How Asana Does Marketing (They Made $90 Million in 2017)

In this clip, we are going to talk about how Asana does marketing. And by the way, if you want to grow predictably for your business and yourself personally, don't forget to subscribe, whatever platform you are coming from. Asana is a project management tool that we use. We've been using it for a while and it's very simple to use. It's one of my favorite project management tools, if not the most favorite out of all the ones that we use. We use some different ones for clients and things like that. I'm looking at my screen now and you can see this is the homepage of Asana and the headline is show work who's boss. Asana is a simple work management platform with the muscle to help teams turn any goal into a workable plan. I love the subheadline. The headline does kind of lead into the subheadline, which is the subheadline can be a little longer. You don't want your headline to be too long. I do like how they on the homepage they try to collect your email and get you into freemium, right? So that's what they have. So going down the homepage here, you can see how Asana looks and then they kind of change up the images in here and then we're coming down and then going down a little more. But anyway, homepage here looks decent. There's a lot of social proof. That's all great. But I'll tell you what, I just want to show you the homepage for a second. We're going to start with SEO first. I'm going to come back to this homepage in a second. We're going to look through it a little more, but we're looking at Ahrefs here. This is the SEO tool of our choice. And you can see Asana, their domain rating is 87 out of 100, which is a very strong domain rating. Usually after you're above 70, you're very strong and it's actually really hard to get into, to go from 70 to 80 and 80 to 90. And they have about 26,000 referring domains linking to them, which means they have 26,000, you know, unique domains linking to them. They rank for 273,000 organic keywords and their traffic value is almost $2 million a month. Meaning if they paid for that traffic on Google, they would be paying, well, $2 million a month. But they get that for quote unquote free when it comes to SEO. What I want to look at too is I want to look at the types of keywords that they rank for, right? So they actually rank for, you know, keywords like task management. They rank for keywords like timeline. They rank for keywords, a lot of these other keywords here that drive a ton of volume. They even rank for one-on-one meeting, project timeline, things like this, right? How to prioritize. So they have a lot in here to work with. And what I'm going to do here is I'm going to actually exclude I'm going to do this and we're going to type in Asana and then we're going to exclude URLs. We're going to look to exclude the brand name here and we're going to see the other stuff that they'd rank for. Okay, so online project management, they rank number 2. So they rank for a lot of different keywords and I don't like to focus too much on rankings, but from an SEO perspective, looking at their domain authority, you know, they get a ton of traffic already, but it's slowly increasing over time too. So you can see over here it gets bigger and bigger, right? And then their traffic value, has more or less kind of maintained. And then the number of organic keywords that they rank for, it did kind of tick down a little bit, but it's kind of holding steady right now. So look, you know, their top competitors, you can see in there they have Smartsheet and some other competitors, but they are very strong when you look at their domain, meaning that if they publish anything on project management, they're likely to rank very highly from that perspective. So from an SEO perspective, I'll give them an 18 out of 20. There's always a little cushion to grow. And then we come back here. I do want to look at the content that they're putting out. So I think what's really smart here in the header is we look at the template section, right? They have a lot of templates here that people can copy. So marketing templates and, um, you know, I'm even wondering if we're using some of these templates internally, um, like agency collaboration, right? And then in here they have more social proof, the marketing teams that actually use Asana, and they have a lot of templates in here. Editorial calendar, event planning. Well, I should probably use that one. Product marketing launch, social media calendar, RFP process. It's all in here because a lot of the tasks that we do, they're more or less, they've been done before, right? There's a process for it. So they share it in here. It makes it way easier. To kind of get started. And what's beautiful here is that they have case studies on this page too. So from a content perspective, um, they have templates, which is useful for everyone across the board, but they also, if they want people to kind of buy, um, they have content like reinforcing content to, you know, case studies to kind of, kind of get people further down the funnel. And then they have an academy too. They literally, there's, they have courses here. Uh, let's see if these are actually free. I believe their courses are free, but they have an academy where, um, you can get more product education because a lot of people struggle with product, um, learning how the product works and Asana is fairly complicated. Because there's so many different things that you can do with it, right? But I'm looking through here and all their courses are free, and I think that's pretty amazing that, you know, they're giving away all these courses. So they have templates, they have courses for product education purposes, and then for kind of, you know, trying to convert people, they have the case studies. So I think their content game is fairly strong, and they have solutions for, you know, all these different types of users that they're trying to serve, like engineering, designers, sales, and they also have a form as well. And I do want to also take a look at the Asana blog. Let's take a look at what they have going on here. So blog.asana.com. So usually I recommend the subdomain. They are collecting emails, which is great. And then they have this persistent scrolling navbar, which is also great. And let's see what you can do. So they do announce a lot of products. Well, I can see the very first one is a product announcement and then others, other sections of the blog. So best practices, so how Asana uses Asana. So scrolling down here, they have a little pop under, under the, well, on the popup on the right side, bottom right side, but it's a fairly long form piece. I think this is probably about 1,000 to 1,200 words or so. There's a lot of screenshots in here and then navigation to other pieces. So they are big enough to kind of talk about how Asana uses Asana. You know, a lot of companies, it doesn't make sense to talk too much about yourself, but a lot of people actually use it. And then, um, a lot of it is about themselves, right? So, you know, 10, uh, or about, you know, conferences in the industry, right? Like industry events, uh, diversity and inclusion at Asana. I think this is all great, but this is more so really talking about themselves. Um, so I'm actually going to click there in the navigation here. I just noticed that they have one on product, best practices, company, and culture. So I'm going to click on best practices because these, this type of content is what tends to drive a lot of traffic. So, Down here, I'm looking at this. What I would recommend when I look at their their content is a lot of it starts with how Asana uses Asana. You maybe put that at the at the end of it because it's a series, and then you know start with the title because there's more weight put it put towards your headline in the in the beginning versus the end. So I still I think a lot of it is is how to use Asana, and I just think it's it's too self-serving. So that's my feedback on on the blog, and I do want to come back to the footer over here. It looks like they have this thing called Wavelength. I want to find out what that is. So Wavelength is, it looks like it's their online magazine and talks about inclusion, how to coach teammates, how to define your team's mission. This is more useful. I think for me, I like reading this type of stuff, mastering productivity. There's a lot of issues in here. So, um, what I would say is ideally it's asana.com/wavelength and then you can get more benefit from an SEO perspective, driving more traffic to this section. Right now it's wavelength.asana.com. So I would, I would change that up a little bit. Overall, I think when I look at the type of content that they're producing, I would give them a 17 out of 20. So 17 out of 20 on content. Um, I think they have a lot of workflow solutions, templates in here, guides. The forum is great as well. Um, just a lot to support their customers. Um, but a lot of it, it seems, you know, I think they're missing the mark on, you know, providing more value in general. And then capturing more of that, that, you know, the long tail traffic and maybe even the bottom funnel of traffic as well. But the forum definitely helps too from an SEO perspective, just getting people to contribute to that. So from a general marketing perspective, I do like, you know, they're exceptional at design, right? When you have a co-founder that was one of the co-founders of Facebook for Asana, they're very focused on design. They're trying to support their customers, right? So again, they have the templates here on the homepage, but look, the social proof is great. They work with Airbnb, Deloitte, and this is just on the marketing page, right? So they know how to tailor. The marketing specifically to all the different types of channels or types of users that they're trying to cater to, right? So if we go back to gallery over here, if I, if I hit engineering, you can see there's a head of engineering here that gives a testimonial and there's a bunch of engineering, um, you know, templates that you can go with, right? So I think from a general marketing perspective, you look at design, you look at how the homepage is laid out, um, how they're trying to make it easier for people to understand how their product works. Um, I would give them an 18 out of 20. So 18 out of 20 on general marketing. Now we are onto CRO, so conversion rate optimization. So I like how, um, again, we're looking at the social proof, right? Like they have Air France, KLM in here, they have Sony Music and they have the testimonials and then you can actually pull out, there's more customers that you can pull out too. You can look at more teams. Um, and there's so many case studies in here. It just keeps going and going. And going. I think it's my buddy over here, Ryan. He spoke at our conference. Going and going and going and going and going, right? Testimonials always help with with CRO, and then the persistent scroll bar—that's great too. I think the fact that they collect emails is also great. Now I do want to look at their pricing section. I always talk about you know how having a price or a chatbot maybe in the bottom right could help with generating more conversions, especially if they're selling the enterprise, right? You could have a chatbot. That only pops up if an enterprise company comes in. You can use Clearbit to kind of reveal who's coming in. If it's like Coca-Cola, you can kind of, you know, only have the chatbot pop up if Coca-Cola comes through. I think the pricing page makes a lot of sense. It's very in-depth and you can see it covers all the needs from basic all the way to enterprise. Enterprise, obviously they need more security. So I think that's great as well. I always talk about popups. So popups are always great, but very brand conscious companies. Maybe they don't want popups to disrupt the experience, right? For Asana, it's all about the experience. So maybe they do that on their blog, but maybe they don't do that on their site. That's a business decision. So they close the pricing page with FAQs and also more logos as well. Logos are always great. I think they're pretty solid from a conversion rate optimization standpoint. This is without looking at the landing pages that they have across their site. So what I would say actually, These are landing pages here. If it's like, if they notice that, um, you know, you visited this page over here, they would retarget you maybe, um, maybe to a marketing landing page. So I think this is really detailed over here. So overall from a CRO perspective, I think they're really strong and, um, they've got integrations. Um, they're basically trying to cover all the objections when it comes to, you know, using Asana. So I would give them an 18 out of 20 when it comes to conversion rate optimization. And now let's take a look at how they're doing, uh, from an advertising perspective. So we're looking at Adbeat and we can see in the last 180 days they've actually ramped up spend. So again, disregard the ad spend portion where it says $559K. The bulk of their spend is actually going towards Google, which I think is very interesting. I don't know if they're spending on Facebook or not. You can't really see that here. They're spending about maybe a little less than 10% of their budget on direct buys, which is buying directly from the websites, but their advertising is ticking up. Which I think is interesting. And if we scroll down here, we can see all the different, um, they're running a lot of Google display ads, right? So we can see, you know, um, for the, for the bulk of it, I mean, 41% is the, these 300 by 250 squares. So let's take a look at these ads and you can see they've been running this one fairly for a long time, plan better projects. And apparently this ad works because they've been running it for a while. We scroll down here and you can see all these graphs, they're scrolling, they're kind of going up into the right at the end. So maybe now they're deciding that now is the time to ramp up spend. Um, it doesn't look like it's like a seasonality thing. It looks like they've decided consciously in the last couple of months, maybe they're running a couple of tests and now it's like it's starting to skyrocket, right? So they know what works for them. So you can see from an advertising perspective, they clearly know what they're doing. Um, and I like that. So next thing over here, we scroll down, we can look at their top native ads. They have a lot of unique ads here. They have a lot of, um, they don't have a lot of, but they do have video ads in here. It looks like they ran a test and they kind of ramped it down. So up and down, right? So, They know what advertising should look like. Basically, you know, you run a test, you see what works, whatever gains traction, you put more towards it. Whatever doesn't work, you put some money towards it and if it drops down, that's totally fine, right? That's how advertising works. So their spend is going up. Either they have no idea what they're doing and they're ramping up spend, which is very unlikely, or they know what they're doing and they're ramping up spend. So from an advertising perspective, I think they could probably attack more channels. Um, but right now maybe they just want to nail Google first before you expand to other ones, which I think is a solid strategy. So I would give them an 18 out of 20, uh, from a paid advertising perspective. Okay. So if we total everything up, we would basically get 89, 89 out of 100. That's how Asana scores for marketing. Now, if you enjoyed teardowns like this, let us know in the comments, who do you want to see next? Um, in terms of our teardowns on who does marketing, let us know what you think we missed as well. Interested, interested to get your feedback. Don't forget, if you're coming from YouTube, don't forget to check out the next video over there. 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