Oliver Meakings

Senja.io

Co-founder of Senja.io. Collect more, better testimonials, manage them, and share them everywhere.

Boostrapped indie SaaS with over 15,000 users.

Co-Founder

Roast My Landing Page

What have you missed on your landing page? Let me show you: https://www.roastmylandingpage.com

Founder

Olly Meakings Marketing

Currently and recently working with London-based bootstrapped and seed-funded startups Corona Test Centre, SeatPlan, NailBuff, Clayton, Ferly, Noodle, Mindful Team, Lifetise, User Replay, The SaaaSy Co, Canopius and CharlieHR.

Freelance Marketing Consultancy

Lifetise

* Ongoing early-stage startup consultancy
* Advising on product and marketing strategy

Freelance: Senior Marketing & Product Consultant

Mindful Team

CharlieHR

* Content strategy and distribution
* Building an audience for The Workplace: https://blog.charliehr.com

Freelance: Content at Charlie HR

Canopius Group

Freelance: Senior Marketing Consultant

Rank

* Oversaw brand refinement for Bonkers Bingo
* Creation of strategy and wireframes for microsite build
* Creation of content strategy proposal

Freelance: Senior Product & Marketing Strategy Consultant [via BIGGER.]

Adventure Film Festival

* Communications and Marketing Director
* Planned and delivered complete marketing and digital strategy
* Partner engagement: Google, Meridian Line, Outside TV, Zeal Optics, Black Diamond
* Managed distributed team of 4: Designer, Videographer, Web Dev and Content Executive
* Introduced Early Bird messaging, selling $1000s of extra tickets

Freelance: Marketing Director

Maximum Pop!

* Managed distributed team of 12: content development, design and sales
* Delivered market-leading digital Gen Z product
* Created, delivered and measured product and marketing strategy
* Grew monthly unique visitors from 200,000 to 1,000,000
* Added 500,000 Facebook likes in 6 months
* Delivered 125,000 quiz plays each month
* Product managed the launch of a suite of products:
- 3 new web builds
- 4 Messenger Bot builds
- 2 new social profiles
* Clients included: Capital FM, Keds, HarperCollins, Egmont, Simon & Schuster, Nickelodeon, River Island

Founder &  Publisher

💪 Collect more + better video and text social proof, free. My SaaS: https://www.senja.io
Helping founders, freelancers, creators and sales people get more sign ups and close more deals.

🔥 I've roasted over 900 landing pages: https://www.roastmylandingpage.com
Yep, the original and the best landing page roasting service. Nobody does it better.

Co-founder of Senja.io. Collect, manage and share your testimonials.

The UX job market stinks right now! 🙅🏻‍♂️ 💩 😵

That's why today I'm sharing my Top 10 Secrets to Getting a UX Job During the Worst Tech Job Downturn Since The Great Recession (aka the Amy Santee System™) FOR FREE!

Say see ya to resumes!
Adios to case study presentations!
And boy bye to never ending networking with randos!

If you're tired of doing the same old thing, give some of these new tactics a try instead! 

Whether you go for one or all of them, these methods work for everyone, no matter your experience or UX specialty. But don't take my word for it, just ask my clients about the results of working with a career coach who is definitely not a random grifter scamming desperate people for their yet-to-be-hard-earned dollars. 

💫✨ It's time to invest in your future with The Amy Santee System™.*

1. Build a strong foundation for your search with a one-hour psychic reading from your favorite provider (tip at least 20% for better results). Don't have one? Check the referrals on my website and help me get that sweet affiliate kick-back!

2. To manifest your goals, buy my Job Interview Crystals set on Etsy. Place them around your house, in your bed, really anywhere (hey, it's a free-ish country). Make sure to pet and sing to them daily. Get a free Networking Attraction Essential Oils Set with every purchase!

3. Every morning before you log onto this god forsaken website, you must align your body, mind, and soul by taking an ivermectin supplement with a sip of hexagonal water from your Stanley Cup, but only if it's the Pink or Cherry color (all other colors are for losers). Knock on wood three times to complete the ritual.

4. Always wear your ionized bracelet to every job interview, even if it's on Zoom! Unfortunately mine are currently sold out so just grab one from AliExpress. 

5. Do a body swap with the hiring manager's bff from the good old days at Meta (who we know they're going to give the job to anyway). Now you're pretty much golden.

6. Hop over to Hang 🤙 Xu's website and grab his fantastic book "Me, U, and UX" for just $299.99 (or 6 payments of $66.66). Hang is one of the best UX designers out there who does the actual job and doesn't just talk about it on social media. 

7. Write “ecneirepxe resu” in blood on a mirror at the Overlook Hotel during winter. Alternatively, you can opt to spend 25 years at the Black Lodge, after which the job market will either be back to normal or non-existent due to advances in AI.

Oops! There isn't enough room for tips 8-10, but these should do the trick. Good luck!

*I make no express or implied warranties about my advice. By reading this post, you agree that I am not liable for any indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages, that may arise from these actions. You agree to waive, release, and discharge me from any claim or liability of any kind, now known or later discovered, arising from your questionable personal life choices.

Senja has hit 1,114 paying customers

$25,000 MRR

Firstly, wow.

To bootstrap a business from nothing to one that serves over 1,100 creators, sales people and businesses is genuinely an incredible feeling.

And, unexpectedly for me, working on the same project day-in-day-out has been deeply rewarding.

Every single day we improve and refine our product, our marketing and the ways we work together.

In fact we re-worked nearly every screen in the app this year and the product is shining.

And more and more customers are seeing success with Senja - whether that's collecting more testimonials, scrapping their outdated 'proof' spreadsheet, or seeing actual increases in conversion on critical pages.

But it's been really tough.

The last 3 months have been exhausting.

One incredibly tough week I worked over 100 hours.

Scaling to address our growing customer base, and feeling the pressure of '1,000 bosses' has played havoc with my mental health.

I'm good at growing businesses, but I am a long way from the 4-hour workweek or sense of freedom other indiemakers sometimes talk about.

The reasons I push myself so hard are complex, but is ultimately fuelled by my constant fear of f**king it up.

I feel that I am closer than I have ever been to a business that I can be proud of, and that gives me the financial freedom I desperately crave.

But that fills me with dread because I've been close to this type of success before and dropped the ball, or given up, or just screwed it.

For now, it's time to take a break, and reflect on what's next for me and the business. 

But before that, a small proud moment for everything me and Wilson Wilson have already achieved.

#buildinpublic

Expert: "Add customer faces to your landing page testimonials"

Does it work?

We've been telling our customers to add their customers' photos to their testimonials since we started Senja.

It felt like common sense

But does adding faces actually improve your testimonials' performance?

We decided to find out

We ran an AB test on our landing page

The control was a testimonial widget without customer faces

The test was the same testimonials with the faces of the customer who left them

Senja now has testimonial analytics, so we're able to review the time spent viewing each widget

The result?

A 40% increase in the time per view on the widget

From 5.9 seconds to 8.2 seconds per visitor

So from this experiment, we can conclude...

Faces hold your visitors' attention and increase consumption of your testimonials

This is the first of many tests we want to run on testimonials with our new analytics.

Follow me to find out what else we learn along the way.

Also, Simon Høiberg, Thomas McKinlay and Jakub Linowski I think you'll like this.

Olly Meakings

Helping creators collect social proof automatically

We just hit $26,000 MRR 🚀

What's next?

A big shift in focus for my marketing work

Senja serves creators extremely well

They can collect video and text testimonials from customers, clients, and sponsors

They can add them to their websites, post them to socials and add them to emails

They can create and share Walls of Love and view online links

And measure how they perform

But, creators have limited budgets and tend to 'set and forget' testimonials

We've done a lot of work educating creators on using testimonials more often, and more intelligently.

But we're aware that there are potential buyers we don't need to educate

Who uses testimonials all-day-every-day?

And in a way that's close to the money?

SALES PEOPLE

Sales teams are constantly using social proof to open more conversations and close more deals

Testimonials, case studies, awards and accreditations

And

Sales teams require multiple seats

And usually have more money

After a long discussion with Wilson Wilson we're going to spend April trying to establish relationships with sales leads

And validate if sales teams could be a good audience for Senja

That's having as many conversations as possible

Exploring product enhancements to serve their use cases

And identify the opportunity and challenges for us as a business

All while continuing to serve creators

So, a massive change for us

But I'll continue to share what I am learning with #buildinpublic

If anyone can connect me with sales people for a chat, please tag them below!

Time to get real

MRR is revenue not profit

We're closing in on $30,000 MRR at Senja and we're really happy

But what do we actually pay ourselves?

This month me and Wilson Wilson paid ourselves $3,700 each

That's about 1/4 of what I was earning from my productized service Roast My Landing Page

So where does the money go?

The rest was spent on fees, (our new) developers, marketing, affiliate commissions, support, tools, hosting and platform expenses.

We're in it to win, so we're re-investing aggressively back into the business

But acquiring customers is VERY expensive

Our profitability increases every month, but there's much more to what's happening than the graphs we post to #buildinpublic

$0 - $1,000 MRR → 1 year

$26,000 - $27,000 MRR → 6 days

And even more unbelievably, I took a day off this week

#buildinpublic

We need help with SEO ✨

We need a freelancer to

→ Run twice-monthly reports on search performance
→ Suggest 12 SEO tasks /month
→ →→ optimize, write, internal link, backlink, build
→ Execute 4-6 tasks, and oversee the rest
→ Monitor performance
→ Build / edit directly in Framer
→ Work in Linear

Who should we speak to?

#SEO

This is our most aggressive marketing move so far

Customers can now one-click migrate from our competitors

Or most common support request "can you help me migrate"

So Wilson Wilson set out to speed up the process with automation

And then we decided to surface it within the product

Users can one-click migrate from TT within our Import screen

What do you think? Tacky, smart or a bit of both?

#saas #marketing 

Christopher Nguyen's Passionfroot sponsor page is incredible 👀

And yours can be too if you watch my roast

In it, I explain how refinements to your Sponsor Me page can lead to more enquiries, more bookings and more revenue

I explore clarity, the use of bundles, focusing on keys offers, social proof and 'show not tell'.

Thanks to Christopher Nguyen for allowing me to roast his page, and Jennifer Phan and Jens Joseph Mannanal for creating PF

Justin Moore might be a good one for you too!

#conversionrateoptimization #creatorsponsorship

Outbound is REALLY tough

But social proof like testimonials and case studies work like magic

Use it to close more leads

Senja now works inside Instantly.ai ✨

Allowing you to find a relevant video or text testimonial or case study straight away

Share it with your lead to build trust and move the conversation forward, faster

Here's how it works

Thanks for Wilson Wilson for his hard work on this!

What do you think Raul Kaevand Nils Schneider Oleg Tomenko?

#prospecting #outboundprospecting #salesprospecting

Your LinkedIn recommendations are incredible social proof 

Here's how you can pull them into Senja

And then share them as links, widgets or images

New on Senja today! #buildinpublic

LANDING PAGE VIDEOS ARE NOT SET AND FORGET

When did you last check the playrate of your landing page video?

For most people, the answer is... never

Here's a 30 second landing page fix for more video plays

Test a new video thumbnail and measure the increase (or decrease) in play rate

In this experiment for Roast My Landing Page I used AB testing in Wistia to compare two thumbnails

The first was a still from the video

The second version was the same video still but I drew on annotations

(the video was a roast, so annotations brought the concept to life)

That's it. 

A 60 second edit

The result was an increase in the play rate from 4% to 13.2%

That's a 230% increase in plays.

Run that across the year and you'll see how valuable the test is.

Now go and review your video play rate!

I share landing page and SaaS conversion tips every day on LinkedIn.

Please repost if this was helpful or gave you an idea to try ♻️

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