a bad way to deal with this.

The bad way would be creating an anonymous account and posting something like “I tried Rally and it’s great”. This never works.

What the Rally founders should do instead is craft a thoughtful post using their personal account acknowledging that they’re the people building the product and sharing the story of why they believe the world needs a better Loom alternative.

Being active in top Reddit discussions also increases the chances of being mentioned by AI-powered search tools when someone asks a related query.
The most straightforward path to acquiring new customers is to intercept those who are already looking for something like Rally
Looking at the top pages that get traffic from search it’s clear that there’s still a lot of untapped potential.

When the homepage accounts for close to 90% of visits it suggests that most people are landing there via branded queries.

But there are definitely high intent keywords that could drive more qualified traffic to the site and Rally has some pages set up to capture it.

So the first step should be analyzing why they aren’t effectively capturing that traffic.
This usually happens when people discover the product somewhere else then search for it on Google resulting in most of the traffic going directly to the homepage  
Take the keyword “saas product demo video” as an example.
  
They’re targeting it with their homepage but it’s not working because they’re stuck on page 3.

If you analyze what’s ranking on page 1 you’ll see two different search intents:

- (How to make a) SaaS product demo video
- (Best examples of) SaaS product demo videos

Their homepage doesn’t satisfy either of them which is likely why it’s not ranking.
Since that term has multiple intents Rally should create separate pages tailored to address each one
That's it for today.

See you next month with a new case study.

Andrea
You're getting this email because you subscribed to Zero to Marketing 

Unsubscribe
 
Via Sant'Aquilino 5, Milan, 20148, Italy