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Jas P

The Importance of Going Directly to Where Your Customers Are - 0 views

blog.kissmetrics.com/where-your-customers-are

customer development buzzerful

shared by Jas P on 14 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Launched in 2007, Airbnb has grown to become a $1 billion company. When Airbnb launched, they faced a tall task: How do we get people to learn about and trust our little-known website? In other words… How do we acquire users? So what approach did they take? Post on Craigslist! In a story posted by Dave Gooden, he finds out that Airbnb would contact people who were offering their homes to rent on Craigslist. The email would come from a random person (who was really from Airbnb) telling them of a “lovely site” known as Airbnb. Here’s a sample email:
Jas P

How Canadian Entrepreneurs Finance Their Startups - Techvibes.com - 0 views

www.techvibes.com/...ance-their-startups-2012-08-30

vc funding leanstartupyeg

shared by Jas P on 14 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • What do entrepreneurs use to fund their startup in its earliest stages? Themselves. According to Profit, 98% of those behind Canada's hottest startups fund their startup with their own capital. 62% continue to do this post-launch for growth capital (check out their infographic after the jump).
Jas P

Lessons Learned the Hard Way: Canadian Angel Investor Reveals His Million-dollar Mistak... - 0 views

www.techvibes.com/...ion-dollar-mistakes-2013-02-21

vc funding

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • 1. Good copywriting is underrated: Compelling copy is key to conversions and also making your brand human, friendly and fuzzy. Developers can’t write copy that well, that’s what marketers are for. Lesson: Great copy is a huge differentiator. It connects your audience to your brand and it has a direct impact on retention and engagement. “Copy is so important because it communicates your vision and helps you solve your products,” said Isenberg. “If you can’t do that right you’ll have little conversion rates and your not going to have a consistent brand image.”
  • 2. Influencers are a big deal: Scale users quickly by onboarding communities. Isenberg worked with schools, trading rooms and blogs. Influencers hold the key to these communities. Lesson: The best way to onboard influencers is the old school way by building a real relationship. Pick up a phone, email them or best yet, take them out for drinks. “I love sitting behind a computer because it’s my safe haven, but the truth is that relationships is key to getting these people involved,” he said.
  • 5. Distribution, distribution, distribution: Strategic alliances with partners helps create value-add for their user base and helps you get traffic (and SEO juice). Lesson: Embeddable widgets that allow users to distribute content across the web are particularly powerful when it’s the strategic partner’s content. “Find your most compelling feature that can be embeddable and do deals.”
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  • 6. Create exclusivity, urgency and scarcity: Who says fear of missing out doesn’t exist on the web? Invite-only increases hype and word of mouth and people like to be a part of an exclusive club. Lesson: Emulate a land grab by providing users the ability to claim "land" on a first-come-first-serve basis (ex: About.me's vanity URL registration before launch).
Jas P

[Companies with 8 figures of revenue] are worth many multiples of 8 figures to a... | H... - 0 views

news.ycombinator.com/item

pricing funding startup financial

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Let's say that you've built up, from essentially nothing, enough of a presence in your industry that you're selling $10 million a year of SaaS. That's only 10k accounts at a blended average of $100 a month -- far less if, like many SaaS companies, you make a significant whack of your money on custom enterprise deals that are not on the pricing page.
  • Now consider this company from the perspective of a Fortune 500 like, say, Intuit:1) They have software which exists.2) Their software creates clear value for customers. They have 10,000 people signing their praises and case studies up the wazoo. We know people will pay $100 a month for it -- we have copious, audited financial statements that prove that.
  • 3) Oh yeah, we're a Fortune 500 company. Launching a new product costs us $250 million and we could fail to produce something that both achieves technical success and produces any value for anyone anywhere. Assuming we do, selling to our built-in base of hundreds of thousands of customers is what we do best.Intuit can totally justify spending, say, $300 million to buy $20 million a year of revenue and the opportunity to 20x that by selling it to everyone who has ever heard of Quickbooks. Or mid 8 figures for something which has, say, a million a year in revenue.
Jas P

The Classy Way To Get Media Coverage For Your Startup - 0 views

onstartups.com/...Coverage-For-Your-Startup.aspx

pr

shared by Jas P on 30 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • The best will be in contact all the time (or at least well before they have a news story to pitch) in an attempt to figure out how to maximize the chances of something being picked up. It’s a wonder there aren’t more of them.
  • Sadly there aren’t and 80 - 90 percent of pitches I received followed the tired format of "Hi X, Company Y is launching a product next week and we thought it would be of interest to publication Z."
  • So here's an idea to try when getting media coverage for your startup - don't start by pitching the product. Start by pitching nothing.Clearly showing that you understand that a journalist doesn't just exist to publicize you is one of the fastest routes to his or her heart.
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  • The closest relationships journalists build are with people who can provide long-term value to them by offering something that isn't just self-promotion. Conversely, these tend to be the names you see cropping up again and again in the media.
  • Comment Having a network of people to offer opinion and analysis is critical for most journalists and it's a great way of getting your name out there, even when you don't have any news. So make sure your media contacts know who you are and what you're qualified to talk about by introducing yourself with a short biography and an offer to help.
Jas P

How To Turn Your Customers Into Marketers - 0 views

blog.kissmetrics.com/turn-customers-into-marketers

conversion customer development viral growth hacking

shared by Jas P on 29 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • So instead of launching a multi-million dollar ad campaign to bring in people, my gym implemented a growth hack. They turned customers into marketers by incentivizing them to bring in a friend. Then the friend possibly could become a member. The math works out for them as well. Let’s break it down: T-shirts ($3 each) x 2 = $6 Complimentary lunch = $0 A total of 100 members bring in a friend. The total cost of the promotion — $600. The result is that 3% of the 100 members convert their friends to members at $55 per month for each membership. The total ROI in the first month — $165/$600.
  • The promotional cost for each customer is very cheap. The t-shirt probably cost a few dollars, and the complimentary lunch probably was a gift certificate to a local restaurant that cost the gym $0.
  • Everything we’ll be discussing has one thing in common — incentives. Economists almost universally agree that people respond to them. Businesses should give their current and prospective customers an incentive to act on their offer. It has to benefit both parties or it won’t be nearly as effective. Not all the incentives are monetary, as we’ll see.
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  • Refer a Friend One of the most common ways businesses spread their product and increase their viral coefficient (how many customers your current customers bring in) is through the use of referrals.
  • Contests Contests help users get energetic about your brand and the thought of winning something. If you’re creative enough with your contest design, it can also get you some PR. Dropbox has gained significant PR by having their annual “Dropquest” contest. Just Google Dropquest and you’ll see all the articles written about it. As a simple contest idea, a business can encourage users to tweet a pre-set message. This message can be about a recent feature. At random, the business can pick a person who tweeted out the message. Be creative and offer a big-time prize. You may get some PR and customers to boot. Avoid giving out a prize that’s unrelated to your business. Instead of giving them a car or a television, give them an upgrade.
  • If you’re a Netflix customer, you’ve probably noticed their promotional ads that come with the envelope the DVD’s are sent in. Many of them encourage you to give Netflix to a friend as a gift. According to Netflix, 75% of their customers come from these recommendations.
  • If you run a SaaS company, put a Like or Tweet button next to new feature announcements. You might be able to take advantage of user excitement and get them to share it with friends and followers. If your business has a blog, attach the Like and Tweet buttons next to every post. All of these social media buttons help get your product in front of more eyeballs and more prospective customers.
  • If I give this card to a friend, they receive a 25% discount. By spreading these products, I’m helping my friends by giving them a discount.
  • Your customers likely know a lot of people who are like them. This is especially true if you’re a SaaS company.
  • a customer could give a friend a trial of your product. So the friend receives the trial, and the customer gets some sort of discount or offer.
Jas P

How to be Successful Pitching Writers Without Really Trying - 0 views

www.onboardly.com/...-writers-without-really-trying

pr

shared by Jas P on 22 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • While it’s important to dig up any relevant dirt that is needed to identify them as the right person for the job, it isn’t necessary to reveal to them that you know they’ve written twelve stories in the past year on e-commerce. They already know. They wrote them.
  • Don’t focus on the bells and whistles of your product – concentrate on how your product or service will benefit their readers.
  • If you are planning to pitch media leading up to a launch or company milestone, always have the necessary resources available should journalists ask for it. This includes an up-to-date media release and a media kit with appropriate assets such as founder bios and photos, one pager/fact sheet and product images/logos. Be available for interviews and answer all email inquiries in a timely manner.
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  • Email them simply to introduce yourself and ask for nothing in return. We think that this step is one of the most important as it allows you to build a relationship with the writer without asking for anything in retur
  • . It may not be enough to get the story covered but it will ensure your email gets noticed.
  • Ask yourself – how would most companies pitch this writer? Whatever answer you decide, do the opposite. Writers are pitched a hundred times a day and typically the pitch is always the same. What is your hook and why are you different won’t always cut it.
  • Get straight to the point and tell them why your startup is unique, why customers will buy your product and how your product is disrupting current trends
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