Startup Circle: How is ShoutMeLoud driving digital transformation in startups and MSMEs?

The journey to digital transformation is not easy. If you are relatively new to the world of online business, you need a digital marketing agency. A digital marketing agency is different from your traditional marketing agency in that they are typically focused on results-based marketing in the digital world. ShoutmeLoud, one of the pioneers in the sector, tells us how the transformation journey can be one of the best decisions of your life.

The company caters to a wide aspect of digital marketing. It includes SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, and Mobile Marketing. 12 years into the industry, read what ShoutMeLoud Founder Harsh Agarwal has to say about the startup and the industry.

What is Shoutmeloud about? Tell us about the team.

Shoutmeloud is a new-age digital learning platform to enable people to grow as a blogger and digital marketer. To put things in perspective, it’s an endeavour, an attempt to liberate people from the rut of 9-5 job and encourage them to become their own boss. The website provides tips for somebody looking to start their blog for the first time. Besides, Shoutmeloud teaches WordPress, SEO, and Social Media Marketing techniques. Overall, it is a resource for everything digital that works in today’s time and can help people begin their journey towards earning a living through blogging.

Since its inception, ShoutMeLoud has financially empowered more than 900,000 readers across the globe with tools of blogging and digital marketing. ShoutMeLoud revolves around transforming the online presence of companies ranging from start-ups and SMEs to established brands and aspiring bloggers.

As for the team, it is made up of like-minded bloggers. When anyone sets up a company, the biggest challenge is putting together the right team made of the right people. Your foundation is what determines the future of your venture and the success of the whole plan. Since we personally do not feel the need of having a physical office and believe that for people like us who work in the creative field and require a fluid working style, the remote team works the best. Therefore, we have about 3-4 members who work on various aspects of the ShoutDreams Blog network.

How did you come up with the idea?

I started blogging just for fun back in September 2008 and started writing about things I knew. Professional bloggers have a lifestyle quite unlike most people. I like to call it the ‘boss-free life’. This is the kind of life where you don’t wait till the end of the month to get your salary so that you can do things that you want. Bloggers have a level of work freedom and flexibility that most people can’t even imagine.

I realized that this could transform my life completely. This is when the idea of starting my own blog came to me. Thereby, I taught myself everything about blogging and earning money from it. And ShoutMeLoud was founded – a blog about blogging. After that, it became my personal mission to pass on my knowledge of blogging to as many people as possible so that they get involved in a more meaningful pursuit in life than working just for the sake of money.

What are the services that you provide?

Shoutmeloud is a digital pioneer envisioned to train a new generation of entrepreneurs who will leverage digital media to its full potential. To this end, it provides a wide gamut of services such as SEO, World-class Blogging, Social Media Marketing, Podcasting, Email Marketing, and Productivity consultation. Besides, we also offer a range of case studies, reviews, the latest digital trends, lifestyle guidelines, and a huge array of digital services to its clients. At ShoutMeLoud, we curate e-books for all levels, right from beginner to advanced. Professionals wishing to deepen their knowledge can download these e-books to instantly start reading and learning.

We publish high-quality video content created by top educators meant to help our audience master all digital marketing strategies. We further provide WordPress themes, plugins and resources for people to work smart and swift.

Are the services only for the B2C? How it's different from your competitors?

Shoutmeloud caters to both B2C and B2B segments. The company is driven by its ideology aimed at transforming the online presence of companies right from start-ups and SMEs to established brands and aspiring bloggers. The company remains true to its taglines - ‘boosting your brand online’ and ‘disclosing proven techniques to fulfil your digital ambitions’.

Certain qualities make us distinct in the industry and certain tenets we stick to:

1. We change lives by empowering people to generate a source of income that meets their needs.
2. We teach anyone how to leverage digital media and platforms.
3. We curate everything under one roof for our audience to master the ever-growing digital tools.
4. We inspire confidence and encourage individuals to find their niche.
5. We pave the way for creators to work smart and be efficient, and we make sure that we share our learnings with our audience.

How do you monetise?

Some ways through which we monetize are:

1. Affiliate marketing
2. ShoutUniversity: A structured online university to learn all things digital
3. eBooks: We have a list of eBooks that sell on Amazon and our ShoutMeLoud store.
4. Featured reviews: We review some cutting-edge digital products, which in turn brings almost 5% of revenue every month.

What is your business/market growth?

We now have over 1 million active subscribers, and their testimonials reflect how happy they are with our offerings. Our premium product ShoutUniversity is pretty new and has to pay customers who are enjoying our digital content offerings thoroughly. We get close to 1 million page views and about 86% of them discover us via a search engine. Thanks to push-notification technology, we could reach 190K subscribers in real-time.

The pandemic has affected every sector. Has it increased your revenue?

The current economic slump on account of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic hasn’t spared any sector of the economy. It has caused even developed nations to lag in their growth. Digital marketing is one of those few industries that has a steady momentum despite the current situation. We have been doing considerably good with the traffic increasing exponentially because many people sought upskilling while cooped up at home. Collaborations were also an important factor in maintaining a brand presence.

What are your Post-Covid plans?

Our primary focus is on scaling up the manpower. Although our team has been growing consistently, we would nevertheless be happy to have a few more like-minded people with us. We are also looking at doubling our current Social Media Marketing plans to reach more diverse sets of audiences. This would mean increasing the spending on social media tools as we are aiming to raise awareness about our offerings and the brand as a whole.

Funding

We are a bootstrapped venture. Instead of raising funds, we use the latest in digital marketing technologies to monetize our online property.