00:19.80
julieewald
All right? welcome everyone. It is time for the allbound awesomeness podcast inbound outbound marketing sales. All of that kind of good stuff right here brought to you by impressive solutions and today I have a very fantastic. Super smart, very passionate guest. Kevin Rowe Kevin is the founder of pure link an enterprise link building solution and a product focused Seo developing industry leadings program for Seo and link building. He has billed world class programs for a range of companies from fortune 100 to Silicon Valley startups he is a thought leader with his thoughts being published in search engine journal vast company forms Huffington post and search engine land over a decade Kevin has worked on seo link building and analytics programs for enterprise clients like Hyde Hotels Kaplan University group ah vmware.

01:15.35
julieewald
The Hartford Coca -cola and so so much more Kevin thank you for being here. Welcome thank you? Well just thank you I’m really excited about this interview. Ah.

01:20.95
Kevin Rowe
Thank you for that Great intro.

01:30.17
julieewald
You have a lot of really great stuff to say we’ve had a really great conversation within the past week or so and so I’m really eager to bring some of that good stuff to our listeners so we’ll we’ll jump right in to something that I know you are really passionate about ah se ocean kid. Tell us about this.

01:49.82
Kevin Rowe
Yeah, so um, one of my big focuses right? now is raising awareness in the seo commution community seo commution ocean and community meltld melded together the seo community about ocean plastic pollution. Um, so. You know I’ve I’ve spent a lot of time you know marketing peerlink and and the company but I felt I realized I had an opportunity to include um include a lot of my passion with ocean pollution in that right? So use that to raise awareness come up with new ideas and solve helping. Solve problems and as I solve these problems or have ideas on how to solve these problems. How do I share those with other people. Um so hashtag seocean is is um, my campaign to raise awareness in the Seo Community specifically around ocean plastic pollution. 1 big thing I do want to? um. You know, bring to attention if you haven’t already heard about is the garbage. Um, the great garbage patch so the pacific garbage patch and that’s um, that’s like one hundred mile Square miles of garbage floating. It’s like a pile of garbage floating in the pacific ocean. Um. You know it’s just it’s it’s devastating and so um, another thing that I wanted to bring up was um, you know and we we met at pubcon I I started to print 3 d um, three d printed recycle ocean plastics.

03:25.59
Kevin Rowe
Ah, for tradeshow schwag instead of creating and using um, ah, traditional swag which a lot of times reality is it ends up in the trash. So I’d rather start making Seo ah swag out of recycled ocean plastic that we’re pulling out of the trash right. I think that’s going to be a really important component. Um I think that could be a really important thing when it comes to stopping the pollution before it even gets to the ocean not just pulling the the plastic out of the ocean but stopping it before it actually goes there. Um so I will actually be publishing. You know I haven’t finished it yet. But I’ll be publishing and documenting how I went about printing these 3 d products at a recycled ocean plastic is very simple and where to get all the products so that you can do it yourself and even some um, some potential vendors. So this is a really important I think that I think if we can stop. People in trade shows that are going to trade shows from using um, material. That’s just going to end up in the ocean or garbage that’s going to be really I think that’s ah that would be a big win in general and in the in the marketing community.

04:33.85
julieewald
I I definitely agree and it’s It’s really refreshing and makes me really hopeful talking to is a per a purpose driven entrepreneur particularly in the marketing space. Um, it’s a.

04:50.83
julieewald
It’s really great to be raise awareness and be able to you know when you go to these conferences you go to these events they get pubed on people are giving away all sorts of shenanigans and you’re right so much of it just goes right in the trash um having something not not walking out with that I not making it worse.

04:57.97
Kevin Rowe
All kinds.

05:10.80
julieewald
Um, is something that’s very refreshing. Yeah.

05:13.87
Kevin Rowe
And I think more memorable as well. Like the idea you’re going to remember this campaign more. So than that pen you have that had the company’s name on it or um, that squishy ball that you know the stress ball that people are going to have on their desk The the campaign itself can reach further and.

05:24.79
julieewald
Um.

05:31.55
Kevin Rowe
I Think also resonate a lot better with an audience.

05:34.73
julieewald
I definitely agree. No one’s going to be throwing out throwing that out. Um that the pen that probably breaks within the first five minutes of use. You should find a way to melt down those crappy pens and turn them into something we’d like.

05:45.36
Kevin Rowe
Or or the chargers. Do you know the chargers that die after 2 after you try to recharge them twice and then you end up throwing them in a trash. Yeah I yeah i’ve’ve I’ve committed that crime. But you know I’m trying to fix it.

05:52.91
julieewald
Yeah.

05:59.20
julieewald
No, it’s something that we all need to atone for I think so you’re passionate about a lot of things. What else are you passionate about.

06:10.34
Kevin Rowe
Product marketing and automation. So those are 2 big things. Um product marketing for me is really about understanding your audience what they need what their passions are um what their problems are and then solving those problems so product. I’ve always resonated with product marketing and product management. Ah the other is automation and um, ah well using automation to fight obesity. Um, so I actually didn’t I didn’t tell you this my brother died a little over a year ago and so. Um, he diedd from obesity- related problems. Um, and that I you know I started to realize that all these problems with with our health and our obesity like start in the kitchen and’ our relationship with food automation and what we’re seeing like with chat gbt and. And other tools right now automation tools and Ai um, there’s there’s ways that we can solve these problems right through? Um, um, removing steps using automation to remove steps to remove friction between us and the lifestyle we want. And so um, I’m actually ah you know on the side I’m building ah a software. Um I call life kitchen to automate the this is something I’ve been working on for a little while far from able to roll it out I’m not marketing it right now. But I just want to.

07:40.94
Kevin Rowe
You know, explain how important I think this is um, um, automating tracking our food inventory in the pantry and freezer and fridge so that we can automatically identify the types of foods that we have and have a recommend a healthy meal plan right. A lot of us make bad choices on food when we um at the end of the day when we’re decision, fatigued decision fatigue and stress creates a lot of bad decisions and so um I think that automation I think that automation is going to be the solution for a lot of that a lot of these problems. Um, so productization and automation together. So um, you know for me health related things and and everything kind of works together in a big mesh. You know I try I try to like make connection between everything I do and all my passions. But um, um, you know for me. Um. Finding solution product, product marketing and product management is about identifying problems finding solutions automation is a solutions.

08:45.90
julieewald
Oh that’s absolutely fantastic and I’m so sorry for your loss. Um, oh no.

08:47.20
Kevin Rowe
Sorry to just break that on you by the way I know we didn’t prepare for that beforehand. But I just you know but was part of my passions. 1 of my passions.

08:55.82
julieewald
Yeah, no, and it um, it’s really Fantastic. You have so many great ideas and so much amazing like just amazing energy rattling around in your brain just putting out all these great ideas and one of the ideas that we had talked about a bit when we met at pubcon. Was about productization and you’ve you’ve touched on it a little bit talking about automation. Um, how you know so in terms of productization. What does that mean to you.

09:26.80
Kevin Rowe
Means a lot. So there’s 2 types of productization agencies traditionally have tried to productize their services right? So simplify the services standardize processes and procedures and the deliverables. Moving away from an hourly base solution right? selling hours versus building technologies and products solve problems. So there’s two productization comes and you know I think 2 different buckets really agencies content marketing firms like I have I have a large background working in. Um. I have a background working for large agencies. Um you know on pretty large enterprise accounts. Um, and we were always doing hourly based stuff. Everything was hours. Get people in get smart people in put you know and help them solve problems right? That’s what productization.

10:19.58
Kevin Rowe
Is identifying those problems ahead of time and then building a solution to solve them. So um I think founders really need to look into productization more even if you’re an agency owner um I’ve talked to I’ve been I’ve talked to a lot of um agency, owners and executives. That are well 1 they’re taking a hit in this market right now right? And um, um, some of them don’t have the margins or they have to let some of their staff go or um, whatnot because and when you’re working an hourly rate-based so when you’re working in an hourly rate-based scenario. Um, you’re going based on people’s hours. So if you lose a ton of work. You have to let people go that is a terrible terrible model. You need that you need to be able to keep people even in a downtime you don’t want to lose your best people spend all this time training them and then um, then they’re not there I think I think that’s like a travesty. So productization really helps to solve that you’ll see you know you’ll see a lot of um product and technology companies really weathering the storm um not always of course you know, but a lot of them can weather the storm more so than an agency when they take a hit right? You can go six months maybe even a year before you have to. Ah, let somebody go in agency if you lose half your client business tomorrow. You potentially could lose half your staff tomorrow. Um, that’s probably an extreme number but but productization is a solution to a lot of these problems.

11:48.27
julieewald
And so would you say there are any downsides.

11:54.87
Kevin Rowe
There’s so many unfortunately so um, um, you can’t accept every client I think is one and that was the hardest thing for me to realize when I started purelink um. Before that I was doing a lot of enterprise enterprise is Seo Ppc Advanced Web Analytics um you know 90% of it eighty eighty percent of it was probably seo and advanced analytics. Um, you know so. I was taking on clients and then I would come in and solve the problems for them I would develop a program whether that’s you know, using all these tools that I have right? and then I would build a team and then ah build a process and then the team would solve you know work on implementing to solve that problem in the way that I have designed it. So um. I was able to work on a lot of different projects doing that. It’s not like that when you productize productization you are focused on a very finite persona and you’re looking to solve their problem and if you get it wrong if you get that problem wrong and it’s not right? Even if you’re going even if you’re prototyping and going to market slowly and doing a test Mvp. Or prototype. Um, you can still get it wrong when you try to go um you go mass market right or mass market depending on what that means. So I think there’s a lot of inherent risks. It’s slower moving. You can’t learn as fast as well. Um, you know I which I do.

13:22.52
Kevin Rowe
Understand that so there are solutions to those problems though when it comes to productization. Um I think that um number one is test fast right? Go to market and test fast build multiple solutions at once. Um, and then I really I’ve ah. I at one point tried to start a business around this. Um this this idea but I am a big fan of getting as much information upfront as possible creating microsites of informational microsites and then testing people’s engagement with different type of of content and then as they engage with that content I mean you’re doing paid promotion of the. Of the the content ah organic promotion. A little bit a lot of it’s going to be paid social ads ah Google ads potentially and then even content marketing. Um through distribution on industry websites things like that. So you want to get as many people as possible understand their persona and then ah test all of it tag the tag the heck out of this website so you understand all the content that people are engaged in what are their problems so you you can you can actually put in the problem solutions right in there or faq’s. And then make sure you understand um, if you have it tagged up properly. You can really measure exactly where people are engaging right? That’s one ah 1 but um I think that can help you be more confident going to market. Um.

14:52.67
Kevin Rowe
And then the other component is if you have an agency. Um you can test out those products. Ah ah with your existing clients a lot faster. That’s another solution. So if you have an agency and you’re trying to go ah trying to productize. Um, Ah, you know you have a. Better ability than if you’re just going to market and you don’t have an audience base built in. So I think that’s going to be um, a good solution to those problems. So.

15:17.87
julieewald
And so in terms of your experience. You know as you talked about peer Peer Link. We’ve talked about Productization. We’ve talked about some of your other business endeavors ah wondering what other if let’s say I was about to launch a new Endeavor. Ah, what are some kernels of marketing and or sales Advice. You’d want to offer that we haven’t already discussed.

15:42.15
Kevin Rowe
Um, let’s see focus on enterprise I think that’s going to be a big one I have pushed so many people to not focus on small business solutions. Especially if it’s your first product. Find larger businesses that you can sell these solutions into um you know I you know we have contracts that I’ve I’ve I’ve implemented programs against contracts that were. When I first got started like the $500000 a month programs and then very quickly realized that um I knew how to scale 1 build teams and scale which was really important but that gave me an opportunity to focus on these enterprise markets which had those bigger contracts then I started working on programs Fifty Five Thousand a month right Twenty five Fifty thousand a month um you know you have the ability to really build out. Um and test things with those budgets. You can you can learn more a lot faster and you don’t um. You can spend more time building the teams focusing on their trainings solving the problems for the clients instead of bouncing between 10 different clients or 20 different clients. Um and only doing 10% you know, um, great work on that right? So I think that.

17:04.39
Kevin Rowe
Focusing on enterprise and not small business at least early on is a great I think it’s a great way to get started. You can even sell in a service you start out with a service and then start to build a technology or or systems around those services. Once you’ve sold it into the enterprise. When you do that in a small business. Ah, it’s ah it’s a lot slower moving. Um, then you know in order to do that become a known expert in in your field. Um, now that doesn’t mean become a an influencer that um you know is you know a highend influencer with thousands of followers. Um, you can be a as long as you’re known as being somebody that actually as long as you’re known as somebody that is a quote unquote expert in the field. Um, you know, which means you’re discussing some of the major problems in the field you’re helping you know communicate um the solutions for those problems. Um, you’re. Showing not a lot of it is giving away your expertise for free a hundred percent like everything like it’s not even holding back a little bit. It’s giving away a lot. Um, but you don’t necessarily need to build a huge audience to find that having the ability to having people and publishers trust you to um. To publish on their websites right? And that’s how I’ve gotten on search engine land search engine journal and fast company is there. There is a trust there? Um, so I think be don’t you don’t have to be an influencer but become a known expert.

18:33.22
julieewald
And that makes a lot of sense So in terms of so if that’s the things you’d recommend. What are some mistakes you see folks making when it comes to their sales and marketing.

18:47.33
Kevin Rowe
Selling things. They couldn’t deliver on 100% Um, that’s ah, don’t get me wrong I’ve made that mistake too. Um, but you got to learn from that one. That’s a hard one because you don’t just hurt your reputation you hurt your team and you you can create. Higher turnover right? So Um, um I have personally hired a well interviewed and hired well over 100 Marketers Seo and Link builders. Um, you know for my companies directly and then also while I’ve helped build teams for for other companies. Um.

19:24.68
Kevin Rowe
And when you sell in something that you can’t deliver on the team gets stressed out and you’re holding trying to hold them Accountable. You have to come up with the new metrics to hold them accountable to new new system of of goals of of Milestones and it is stressful when you can Standardize. Um. Um, you know if you sell something you know you can deliver on and it fits within your standard processes your procedures your guidelines or systems. Um, your team’s going to be Happier. You’re going to be more efficient and um, you’re going to be a lot less stressed as ah as a founder and owner.

20:01.88
julieewald
It makes a lot of sense and you know if thinking back to some of the early days of team Ipressa feels a little familiar. Not going to lie. We’ve all done it. Yeah, just or.

20:09.79
Kevin Rowe
Um, we’ve all done it all of us. Yeah, and if you haven’t done it. That’s great. You probably have a lot of experience. But if you’ve you know a lot of people have started their own business. They’ve they’ve made that mistake and it’s hard. It’s a hard lesson learn.

20:25.57
julieewald
It is so which businesses you think are doing it right.

20:30.95
Kevin Rowe
Um, well I think there’s 2 um and well there’s there’s 2 I want to call out just because they’re in the seo space. But there are a lot of businesses doing um, doing things right from a product perspective right? So not selling. Not selling in things they can’t deliver on and um productization. So ah, a hfs and conductor have always been pretty I oppressed with um so href Tim Soul um he’s done an amazing job. But they have a great product. You know, but Tim’s been able to like really you know. Develop ah a proper go-to-market strategy like he’s doing it right? Not just the company. The company’s doing it right? and he’s got a great product to work with and he’s doing it right? Um, but they they focus on smaller business programs for sure. But. Nonetheless it’s it’s not an enterprise It’s not complete enterprise play but enterprise you use it right? and it’s a great tool I love it conductors the other one cephh um be smyrknik I hope I didn’t get that wrong, but he’s the he is the founder. Um, he’s Ceo of conductor founded. It. Um. You know they have an interesting story and they were actually a link building company in like 2011 I believe I don’t know exact dates prior to conductor being ah an analytics company and they also have a marketing arm as well. Um, they they were a link building company. They pivoted.

22:00.92
Kevin Rowe
Out of that and started focus on the technology right? Productization. So I think that um link building is definitely a tough space to go into and and back then everyone was doing a lot of bulk-based link building paid link building schemes and when it was working until penguin hit. Um. You know various other updates but a lot of that came in and then people’s um, like a lot of link building programs tanked right? So I think I don’t know for sure but it seems like 1 of the reasons they’ve pivoted was ah such a long time ago is a big part of their story now. But um. Ah, one of the reasons why they pivoted was um, the analytics size a lot more scalable and there was a need for it too and and they also focus on the enterprise side of Seo. So I like what they do because productization and enterprise focus like they’re just getting that right? I love it. Um, the the team there is doing a great job. And I know they have ah they have a um, pretty great product team over there too. So you see they’re doing new feature launches and ah you know the features really tie into solving problems for their clients and their you know their known client base and not just for new clients right? So um I think. Keeping an eye on those 2 from um ah from a technology perspective in the search industry content marketing and Seo industry I think they’re they’re doing it right.

23:26.54
julieewald
It’s nice. So in terms of we’re talking about the businesses doing it right? What kinds of Trends have you been watching in terms of sales and marketing that you’re getting a little excited about or wary of that you might want to hit your star on.

23:45.11
Kevin Rowe
1 of the I think the biggest thing right now is podcasting. Um, you know there’s well there’s a lot of trends happening right now. Um you know podcasting I think is definitely a big one. Um I’ve been thinking about this a lot too. Podcasting versus long form content creation and what is helpful content. Um podcasting I think um is is an awesome tool. But there’s also what I’m realizing other um, which I’ve ah you know we’ve already always known. Um. Ah, helpful content marketing creating like unique case studies doing studies right? that nobody’s produced finding data. That’s really helpful to the market that stuff takes a lot of time and I I know there’s a lot of people moving into podcasting but I think that we can’t ah we we have to not ignore. The you know the tried and true content marketing component right? case studies um, unique studies, unique data points. Um finding insights that that nobody else has and that takes so much fricking time takes so much time to do so um. I don’t I you know I don’t personally I think I don’t want to chase I want to see where this podcasting stuff goes before I would scale that up. Um, but it’s a lot of great information is coming out in podcasting. However, it’s.

25:18.13
Kevin Rowe
1 of the downsides I think is it’s hard to search through all that content. So I’m hoping somebody solves that problem and I think that’s going to really help to scale up the value podcasting can have on solving that problem because I think that there’s there’s um, at least being being easier to filter through and search. You know through a lot of this content right? So so huge opportunity in podcasting right now. It’s growing. Um, also, there’s like I heard a study that or at least a number rather that um, most podcasts don’t get past 8 episodes. So if you do 10 you are actually in the top 10% of podcasters huge opportunity in this market one hundred percent um Um but you know but I think there’s still some challenges there in in um, some major challenges and like creating really high value content. Or at least being able to make it easily find easy to find.

26:15.91
julieewald
And oh that’s really interesting that statistic that what is it that you know 10 the 10 episode Mark you know your episode number 7 right.

26:27.12
Kevin Rowe
We better keep going.

26:29.25
julieewald
Got step on the gas of this so we had to do a hard pivot really quick to talk about a pure link tell us about pure link. What? what? you do you talked a little bit about who you work with just give us the whole the whole skinny.

26:46.18
Kevin Rowe
Sure so purelinks is an enterprise link building solution um started in 2018 and since then we had over 3000% growth almost 3000% growth. So um, I went to market very softly with that I had my enterprise agency role holdings and we were doing you know seo advanced web analytics all that stuff then um I had a problem where all the link builders we were hiring to do links to build links for our clients were doing trash work. I was like I I can’t keep doing this I got to build my own solution in-house. So I did and then I realized well we have a product or at least um, you know a resemblance of a product rather? Um, so I started to build that out further right? And um. We had a specific audience. We were going for at the time. But since then I’ve pivoted ah slightly a few times. So initially we started out by you know, leveraging relationships with publishers that we already had to secure links on work. Great still works very well. Um, but then there’s um, um. You know we’ve had the need to launch other solutions other products right? So we have now 3 products um pure context pure context is you know is 1 of our more scalable. Um, context-based link building solutions right? It’s made for companies that um, really want.

28:15.54
Kevin Rowe
To ensure they get links on a given month There’s a lot of people that just want predictability in link building. Ah then we have natural link. Um so natural link I I launched this solution because um, there’s certain types of link building tactics people really gravitate to. The Seo industry is if you ask 10 seos. What’s a good link building tactic. You will get 15 different answers. Um, um, and so I realized that you know I realized that year one of launching pure link and and so I started to launch these other solutions for. Ah, very heavily for our enterprise-based clients that wanted specific types of link building that they were ensuring were white hat and past Google’s sniff tests right? that that um that google google doesn’t say the type of link building to technically that that is the right. Type of link building except for one which I’ll explain in a moment and then we launch earnnie so Earnnie is our earned link solution. So that’s how we recommend content and distribute that content in order to earn links right? So that means you’re not you’re not really asking for them. You’re just creating something that fits inside of a specific audience and then share it to that audience. Sometimes it’s paid marketing social ads um um, content syndication and then as that gets picked up right? It starts to get links naturally. Um so Ernie was was.

29:46.90
Kevin Rowe
Um, solution focused on a group of seos. We have specific specific persona that enterprise seos that ah, um, that are struggling like they’re very specific on what type of link building. They will do and it’s. Only the type that Google has said to do so John Mueller actually he’s come out and said he’s been actually great lately. Um, last few years about providing more information about what type of link building is um, you know would be approved for or not approved rather but.

30:21.98
Kevin Rowe
They condone I guess you could say um, he’s never said that but but like those words so I don’t put words in his mouth. But um, um, they have definitely pushed and all the content is said earn links by creating great content. Don’t pay for links don’t um and I guess technically. Don’t outreach or try to trade links or do anything that to game the system. So um, pure link. You know, ah for me what what? we’ve really focused on right now is rolling out new solutions that fit a changing market and the market’s changing pretty fast in Seo. It always has for.

31:01.65
julieewald
And yeah, it’s something that you really need to be on the pulse of to be able to act appropriately and take the right steps. Um, a lot of a lot of news ends up being old news really quick when it comes to search. Um, so we’re kind of at time.

31:12.57
Kevin Rowe
Hundred percent

31:19.27
julieewald
But what did we miss? Did we miss anything.

31:24.69
Kevin Rowe
Um, I do like to reiterate Seo. You know I think I don’t think we missed anything but I really do want to leave people thinking about that. Um and go just quickly deeper into. Um. Using 3 d recycled ah recycled ocean plastics for trade show schwag um, you can get yourself a 3 d printer and do it or you can make you can ah find a local 3 d printer or even for 3 d printing companies online and submit them plans that you can make using um sure. Shaper 3 d is a great software for and a tablet that’s an intuitive base 3 d modeling software. Um, and then you can request or even send. Um, you can request recycled ocean plastics. Um, there’s now filament out there that you can get There’s already made filament. When I first started doing this I almost had to make my own filament out of recycle ocean plastic which is a whole other process. Um, but I think right now you can you can find companies that will help you do that online pretty easily There’s a lot of people out there with 3 d printers that are just sitting there not doing anything. And they’ll just produce things for you. It’s it’s actually great. There’s a lot of marketplaces for that.

32:40.00
julieewald
No, that’s that’s awesome. So everyone hashtag seo um, please follow please engage, please take some of these tips I think this is really awesome. Um, otherwise if you want to keep tabs on Kevin I recommend going to. Peerlink dot com and keep in tabs and maybe engaging and I’m really excited about what you’re doing next by the way you have all of these great ideas I’m just really excited to see what the ah, what’s next who we will. So.

33:08.19
Kevin Rowe
We will see got you got to really double down on se ocean first but we’ll see.

33:16.43
julieewald
Yeah, sounds good. So Kevin thank you so much for ah for joining us today. Thank you for being here and thank you so much to all of the listeners for the allbound awesomeness podcast brought to you by I impressive solutions hope you join us again next time.

33:21.88
Kevin Rowe
Thank you! It was great. Thanks for having me. Thanks.

33:34.85
julieewald
Thank you so much Bye now.