Growing a YC-backed Startup BxBlue in Brazil – Roberto Braga (GMT040)

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How did YC-backed startup BxBlue, which is based out of Brazil, get their first customer using SEO within a month? In this episode, I chat with Roberto Braga, CMO of BxBlue, on an in-depth look of their SEO strategy, his experience and biggest learnings with being part of Y-Combinator and the challenges of growing a startup in Brazil.

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What You’ll Learn in This Episode
  1. How the BxBlue team were able to get their first customer using SEO within a month
  2. How to rank higher in search engines than a large company like a bank
  3. Accelerating the traction of articles and content that are performing well
  4. The challenges with growing a startup in Brazil
My Takeaways from This Episode
  1. Really get into the mind of your ideal customer. Find out what they’re asking. Talk to them to find out what questions they’re looking for. This was his first step for doing keyword research. It doesn’t have to be complicated
  2. Do things that don’t scale. I like how their first few customers, they would take their loan and physically walk over to the bank. This reminds of Tony Hsieh with Zappos. He sent cold-emails. These are things that don’t scale. This maximizes learning, which is what’s most valuable in the early stage.
  3. Add fuel to things that already work. I don’t know about you, but I’m the kind of guy who when I see something new and shiny I jump to that. For roberto, his team found the articles that were performing well in terms of SEO and running ads to those.
About Roberto Braga

Roberto is a co-founder bxblue, a marketplace for personal loans in Brazil backed by Y Combinator (S17). He leads bxblue’s user acquisition, marketing and growth strategy. Before, Roberto founded IPe, anetwork security company.

Show Notes
  • 2:50

    Roberto’s career journey (from engineer to 3x founder)

  • 8:46

    How was YC for the BxBlue team

  • 13:30

    What were their biggest learnings from YC

  • 14:45

    How did SEO become BxBlue biggest acquisition channel?

  • 18:20

    How they did keyword research

  • 19:44

    How did they handle competition for targeting branded search terms

  • 21:12

    It only took them 1 month to get their first customer using SEO.

  • 23:41

    Early on, they were publishing 2 articles a day. They’ve scaled that up now to 10 articles per week.

  • 23:46

    How they are leveraging video to rank higher on search engines

  • 24:46

    How they’re distributing their videos right now

  • 25:28

    Their process for writing 10 articles a week

  • 26:46

    What was their backlink strategy

  • 27:57

    What percentage of their traffic is from organic traffic

  • 28:49

    They boosted popular articles on Facebook and Instagram

  • 30:24

    How they created hyper-specific audiences on Facebook for ads

  • 34:09

    What experiment did they run that didn’t work

  • 36:23

    Any other channels they are testing out right now.

  • 36:25

    What new channel acquisition are they testing out right now

  • 38:04

    What are the biggest challenge when growing a startup in Brazil?

  • 40:41

    Roberto’s 3 tips for marketers early to mid of their career

  • 44:00

    My three takeaways from thi episode

Links

Music By The Passion HiFi www.thepassionhifi.com.

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