Core strategy from the moment Tim joined in 2015: publish expert-written, non-outsourced content and original data studies to make Ahrefs "discoverable" and build backlinks/authority, rather than relying on ads or a sales team.

“Create content that will make you “discoverable.””

Content marketing increases the number of chances for people to find the brand and develop affinity for it before ever seeing a sales pitch.

“One of the superpowers of content marketing is increasing the ‘surface area’ of your business.”

Tim started the Ahrefs YouTube channel in his first month at the company (2015). By the time of the 2024 podcast retrospective, YouTube was one of several Ahrefs channels he described as being measured in the millions.

“Millions of views on our YouTube channel”

Tim frames the channel's payoff (a founder-adjacent, not literally founder, source) as the result of years of consistent, high-effort publishing rather than a single viral moment.

Rather than treating word of mouth as something purely outside their control, Ahrefs tried to fuel it deliberately: keep the product itself excellent, keep customers happy, and give happy customers specific, memorable reasons to repeat to others why Ahrefs stands out.

“We’re not as big as some of the other brands in our market, but we work hard to keep our customers happy”

Tim's underlying thesis is that no marketing campaign can compete with unpaid, authentic endorsement from genuinely happy users, so the product itself becomes the primary marketing engine.

“It’s just such a good product that I can’t help but talk about it.”

As one of several promotion tactics for the free lead-gen course (alongside email, Twitter, Reddit and paid ads), Tim published it on Product Hunt.

“Published on ProductHunt”

As part of promoting the same free course, Tim posted to r/Entrepreneur.

“Posted on r/Entrepreneur”

The Reddit post specifically produced little response, in Tim's own account.

“not much engagement”

A multi-person production effort (research, editing, thumbnails, transcripts, clipping) built around long-form video interviews; reached 10,000 downloads after roughly 3 months and 10 episodes, which Tim considered a disappointingly small number given Ahrefs' other channels are measured in the millions.

“It took us 3 months, 10 episodes, and a TON of promotion to get there.”

Tim values the podcast for branding and audience trust-building, even though he's explicit that it isn't a sales channel.

“A podcast is a great tool for branding and building trust with your target audience.”

Tim states directly that he doesn't expect the podcast episodes to generate sales, unlike SEO content which keeps converting for years.

“But I’m not expecting any sales to come from the episodes that we’ve published so far.”