Casey Armstrong knows a lot about all areas of online marketing. During his spectacular career, Armstrong was able to help all sorts of startups grow significantly. We reached out to Armstrong to know more about him, and he kindly agreed to answer a few questions for us in regards to marketing, customer acquisition, and more.

About Casey Armstrong

Armstrong is a seasoned full stack online marketer, who focuses on customer acquisition and revenue growth. As a full stack marketer, Armstrong is highly experienced in growth hacking, SEO, semantic search, email marketing, content marketing, and other areas.

He has helped in the past numerous startups becoming top-notch technology companies. Some of these firms are Pantheon, Mavenlink, Pivotal Tracker (acquired by EMC), The Lean Entrepreneur, and others.

Discover more about Armstrong on his personal website, or, alternatively, on his full stack marketer page, where he also shares some interesting advice for startup founders and entrepreneurs.

Before we dive into our interview, don’t forget to read our article “How to Get 5,000 Signups Every Month and Other Actionable Strategies to Acquire More Customers“, where you’ll find a very recent podcast Armstrong had with Nick O’Neill — this last one being an experienced professional with knowledge on how to acquire customers for B2B (Business to Business) companies.

Interviewing Casey Armstrong

1) Casey, you have had a wonderful career, and you can now boast a great resume. My question is: What is the specific mindset that has driven you to such a spectacular success? What is the mindset that one should have (develop) to grow a company from 5,000 to 500,000 customers?

Thanks for the kind words. And in regards to mindset, I’ll touch on two points: LEARNING and DOING.

LEARNING: Always be learning, from others and yourself. It is helpful to read tips/advice from others whom you respect (though, not too much as you need time to execute!), but also watch what they are doing. And figure out why. For instance, I often watch what people like Sean Ellis and Hiten Shah are doing/testing at Qualaroo and KISSmetrics, respectively, and I try to figure out why. Then, see if/how I can apply that to projects I am working on. When you find something that works (learning from yourself!), double down and ride that growth wave.

DOING: In order to be successful, you need to get in the trenches. There are so many people who like to “manage” or talk in theory, but that doesn’t accomplish anything. Don’t be afraid to fail. Or push publish. Or attempt something you are not an “expert” at. You have to start somewhere, and there is no better way to learn and succeed than by doing.

2) Success is most of the time a combination of factors, but what is the one very important area a person should focus on in order to learn how to acquire more customers online? Quantitative skills, coding skills, SEO, email marketing, etc.?

Every product/situation is different. Before spending time/money on marketing, figure out who your ideal customer/user is, where he/she “lives” online, and how you can provide them value.

3) Can you please share a couple of tips our users could use from day one in order to acquire more customers, and leads? Perhaps a couple of successful strategies you’ve used in the past?

Similar to my points above, figure out who your ideal customer is. What sex/age are they? What sites do they visit online? Where do they live? What problems are you solving for them?

For instance, if your customers are males between 25-35, in the US/UK, that spend all their time on GrowthHackers.com and Inbound.org, work for various CRO agencies, and you are helping them create better mobile content … THEN maybe create CRO content focusing on mobile case studies or ways to drive revenue on mobile and find ways to get to the top of GrowthHackers.com and Inbound.org.

This is the approach I took for a client in the Drupal space.

4) What is a customer acquisition channel you think is still under exploited at this time?

This is more of a subset of SEO, but lately I have been focusing a lot more on semantic SEO and structured data. I have been implementing structured data for several years, but it’s potential is greatly expanding (Google, Bing, Facebook, etc. are all working together on this) and I believe this is the future of SEO. I could go on and on about this, but I’d check out Bill Slawski. He is one of the top minds in this space.

5) Are you a believer of the “work-your-butt-off” approach when dealing with work, or you are just a super clever professional, given the enormous success you’ve achieved with your career?

Yes, you need to work both smart and hard. As I mentioned earlier, I think all successful people get in the trenches and actually DO the work.

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