Acquisition costs will be tough to keep down. 

Churn will be high. 

You need to build sales pipeline quickly, and… You can’t pay for it. 

Imagine that *that* is your go-to-market customer profile upon starting a new job. 

For Dan Slagen (and for anyone serving the SMB), this was the reality. 

Dan joined ThriveHive in the midst of a product pivot a little over a year ago. 

Instead of offering an all-in-one marketing automation solution for small local businesses, ThriveHive was going all-in on local SEO. 

Only local SEO. 

The product and overall go-to-market approach would need to change. 

Most importantly, they needed to find cost-efficient channels for growing the business, as going upmarket is obviously out of the equation when your product is built on local SEO. 

So, paid was out. As was long-term SEO plays like blogging. 

As it turns out, Dan and ThriveHive found their area of high-leverage with a free SEO grader, partnerships to help distribute it, and….a TV show?