MarketSplash

We launched MarketSplash in 2020 as an experiment to test and refine our strategies for building a successful publication. Our concept? Create and scale a digital marketing and design publication.

Vlad Shvets

Empact Partners Founder & CEO

The goal was to validate various SEO and content assumptions through consistent publishing. Within a year, we grew from 0 to 10K monthly views by publishing just a couple of articles a week.

2021

The Big Migration

MarketSplash was not our only experiment. We bought the domains for three other sites, all focused on different niches.

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At the start of 2021, we merged these sites into MarketSplash. Why? MarketSplash was doing better than the other sites, and we wanted to consolidate our focus. It was important to follow a good playbook for the migration. We didn't just merge the sites—we carefully moved and improved the content by:

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This approach yielded the positive results we wanted.

Vlad Shvets

Empact Partners Founder & CEO

I remember we covered the topic Adobe Illustrator Alternatives on both MarketSplash and UX Lady. In both cases, we ranked on SERP 2. But once we migrated, the article moved to the first page, even though no major changes were made to the actual content.

The combined topical authority from migrating the sites and additional backlinks led to:

1. Increased traffic (25K monthly views)

2. Improved rankings across the board.

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Content Expansion

With the successful migration, we ramped up our editorial team and increased our posting frequency, focusing on:

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This resulted in exponential traffic growth from 25K to 50K monthly views.

Theodore Cipolla

SaaS Media Consultant

There is a wealth of fascinating and valuable academic research in the marketing sphere, such as the concept of marketing myopia. Our goal was to present these insights to our audience in an engaging and actionable manner.

Localization Starts

We decided to localize our content into six languages:

1. Spanish

2. Portuguese

3. French

4. Italian

5. German

6. Russian

These languages were the easiest to handle, with no complex characters, allowing us to scale the process smoothly. While there was a lot of manual work involved, we used machine-learning tools to assist with translations and then spent time doing thorough edits and formatting.

Vlad Shvets

Empact Partners Founder & CEO

A big part of getting localization right was the technical side. The hreflang HTML attribute needs to be properly implemented as it tells Google which language and country you are targeting for a specific page. These tags must be on all pages with language and regional variants, not just the homepage.

2022

Localization To 21 Languages

Building on our initial success, we expanded localization to 21 languages, following the same playbook with equally impressive results.

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What we took from this:

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Juxhina Malaj

Senior SaaS Media Consultant | MarketSplash Senior Editor

Quality editing of localized content should be part of your process. For example, we had a case with the name “Procreate,” where translation tools turned it into a verb when it was meant to be a noun. So, yeah, those checks are super important.

Acquisitions

In 2022, we acquired Product Tribe, Email Stats Center, and Shopify Nation, bringing new content and topical authority to MarketSplash.

• Product Tribe: Already had existing content that we improved before migrating.
• Email Stats Center and Shopify Nation: Required complete content recreation due to not having rights to the original content.

These acquisitions helped MarketSplash grow from 50k to 250k monthly views.

Vlad Shvets

Empact Partners Founder & CEO

The three acquisitions we made in 2022, along with improving the content and migrating it to MarketSplash, worked out great. We quickly grew to 250K monthly views. Again, the power of taking an existing domain and improving the content or giving it a new brand and life was a super effective strategy.

Monetization 

During this phase, we ramped up our monetization efforts by:

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Shanal Govender

Senior SaaS Media Consultant | MarketSplash Chief Editor

Our monetization efforts gave MarketSplash a big revenue boost. We did it in a strategic way that kept our readers happy, placing display ads on specific content to avoid disruption. For affiliate marketing, we went a step further by partnering with the right brands. This not only made us successful with affiliate marketing but also got more clicks for the brands and helped us negotiate better rewards.

2023

Diversifying Our Content

We diversified MarketSplash’s content focus beyond digital marketing and design by introducing a tutorial subfolder with how-to articles on a range of topics and implementing a finance dictionary subfolder to cater to a broader audience.

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Vlad Shvets

Empact Partners Founder & CEO

This diversification led to a huge growth in traffic (250K to 800K monthly views). We rode this high for most of 2023 until … CRASH!

The Big Crash

We messed up! After Google’s Helpful Content Update and subsequent algorithm changes, our traffic dropped fast.

Why we were hit:

Vlad Shvets

Empact Partners Founder & CEO

We messed up, and it required a strategic rethink of our approach. The MarketSplash experiment entered yet another chapter, and the knowledge we gained was invaluable—not just for us but for our partners building their own SaaS Publications.

2024

MarketSplash Relaunch

Our plan is to relaunch MarketSplash with a renewed focus as a SaaS GTM Publication.

• Content will be authored by Empact Partners internal team and external experts.
• Laser-focus on SaaS marketing and sales, a professional niche audience with which we have tons of experience.
• No more affiliate marketing or display ads.

The new MarketSplash will focus on delivering the highest-quality, expert content for SaaS GTM professionals and founders. Stay tuned to see what will happen next.

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