Internet marketing insights with all-around marketer Dimitris Vlachos

Hey people, as I have written in the past, it is possible to crack $1 Million by building an Online Business. The first step is always to acquire the skills upon which you will build the foundation of your business. For this reason, from times to times, I will be featuring here a series of AMA-style mini-interviews with people who are successful in their industry and will provide insights on how to get started. Most of them originally appeared on the private FB group I have co-founded named “Online Capitalists”. AMA stands for “Ask Me Anything” and is a concept originally appearing on Reddit. Please join the group for valuable information on online entrepreneurship and wealth building.

Today, I am really excited to present to you an AMA featuring Dimitris Vlachos!

Dimitris is currently Head of Marketing in an up and coming startup located in Athens, Greece called Movinhand. He is an all-around internet marketer, with SEO, outreach and Facebook Ads being his strong points.

Currently he focuses on the topic of customer retention by testing different onboarding tactics and event-based customer engagement.

Dimitris is one of the guys that I provide as counter-example when people tell me that they cannot get started with online projects because “they are not good with computers”, “they have not studied something similar” and “they are not technology savvy”.

He started with zero knowledge in the industry and managed to rise solely via self-education.

In the process, he has been mentored and worked with big names like Matthew Barby.

To close, let me say that Dimitris is going to launch an SEO course this fall with Hubspot’s Global Head of Growth & SEO.

So, what questions do you have for him? Shoot away below!

Question (by Ilias Tsagklis)

Hey Dimitris, let me start… I know you are very keen on Copywriting.. What are 3 resources that you would recommend on the topic ?

Answer (by Dimitris)

Hey Ilias! Thanks for the Intro! I will list three of my favorites:

1) Kopywriting Kourse
2) Advertising Secrets of the Written Word
3) Breakthrough Advertising

I would start with this order 🙂

Question (by Roberto Zanon)

Hey Dimitris, here’s my question as well.

Do you have like a “list of top 10” let’s say articles/resources for anyone that wants to promote his products (digital or physical) through Facebook advertising?

Answer (by Dimitris)

For someone who wants to promote his products I would recommend just this article (I hate analysis/paralysis) 🙂

http://www.nateliason.com/lifestyle-business/ (I read it almost every day)

When you have a product and you think that Facebook Ads is a good way to start promoting it, I would recommend :

1) The Legend: http://www.jonloomer.com/

2) Amazing Post: http://growthpilots.com/how-to-boost-facebook-ad-performance-with-dark-posts/

P.S I wouldn’t focus on Facebook technicalities until you have something decent to sell

Question (by Kyriakos Liakopoulos)

Hi Dimitris, I would like to know from your experience, what kind of products/services do you think are best suited for Social-media marketing? Have you seen any products/services that would be better off trying other means of marketing, or is it all about execution in the end? Thanks, looking forward for your SEO course!

Answer (by Dimitris)

Well, I don’t have that much of experience in many industries. In the recruiting industry, there is a ton of opportunity because there are millions of passive job seekers that even if they do have a job, they are interested in other job opportunities.

In my opinion, if you are B2C, Facebook is the ultimate weapon. When we tried it for B2B it didn’t work at all.

I really think that there are tons of other means of marketing that we don’t focus on (and that we should).

Here are some examples:

Fast Results with SEO: https://www.matthewbarby.com/seo-campaign-blueprint/

Referral Marketing: http://www.referralcandy.com/blog/47-referral-programs/

Influencer Marketing: https://sumome.com/stories/influencer-marketing-super-connector

Bottom Line: I don’t think traditional marketing methods (Facebook, Adwords etc.) are always the best way to start, especially when you are just starting out and you don’t have that much of a budget.

Hope that answers your question

Question (by Alex Chaidaroglou)

Hey Dimitris, here are my questions:

1) What are the best link building methods?

2) How do you currently acquire business customers? Is it the same way you did in the earlier days?

Answer (by Dimitris)

Straight to the point as always 🙂

1) We use a lot of sponsored posts/guest posts that we can manipulate the anchor text and once we run out of budget we run infographic campaigns and link building with images. It works pretty well, so far.

We manage to build around 15 referring domains per post which seem to be enough for page#1.

Ahrefs has this cool feature where you can write a keyword and it shows you approximately how many referring domains you should build, in order to rank. (In your face Moz)

2) We have a robust sales process due to this amazing tool: http://close.io/ and we get a lot of leads from Adwords as well.

In the early days, we were far less efficient because we didn’t have neither the knowledge nor the tools to streamline and automate the process.

Question (by Nasos Psarrakos)

Hey Dimitris happy to have you here. Here is my question:

What is your best channel for finding early adopters for a product? What did you do in your case?
(Mainly asking for products being rather in MVP stage and starting out to do some customer development)

Answer (by Dimitris)

It depends on the product: Let’s take a nutrition app that helps people to build their diet as an example:)

I would use a combination of Facebook Ads and referral marketing (to build anticipation) in order to test if there is any demand.

I found this article particularly useful: https://blog.gleam.io/prelaunch/

Question (by Constantine Kalivas)

Hi Dimitris, thanks for the AMA.

What are the best reads (blog posts or books or papers) on referral and viral marketing that you’ve had for the last months?

Answer (by Dimitris)

I don’t have that much of experience in viral marketing. I am trying to figure this shit out as well:/

2 blogs caught my attention though:

1) http://www.referralcandy.com/blog/

2) https://blog.gleam.io/

Alright, that was fun! I would like to thank Dimitris for his time and valuable insights! Stay tuned for some more AMAs coming up! Cheers!