Leading Matters #13: Rand Fishkin Founder Moz

Episode 13 of Leading Matters features the founder of Moz, Rand Fishkin.  Rand shares how he built Moz by focusing exclusively on the community of marketers who wanted desperately to make sense out of Google’s search engine algorithms, and how the company was able to maintain focus on the mission of making marketers successful.  The result is a strong and loyal customer base.

I have watched Rand Fishkin from afar for a number of years and really wanted to get him on the show.  I finally reached out to ask him for an interview and he graciously agreed.  I’m glad he did and I know you will be glad that he sat down for what turns out to be nearly a 30 minute interview.  To put it simply Rand conducts his professional life from the position of humility and generosity.  He is genuine, he is passionate, and he is gracious.  It has worked for him, for Moz, and there is a good chance incorporating some of his ideas will work for you.

HIGHLIGHTS

On the value of building community first

This is something I talk and write about frequently, and I was thrilled to hear Rand’s take on community building.  Moz (SEO Moz at the time) was more or less an off shoot of Rand’s personal investment in helping people understand the complex world of the Google search algorithms in the early 2000s.  Educating and building a community eventually lead to a sound and sustainable business model.

Mission really matters

Moz never targeted a specific level of customer acquisition.  This is not to suggest that they didn’t care about customer acquisition, but instead focused continuously on educating which ultimately leads to more customers.  They do this by placing their mission front and center with everything they do.  The mission?  Make marketers successful.

Content marketing isn’t for everyone.

Content and Inbound marketing demands discipline and effort.  Rand believes that if you aren’t passionate about educating then content marketing probably isn’t for you.

Decreasing churn through selflessness

SaaS companies know that churn is the metric that matters (the percentage of the install base that cancels their subscription in a given period of time).  Rand shares how valuable and educational content helps improve churn metrics.  He explains how customers that interact with 7 or more pieces of content have a much lower churn rate than customers that convert on their first or second visit.   

Injecting cultural fit into the talent acquisition process.

How do you know if a kick ass developer cares about customer support and service?  Send them to lunch with some customer support folks as part of the interview process.  This is just one of the tactics that Moz uses to evaluate for culture. They have a scoring system in place that evaluates candidate against the Moz values.