In business, if you're not reading, you're not learning. As an experienced entrepreneur, growth expert, and the current head of marketing at When I Work, I spend a lot of time reading essays and talking to other marketers about what is and isn't working. It's an essential part of my job and our ability to continue implementing new ideas, tactics, and processes that help us continue to meet and exceed our growth goals month over month.
I've spent over 10 years developing relationships with other people and following the very best blogs that can help me become a better marketer and growth leader. But if you're relatively new to marketing or entrepreneurship, it's not always easy to know where the best resources are.
Instead of wasting time searching for the best articles and content on your own, I'd recommend focusing instead on the resources and blogs that other marketing leaders and entrepreneurs have followed and used to move the needle at their businesses.
In this first post of a 3-part series, I'm sharing the preferred resources of 12 people who are making some serious waves as marketers, growth experts, and entrepreneurs.
1. Alex Turnbull, Founder and CEO, Groove
“There isn't a better curated source of growth wisdom than Hiten Shah's SaaS Weekly newsletter. If I were only going to rely on one resource, this would be it.”
Alex’s Recommended Post: Hiten's research on what makes Slack addictive is a recent favorite. The post is packed with data and sophisticated analysis, and I guarantee that you'll come away with at least one insight that will help you make your product stickier.
2. Jamie Quint, Co-Founder, Interstate Analytics
“Growthhackers.com is the best meta-site right now. My favorite original content site is Andrew Chen's blog.”
Jamie’s Recommended Post: Andrew's site is great for really solid pieces that cover the basics in a comprehensive but still easy to understand way. One example is this post, which does a great job of outlining basic growth strategy.
3. Patrick Campbell, Co-Founder & CEO, Price Intelligently
“There's a lot of noise out there in the growth and marketing worlds. One of my absolute favorite resources is Brian Balfour's blog, Coelevate (VP of Growth at Hubspot). Every post is actionable, well thought out, and his resources are being used by all teams doing growth correctly.”
Patrick’s Recommended Post: His course on Building a Growth Machine is a must for anyone who is taking growth seriously. This course outlines the growth process to make sure you're building for both short term and long term success.
4. Joanna Wiebe, Conversion copywriter and creator of Copy Hackers
“I soak up everything I can from the team at MECLABS (which powers Marketing Experiments) because they are constantly questioning what we know as marketers and contributing new, interesting data to the conversation.”
Joanna’s Recommended Post: Every online marketer should memorize and use the Conversion Sequence Heuristic, discussed in this post among other places.
For me, repeatable methodologies like this heuristic make it a thousand times easier to do our work as growth-focused marketers. With it, we can look at a landing page that's not working and ask the right questions - is the value proposition clear? have we neutralized anxieties? - instead of jumping to conclusions or throwing our hands in the air.
5. Dylan La Com, Product at GrowthHackers.com
“Picking just one is very hard, but, excluding some of the original content on GrowthHackers.com–AMAs, Ask GH's etc, which I truly believe is some of the best growth content available–I'd have to pick Brian Balfour and his blog posts at Coelevate.
Dylan’s Recommended Post: This video from Brian's talk at Weapons of Mass Distribution is gold. It's worth watching because Brian does an exceptional job communicating the importance of retention curve analysis as the foundation for a solid growth strategy.
6. Jimmy Daly, Content Marketer for Hire, jimmydaly.com
“I don't spend too much time reading about what other people are doing in marketing. Instead, I consume a lot of information and inspiration about performing better, thinking bigger and being more creative. For that reason, I find the the Tim Ferriss Show podcast to be insanely useful.”
Jimmy’s Recommended Post:The Lazy Manifesto. If you want be a better marketing, focus on the foundational principles that will make you more productive, smarter and more efficient. This quick audio excerpt gets to the core of why some people are wildly successful and others aren't.
7. Matt Hodges, Senior Director of Marketing, Intercom
Tomasz Tunguz is a must-read for anyone in the SaaS world- B2B or B2C, marketing or otherwise. He's a respected VC at Redpoint and has a great perspective on what makes SaaS businesses tick. He writes almost daily, and his marketing related posts specifically have given me some great, broad ideas as I build out marketing for Intercom.”
Matt’s Recommended Post: The Expanding Role Of Marketing In SaaS Companies naturally resonated with me as a marketing leader for a SaaS businesses. More and more new businesses are SaaS, and they demand a different go-to-market model than traditional software businesses. It's critical for any successful marketing leader in this new world to understand marketing's expanding role and new set of responsibilities. As usual, Tomasz hits the nail on the head in this piece from the what, to the why, and actionable advice.
8. Dan Shure, Owner & Consultant, Evolving SEO
“I highly recommend using a mix of human, algorithmic and mixed human-algo sources. Follow the key influencers on
Dan’s Recommended Post: One of the sources I mentioned is using an RRS reader so you don't miss anything from your favorite bloggers. Glenn Gabe has been writing some phenomenal stuff in the SEO industry, including this post, which I may never have seen except I added him to my RSS reader.
9. Ryan Hoover, CEO & Founder, Product Hunt
“I've followed Andrew Chen's blog for several years. He does an amazing job of distilling trends and tactics into actionable, understandable learnings.
Ryan’s Recommended Post: Andrew's essay about the factors that influence engagement -- DAU/MAU specifically -- provide insight into realistic benchmarks for various categories of apps. It's important to understand the user context and use accurate comparisons when measuring performance and setting expectations.
10. Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko
“Most definitely Neil Patel. What separates Neil from the rest is that he's doing "in the trenches" marketing each and every day.”
Brian’s Recommended Post:This post is classic Neil Patel. He answers a common marketing question with fistfuls of real world data and examples.
11. Michele Linn, Vice President of Content, Content Marketing Institute
“I have a few favorite resources (and read many other great publications) but if I had to choose just one that includes tips, tools and trends, I'd have to recommend the blog from Orbit Media. The posts are super useful and they connect the dots so I can actually follow along and make improvements to my content marketing program.
Michele’s Recommended Post: There are a ton of great posts on the Orbiter, but this post is an "oldie but goodie" that I not only think about a lot, but it was mentioned in several Content Marketing World presentations last year. Content marketers want their visitors to find the right content at the right time, but many of us have sites that surface what is most recent instead of what may help our readers. This "content hub" approach from Andy Crestodina not only addresses a great way to do this, but it also helps marketers get more visibility and conversions for their content.
12. Ashli Norton, Co-Founder, Autosend
“Lincoln Murphy is my favorite resource for great growth tips. Basically, every single question I've had as a co-founder of a growing startup has been answered by his blog completely. If it's been done in SaaS, he has dealt with it and has shared it all on his blog.”
Ashli’s Recommended Post: As SaaS companies live or die by long time customers and renewals help us thrive this article walks you through exactly how to handle renewals automatically to make more money.
What resources do you turn to when you want to learn more about marketing and growth? Tell me below in the comments. For more recommended resources from top entrepreneurs, marketers, and growth experts, stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 of this series!
