Scott Kurtz: An Inbound Marketer and He Doesn't Even Know It

This blog post is based off of David Garland's interview with Scott Kurtz on his HubSpot sponsored web series " The Rise to the Top. " You can watch the full interview below.

Scott Kurtz is an American cartoonist most well-known for his daily comic strip PvP . PvP, also known as Player vs Player, is a webcomic focused on video game and "nerd culture." His comic gets over 100,000 unique visitors per day, and his path to success has been an unorthodox one. 

The typical route for up and coming cartoonists used to be to prepare a syndication package of about 6-8 weeks of dailies and a couple Sundays with a cover letter. You would then send this package out to the syndication companies and pray. The on-going joke amongst comics was that once you had enough rejection letters to wallpaper your apartment, then you knew it was your time to make it.

Kurtz decided to approach the comic business in a different manner. He had already prepared syndicate packages and had a large backlog of comics to pull from. Instead of trying to break in through a syndicate, he decided to begin publishing his strips on his website. Since the gamers that were his target audience were also the people most likely to be spending time on the internet Kurtz had a leg up on most cartoonists. Kurtz attributes a lot of his early success to being in the right place at the right time, but there are lots of Inbound Marketing principles hidden in his story that marketers can learn from.

Marketing Takeaways:

Consistently Create Content

One of the aspects of Kurtz's story that sticks out to me was that he already had a large amount of comic strips produced and ready to be published. Because of his need to create these syndication packages he had a backlog of content that he was able to consistently post when he decided to start publishing online.

Make Your Content Easy to Share

The internet makes content extremely easy to share. Kurtz took advantage of this and continues to do so today. He leverages a wide array of social media services that allow his fans to share his comics easily and quickly.

Be Authentic and Know Your Audience

Kurtz had a very good idea of who was reading his comics and who his audience was. He was already immersed in the video game culture, and because of this, the comics he drew were authentic. This caused his fans to feel connected to Kurtz and his comics in a way that can't be faked.

What do you think were some of the reasons for Kurtz's online success? Leave them in the comments below.