Foundr Case Study

Foundr is a leading digital media and education company dedicated to empowering entrepreneurs with world-class business insights, courses, and content. Through in-depth interviews, expert-led training, and actionable resources, Foundr helps aspiring and established business owners build and scale successful ventures.

Key offerings include entrepreneurship courses, expert interviews, business growth strategies, and community-driven content designed to support founders at every stage of their journey.

Who Is Foundr?

I started working with Foundr at a unique time in their journey. The company had risen in popularity in recent years but was now looking to manage its marketing budget more tightly and ensure they were maximizing every penny.

The key objective was to ensure website traffic was maintained or grown whilst also keeping costs low and content quality high.

They needed a marketing consultant that could devise a unique content plan that took advantage of their vast database of content and business influencers, whilst also tackling content gaps from an SEO perspective.

Another objective was to continue running their famous entrepreneur magazine, producing bi-monthly editions for their loyal customer base. This involved interviewing successful founders, identifying trends from those conversations, and creating high-quality, topical, themed magazine pieces.

What Were The Goals of Our Collaboration?

As part of this partnership, it was my job to establish a marketing strategy that would ensure we maximised our budget, working closely with the Head of Marketing to execute our plan.

I was in charge of creating a detailed content calendar that included LinkedIn posts, SEO-friendly blogs, ghostwritten Founder pieces, and thought leadership content.

I also conducted a detailed competitor analysis, identifying topics that were bringing those brands traffic and other content ideas that we could tweak to suit our audience.

I was also tasked with creating the content for the Foundr bi-monthly digital magazine, which included interviewing successful entrepreneurs, writing up other interviews into insightful articles, and managing timeframes and other team member responsibilities to get each edition over the line.

My Role

One challenge that became apparent very early on in the project was the turnaround time between reaching out to a founder or entrepreneur for an interview and successfully conducting that interview.

As such, I had to quickly adapt the timeframes and expectations we were working to, giving us more breathing time to get this vital content completed on time.

Challenges and Pain Points

Strategy and Execution

One of the biggest selling points that made me decide to take on this job was the opportunity it presented to be at the forefront of Foundr’s content marketing plan.

That meant not only creating the overarching strategy, but also writing a wide variety of pieces as well, which is something I love getting involved in.

To ensure I managed my time effectively and achieved the results we desired, I split the project into three main phases.

As such, I broke the project down into a few key stages..

To kick off the project, I needed to pull together our content plan, focusing on any quick wins we can get, while also keeping future success in mind.
I started by running through Foundr’s incredible list of courses and entrepreneurs, identifying where we could extract unique, useful information that our readers would enjoy. This approach made up the large part of our topical authority, as I published these articles under the founders author title, highlighting to Google and our audience that the content is genuinely valuable and insightful, and had come from a reliable source.
Next, I used the Content Gap Analysis feature within Ahrefs to identify some SEO gaps we could tackle alongside those other pieces.
Lastly, I also identified potential entrepreneur interviews that could be used for thought leadership content.
All of that information was then collated into a detailed Google Sheet master spreadsheet that the whole team had access to, ensuring everyone had eyes on deadlines, progress, and performance.
Once our content strategy was in place, it was time to start rolling out the SEO-based content, while reaching out to potential founders for additional thought-provoking content.
I also set about writing and organizing the ghostwritten pieces for existing founders in our network, sharing with them for final sign off before publishing.
Once phase 2 was firmly in full flow, I turned my attention to thought-leadership based content. While this process takes much longer, the content is much more detailed, and is a great signal for Google that they should be sending more organic traffic to our site.