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Jas P

Reaching the Startup Holy Grail: Product-Market Fit | Michael Karnjanaprakorn - 0 views

www.mikekarnj.com/...-holy-grail-product-market-fit

startup idea validation

shared by Jas P on 10 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. You can always feel when product/market fit isn’t happening. The customers aren’t quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn’t spreading, usage isn’t growing that fast, press reviews are kind of “blah”, the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close. And you can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account.
Jas P

Ramit Sethi and Patrick McKenzie on Getting Your First Consulting Client | Kalzumeus So... - 0 views

www.kalzumeus.com/...g-your-first-consulting-client

consulting Customer development

shared by Jas P on 14 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Ramit:  I want to emphasize a couple of things you mentioned. One, if you’re charging 5, 10, 20 bucks an hour, it’s very, very difficult to go from that to charging 200, 300 an hour or 10,000 a week.  It’s very difficult to make that transition. If you do it when you come in, that can happen. But going from one level to another is extremely difficult.
  • Thumbnail sketch: You can get from $20 to $100 by getting serious as a professional, and you get from $100 to $200 by getting really good as a professional (or working in a high-demand speciality), and then somewhere between say $150 and a weekly rate in the tens of thousands you probably repositioned your offering such that it is no longer directly comparable to what you were doing before.
  • Can you sell Rails at $50k a week?  I'm going to go with "almost certainly yes."  I think there are probably people who do that, and if you listened to them pitch clients, they would speak a language that holds very little in common with what you hear from a $100 an hour Rails developer.  Want to speak that language?  Keep reading for some thoughts.  (It will also help to get pretty darn good at Rails... though I think most people in my audience probably overestimate how skilled you have to be to move up that ladder.)]
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  • Ramit: The other thing you mentioned is how many people go in saying, “I’ll just do this first, and I need to make my bones.” And you know what? There is a time and a place to do free work. I do believe in free work occasionally. But I always tell people if you’re going to do free work, make sure you are clear about your messaging.
  • Now, I’m generally not a fan of free work, but I can be strategically. This is what I would say to the client. I would say look, my normal consulting rate is $85 an hour, or whatever format of pricing you’re using.
  • However, I really like what you’re doing, and frankly, I want to build up my portfolio. I would be willing to do this for three weeks for free if, in exchange, you agree that if I do an extraordinary job, then we can discuss working at my normal rate. Well, who’s going to say no to that? If you do an extraordinary job, everyone’s going to want to pay you.
  • But in this case, yes, you are working for free. But you are explaining why. That is so important. It separates you from, frankly, the people who are new. They’re new, and you can tell that they’re asking to be taken advantage, because they’re like OK, I’ll work for free. It’ll be fine. Somehow, I’ll go from free to $500 an hour. Doesn’t work. Explain your messaging. Explain your positioning, and people will respect you way more for it.
  • You will then aggressively leverage this portfolio when attempting to get work at your current billing rates.  I have projects which I did at $X per week which I will use to justify new $5X per week projects at new clients.  If clients ever picked up on the discrepancy – which would require me being stupid like mentioning that somewhere publicly… wait… d’oh – I would say something like “My previous client took a chance on me earlier in my career, when I didn’t have a track record of delivering results to people just like them. 
  • Ramit:  That’s right. I want to talk about one of the secret sauces of my business, and it’s something that actually nobody really cares about. People think they care about it, but they don’t care about it. It is the research that I do going into building a product or getting a client. And I know you’ve done this as well. It’s funny. The other day, I was asking people, “Hey, if I speak at South by Southwest, what would be a good talk?” Somebody wrote back on Twitter saying, “You should talk about your research methodology.” I said that would be great… for the three people who would attend.
  • Research is what allows me to charge 100 times what my competition charges… but nobody cares. Nobody wants to see [the hard work which goes into] how the sausage is made.  They just want to see the shiny tactic – the A/B test where you tested the color of this button.
  • I have a course called Earn 1K, and it’s about how to take your skills and turn them into freelancing income by getting multiple clients and earning 1K. Many of my successful students earn 5K or 10K in a month on the side. So, very relevant to the people listening here. When I started off doing this research, I actually didn’t even think of doing an “earn money” product
  • You can negotiate your salary. You can get passive income, which for most people, never works. You can get freelance income. You can blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  [Patrick notes: Ramit would probably round out this list with 1) buy real estate and rent it to people, 2) invest in the public capital markets, and 3) start an honest-to-goodness business.]
  • Now, you can get good survey data with as few as 20 responses.  For all the engineers listening, listen closely: Statistical significance is irrelevant when you’re doing customer research. I don’t give a damn about P values and anything like that. It’s almost all qualitative.
  • Now, you don’t have to do 50,000.  Honestly, 100 gets you farther than most people do. [Patrick notes: I think talking to ten individual people who could actually buy your product prior to writing a line of code puts you ahead of the curve, judging from my inbox.  You’ll learn a million times more from 10 people than you’ll learn from your IDE when coding a product built for nobody.]
  • No SEO wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Damn, I have a WordPress problem.” They wake up in the morning and say, “Damn, I have a business problem.”
  • I pay them pretty well. I have passed on hiring engineers who may be more technically proficient, but they didn’t understand what I wanted. Honestly, guys, as a business owner, do you think I care if you’re using this technology or that? I just don’t give a damn [about technology]. I really don’t.
  • What I care about is, is my business going to generate revenue? Am I serving my customers? Is my website going to go down, and I have to be the one who tells you? Or can I go out on a Friday night and not worry about my business?
  • The guy was doing very well. I believe he was making either 40k or 400k a month. He was doing very well. This guy got pretty interested, and he said, “Hey, I’ve got to take a look at this market.” He spent about four or five months really doing deep research. Lots of stuff, including ad words, including customer research, including buying all the other products.
  • Once we got those right, sales skyrocketed.  [Patrick notes: cough read writeup in Fortune Magazine cough] I’ll just say that it’s very, very important to understand the words that your client or your customer is using and be able to explain how and why you can help them.
  • I think we don’t pay nearly enough attention to the exact words people use. Maybe we would if we came from a communications background. Nothing motivates people like having their own words repeated right back to them, which is something that you should try to do more often. It’s just an easy conversational hack to sound more persuasive.
  • But you have to make your prospective clients feel like you understand where they’re coming from. And that starts with both understanding where they’re coming from, and then communicating like you understand where they’re coming from. Even if you’re building a website for someone, it’s not just a website, right?
Jas P

Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing | Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) - 0 views

andrewchenblog.com/...an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study

marketing viral Customer development conversion

shared by Jas P on 14 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The stakes are huge because of “superplatforms” giving access to 100M+ consumers These skills are invaluable and can change the trajectory of a new product. For the first time ever, it’s possible for new products to go from zero to 10s of millions users in just a few years. Great examples include Pinterest, Zynga, Groupon, Instagram, Dropbox. New products with incredible traction emerge every week. These products, with millions of users, are built on top of new, open platforms that in turn have hundreds of millions of users – Facebook and Apple in particular
  • Whereas the web in 1995 consisted of a mere 16 million users on dialup, today over 2 billion people access the internet. On top of these unprecedented numbers, consumers use super-viral communication platforms that rapidly speed up the proliferation of new products – not only is the market bigger, but it moves faster too.
  • Over time, all marketing strategies result in shitty clickthrough rates.
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  • The converse of this law is that if you are first-to-market, or just as well, first-to-marketing-channel, you can get strong clickthrough and conversion rates because of novelty and lack of competition.
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
Jas P

What does a growth team work on day-to-day? | @andrewchen - 0 views

andrewchen.co/...growth-team-work-on-day-to-day

growth hacking

shared by Jas P on 14 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • But first, you need a great product Let me note that if people aren’t using your product, then you’re wasting your time spending too much time optimizing growth. You need a base of users who are happy and then your job is to scale it.
  • Planning and model building The planning/modeling side of things is really about understanding, “Why does growth happen?” Every product is different. You might find that people find you via SEO and then turn into users that are retained via emails You might find that people come to your site via web and then cross-pollinate to mobile, and that’s the key to your growth. You might find you need to get them to follow a certain # of people. You might realize they need to clip a certain # of links to get started.
  • Summary To summarize the above: Have a solid product where your users are happy Coming up with a model for how your site grows Trying out ideas and deploying them as A/B tests If the site grows, then try out more ideas. If it doesn’t, rethink the model in step 1 because it might be broken
Jas P

Kyro Beshay: Hacking Behavior: The Behavior Potential - 0 views

kyrobeshay.com/...ehavior-the-behavior-potential

growth hacking Customer development customer validation

shared by Jas P on 13 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • One of the most popular theories on the phases of behavior change is known as the Transtheoretical Model. It outlines five phases that lead to an alteration in one’s behavior: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Here is a quick overview of each phase: Precontemplation: Individual is unaware that their behavior is a problem. Contemplation: Individual is aware that their behavior is an issue and is ambivalent as to whether action should be taken. Preparation: Individual plans to take action in the near future – a “window of opportunity” has opened. Action: Individual has made specific overt modifications to their lifestyle. Maintenance & Relapse Prevention: Individual take steps to avoid factors that increase the risk of relapse.
  • The Behavior Potential illustrates the common cycle of awareness, motivation, action and frustration we often experience when trying to change our ways, with each spike representing a single attempt. The goal is to manipulate the phases of the Behavior Potential so that:
  • Phase 0: Precontemplation – Get Views During this phase, no one has seen your product, and so the goal is to get it in front of people, which is where Growth Hacking comes into play.
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  • Phase 1: Contemplation & Preparation – Present The Problem & Solution So you’ve finally found someone to look at your product. Now your goal is to convince them they have a horrific problem and that you have a remarkable solution. This is something I see less and less. Startups will often litter their landing pages with all the great features they’ve developed, which gains them absolutely nothing if they’ve not yet convinced the viewer there’s actually something in their life that could be improved. To do this, there are 4 basic principles: Describe the problem in your viewer’s terms. Walk through examples of life with and without the problem. Outline a plan of attack. Socially validate the legitimacy of the problem with user feedback. Individuals in these stages are often ambivalent as to whether they should actually put forth effort into changing. Individuals in this stage go back and forth between reasons for concern, and justification for lack of it, with awareness of the pros for changing and an acute awareness of the cons. Show them that the benefits of switching outweigh the costs.
  • Phase 2: Action & Maintenance – Reward, Reward, Reward You’ve convinced someone to start using your product, and now you want to ensure that they’ll keep using it. The way we lengthen Phase 2, or sustain a behavioral change, is by simultaneously reinforcing the behavior while recognizing the situations which create an increased risk of relapse.
  • Reinforcement strengthens behavior – a core component of operant conditioning. There are two types of reinforcement: positive and negative. Positive reinforcement is the introduction of a positive stimulus, while negative reinforcement is the removal of a negative stimulus. An example of positive reinforcement is a mother laughing at her child’s joke, positively reinforcing that particular behavior, and likely resulting in her hearing that joke a lot more often.
  • Phase 3: Relapse – Your Rewards Aren’t Rewarding Relapse prevention involves recognizing the factors that may lead to one reverting back to their old habits, so if you find your users becoming disengaged, then there is likely a flaw in your reinforcement mechanism. The user finds it easier to not use your product. You may have convinced them that your solution is better in theory, but in practice it isn’t. To prevent relapse, constantly measure user engagement and adjust your reinforcers accordingly. Work towards bridging the gap between what you’re selling and what your users are experiencing.
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

Non-programming skills every programmer should have - 0 views

www.singhrahul.com/...g-skills-every-programmer.html

programming

shared by Jas P on 21 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Designing Basically, designing means how your software looks and how it works. The purpose of designer is to make software that's better than what already exists. A designer makes sure that a software is as simple to use as possible, execution is smooth and bug-free, and user never has any confusion in achieving his goals when he uses that software.
  • So, here are some skills and qualities that may help you in having a better life as a programmer. Social This is probably the most obvious one and that's why it's highly ignored. I can tell this from my personal experience. Whether you are in college or a company, being social always works in your favor. Often times, we ignore small things like saying a simple 'Hi' to a coworker or greeting them with a simple smile. I had this problem during my school days, and also for some part of college life. 
  • A programmers aim shouldn't be to simply write good programs, rather it should be developing really great products. Even the basic knowledge of designing can help a long way in accomplishing that. Recommended book : The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.
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  • Business Creating software is a business. Senior managers and team leaders expect you to behave in a certain way with your clients and partners. It's about having proper email etiquettes, behavior and responsibility when dealing with clients.  Also, it's good to have some management and leadership skills. You should be aware of the latest trends and activities in your area of specialization.
  • Recommended book : What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School by Mark McCormack.
  • Startup Few years back, I would have never considered working for a startup or even making something on my own. I thought it was better, and easier to get into big companies and get a good pay package and that's about it. But, after about a year of learning things on my own and trying to build something independently, I can't tell you how great it feels when you work for yourself. You are free to make that software or game that you always wanted to, but didn't have time or resources.
  • Creativity/Drawing It's a bit difficult to explain this exactly. But, I think being creative helps you a lot, in coming up with new solutions, or looking at problems through different angles. You can be creative in any field, and the best thing is, this quality stays with you when you try to solve tough programming problems.
  • Spiritual I am still not sure whether I should have included this one or not. The only reason I am including this is because, I have personally benefited a lot from this single quality more than any other skills/qualities I have mentioned before. For those who don't care about being spiritual, please note that it has got nothing to do with any religion, country or society. Anyone can be a spiritual person without even being religious(I am one).
  • You can just start with meditation by focusing on your breathe for 10-15 minutes daily. I would love to talk more about this.
  • Believe me, you will feel more calm, peace and satisfaction by being a spiritual person. You won't get irritated easily and almost never have stress again if you are able to practice this for a long time.
  • Recommended book : Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. This is the toughest one to choose because, I have literally read at least a hundred books on this subject. Honestly, I only recommend this because I am currently reading it and found it really good.
  • Jas P on 21 Oct 12
     
    With the entire world arriving on the doorstep of software, the ability for software developers to have skills beyond programming is indispensable.
Jas P

10 Studies That Reveal What Customers WANT You To Know About Them - 0 views

blog.kissmetrics.com/what-customers-want

Customer development customer service conversion

shared by Jas P on 14 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • 1. Customers Care More about Service Quality and Attitude than about Service Speed
  • A recent Gallup study reveals that when it comes to memorable service people tell their friends about, it’s more important that the service provided feels “thorough” and friendly, rather than quick. This was especially true for service in premium or prestigious markets, such as customer support at a bank.
  • Not only that, in a Customer Experience Report by RightNow, researchers found that the #1 reason customers would abandon a brand was due to poor quality and rude customer service, which were cited 18% more often than “slow or untimely service.”
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  • 2. Customers Know What They (and Other Customers) Want; They’re also Willing to Help
  • In a study of 1,193 commercially successful innovations across nine industries, 737 (60%) came from customers (i.e., customers can have very innovative ideas). User-created innovations have been successfully utilized to turn around “innovative slump periods.” While #1 is certainly a shocking revelation, there is a unique case study for #2 that really paints a believable picture for just how valuable customer input is.
  • 3. Customers like Loyalty Programs… as Long as You Make Them Seem Easy
  • In their research on the Endowed Progress Effect, Nunes and Dreze tested two versions of a car-wash loyalty program, which consisted of a card that got stamped after every wash. The first card needed 8 stamps to get a free wash. The second card needed 10 stamps to get a free wash, but 2 stamps were automatically added when the customer joined. That means both cards took 8 stamps total to get a free wash; they were just framed differently. Which one do you think performed better? Their findings: Despite the similar process, the second card performed almost twice as well as the first card, having 34 percent of participants complete it versus 19 percent for the other card. Why is this important? It shows that customers are more likely to stick with loyalty programs if the task at hand is framed as already being started.
  • 4. Creating Goodwill with Customers Doesn’t Take a Lot of Money
  • An employee on the phone with a customer during a marathon troubleshooting session heard the customer tell someone in the background that they were getting hungry. As she tells it, “So I put them on hold, and I ordered them a pizza. About 30 minutes later, we were still on the phone, and there was a knock on their door. I told them to go answer it because it was pizza! They were so excited.”
  • What’s actually happening: While the cost of the gifts/actions is quite small, the human mind simply cannot refuse the psychological construct of reciprocity. Reciprocity can be summed up as our natural inclination to feel grateful for favors and our desire to “pay them back,” no matter how small they are (covered quite well by Cialdini in his famous book Influence). The other thing that you must understand about reciprocity is that research has shown us that the intentions of the “giver” can affect the perceived value of the gift. This is why “Frugal WOWs” work so well: Customers perceive the service as a genuine act of kindness rather than as you trying to buy their affection with costly gifts. So remember, it doesn’t take huge expenses to win customers over!
  • 5. Customers Absolutely Adore Personalization; They Will Gladly Pay More for It
  • Would you believe that waiters were able to increase their tips by 23% over a control group by utilizing something as inexpensive as mints? It’s true, and this research is not only important in helping you understand how to create repeat customers, but also how to keep your customers incredibly satisfied and supportive of your business offering.
  • The results were surprising to say the least: The first group studied had waiters giving mints along with the check, making no mention of the mints themselves. This increased tips by around 3% against the control group. The second group had waiters bring out two mints by hand (separate from the check), and they mentioned them to the table (i.e., “Would anyone like some mints before they leave?”). This saw tips increase by about 14% against the control group. The last group had waiters bring out the check first along with a few mints. A short time afterward, the waiters came back with another set of mints and let customers know they had brought out more mints, in case they wanted another. That last group is where waiters saw a 21% increase in tips… yet they still were bringing out only two mints. The researchers found that it was the perceived personalization of bringing out the second set of mints and mentioning it to customers (“Hey, I thought I might see if all of you are satisfied or if someone could use an extra mint.”) that made the difference.
  • Point being: It wasn’t really the mints; it was the personalized experience that they created. It made it perfectly clear to customers that the waiter was thinking of them. Be sure to incorporate this into your own offering: How can you follow up with customers in a personalized manner with free support, training, or reward for trying out your product or service?
  • Research lead by Melanie Green and Timothy Brock reveals that trying to persuade people by telling them stories works extremely well. The reason that stories (when told well) are so appealing to customers is that you can transport them inside the story and get your point across without directly selling.
  • Once inside the story, we are less likely to notice things which don’t match up with our everyday experience. For example, an inspirational Hollywood movie with a “can-do” spirit might convince us that we can tackle any problem, despite what we know about how the real world works. Also, when concentrating on a story, people are less aware that they are subject to a persuasion attempt: The message gets in under the radar. Our brains have a tendency to be mostly concerned with enjoying the story and absorbing the message.
  • For instance, over at Help Scout, I conducted an interview with Leo Wildrich of the BufferApp that discussed how a small team like Buffer’s could possibly handle email support with tens of thousands of customers. The tale of a small team dealing with mountains of support emails was definitely one that resonated with a lot of small business owners, and the post was quite popular and performed well, all without the “hard-sell.”
  • Everyone loves hearing their own name! The implications of this have been seen across a variety of situations in dealing with customers: People tend to like you more if you use their name a few times during conversations. (But there is a limit; saying their name too much becomes unnatural and insincere.) People open emails with more consistency if their name is included. (That’s a big reason to ask for a name if you want increased conversions via email.) People often assume you are more competent if you know their name; it’s a big part of their identity, and if you recall it and use it, you are instantly viewed in a better light in their eyes. Utilizing customer names when interacting with them directly is an important part of making people feel like individuals rather than a “support ticket.” It’s difficult to scale, but if you care about your customers, it’s an essential part of winning them over. There’s quite a difference between receiving an automated email from “DO-NOT-REPLY” versus receiving one from “Scott” saying, “Hey Greg, thank you for your purchase! :)”
  • 9. Selling “Time” over Savings Can put Your Customers in a Better Buying Mood Have you ever wondered why commercials for “cheap beer” never, ever focus on the money that you can save by buying them? Instead, they create ads and slogans that focus on having a great time (i.e., “It’s Miller Time!”) This isn’t an accident. As it turns out, new research from Stanford reveals that selling “time” over money can make customers more receptive to buying. From Aaker’s research: “Ultimately, time is a more scarce resource—once it’s gone, it’s gone—and therefore more meaningful to us,” says Mogilner. “How we spend our time says so much more about who we are than how we spend our money.” Getting people to think about a period of time they enjoyed (associated with a product) can be much more effective than reminding them that they could be saving money.
  • 10. Bringing up Savings Makes Customers Feel Self-Centered and Greedy
  • Psychologist Kathleen Vohs has done numerous studies on priming, specifically in terms of how it affects our perception of money. She found through her research that just thinking about money makes us more self-serving and less willing to help others: Two sets of subjects were “primed” with either cues related to money (money related images, essays about making money) or cues that were unrelated to money. Later, subjects were asked to solve a difficult “brain-buster” and to help others do the same (those others being people “in” on the study).
  • Getting people to think about money and having them enter this “selfish” state can be beneficial or disastrous in advertising benefits to customers. If you’re selling an item associated with luxury or prosperity, this mindset may be a good thing (advertising your mutual fund, financial/retirement services, etc.).
  • Roger Dooley, author of Brainfluence, had this to say: [Marketers] who should be particularly cautious about money cues are those who want to appeal to the viewer’s feelings about others. Filling viewers with feelings of warmth and a desire to please someone else… and then reminding them about money, could be self-defeating.
  • Vohs agrees, citing research that shows how money often creates conflict and stress when paired with family issues, due to conflicting interests (Burroughs and Rindfleisch, 2002). The lesson: Be wary of reminding your customers about money if your product isn’t related to serving self-interests.
Jas P

Sean Ellis on creating a sustainable growth program via Sandi MacPherson - QUIBB - 0 views

quibb.com/...g-a-sustainable-growth-program

growth hacking

shared by Jas P on 13 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Behind the term 'growth hacking'The concept for growth hacking grew out of the fact that most startups fail, and needing to not fail. When you think about games, the market is filled with large companies with lots of money to throw into marketing. Sean summed this need up well, with: When you're competing against Sony, you can't go dollar for dollar
  • 2. A Must-Have Experience Sean focused on the importance of a Must-Have Experience (MHX) - you must have a hook that clearly identifies what this is.
  • 3. Uncovering your MHXTo get a clear understanding of what your MHX is, Sean suggested reaching out to your Must Have Users (MHUs)… but what is a MHU?
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Sean likes using a pop-up or other survey tool to ask people 'How disappointed would you be if [your product] wasn't available anymore?' on a scale ranging from 'not at all disappointed' to 'extremely disappointed' to identify your MHUs (they'll answer very or extremely disappointed).
  • You can ask these identified MHUs 'What is the primary benefit you receive from [your product]' (as an open-ended question to start, then after getting ~30 responses, you should be able to narrow it down to 3 multiple choice answers).
  • 4. Getting people to your MHXOnce you understand your MHX, you can then maximize the percentage of people that reach this point. This means identifying points of friction and reducing that friction (Sean suggested watching people use your product, and then A/B testing based on insights gained), focus on what a real conversion looks like, building channels to increase user habits/increase revenues/drive sales/etc., and understand intent by A/B testing your messaging and hooks. You need to obsessively optimize everything that is part of this newly formed growth engine.
  • You need to engage with your users, and take those insights to come up with new, breakthrough ideas.
Jas P

How to Handle Price Objections - 0 views

www.quicksprout.com/...w-to-handle-pricing-objections

pricing

shared by Jas P on 15 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Create case studies If you really want to show the value in what you offer, you have to create case studies. The simple ones won’t cut it, you have to give detailed ones… ideally with the exact things you provided and the results. To legitimize the case studies, make sure you put in testimonials from customers. This can be done in the form of video or text and if you happen to go the text route, make sure you include: Their full name Company name Their picture Title at the company If you want to see an example of a good case study, check this one out from Conversion Rate Experts.
  • Offer a free trial One of the easiest ways to handle price objections is to offer a free trial. Remember, just because you are offering a free trial doesn’t mean you can’t take a credit card up front. With Crazy Egg, one of our biggest objections from people is that our prices are too high. We created a “free trial” offering in which people had to put in their credit card up front. That offer converted at 59% higher than our 30 day money back guarantee offer. Keep in mind that you will get a lot of people who will cancel your service before their free trial is up, so when you a/b test this you have to also include cancelations into your calculations.
  • Explain the value The easiest way to demand a high price point is to explain how much money you are going to either make a company, or how much money you will save them. If you can explain this in an easy to understand fashion and provide case studies to back it up, it shouldn’t be hard to demand a premium price. A great way to do this is through sales copy. And don’t worry, your copy doesn’t have to be sleazy. I do this with Crazy Egg, NeilPatel.com and I also used to do it for my Quick Sprout Traffic System. You could even spice up your sales copy by including a video incase people don’t want to read your copy.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Offer payment plans When I used to sell the Quick Sprout Traffic System, some people felt it was a bit too expensive. They didn’t like the fact that I was charging $197 for an eBook, and video/audio training. Instead of reducing the price I tested out a few payment plan options: 3 payments of $97. 4 payments of $67. Although both pricing plans in total were more expensive than the original price of $197, the 3 payments plan option converted at 34% more than the original offering and the 4 payment plan option converted at 52% better than the original. With the 3 payment plan option I still got complaints about my prices being too high, but with the 4 payment plan option, I got almost no complaints. Plus I was able to charge more than the original price of $197.
  • Explain what you don’t charge for Just like any good business, you want to go above and beyond for your customers. Which is why you probably provide a few little extra things for your customers at no charge. When people start to complain about your price points, you should explain how you go the extra mile for your customers and all of the little things you do for free. You can even express this on your website by bundling all of that extra stuff you provide into a “free bonus” for anyone that purchases your product or service.
  • Explain why your price points are high If people understand why your prices are what they are, they’ll be more likely to pay them. Tell them your fix costs, explain what their money is being spent on, and even tell them your profit margins. People know you are in business to make money, but no one wants to feel like they are being screwed over. If your margins are reasonable and you explain your costs to potential customers, they shouldn’t have an issue. For example, Single Grain had an issue in which potential customers felt their prices were too expensive. Instead of reducing their prices they explained to the companies why they charge so much, then they broke down their costs and even shared their margins. By doing this they were able to sign on 33% more new customers.
  • Offer lower price points for less and then upsell Now this won’t work for all businesses, but you could lower your price by offering a limited version of your product or service. Plus if people are happy and looking for more, it creates upsell opportunities. I actually had this happen to me when I tried hiring a copywriter by the name of Michael Williams. I didn’t want to pay his fee of $12,000 so he sold me on a smaller package that only cost me $3000. Funny enough, after 2 months, I went back to him and paid an additional $9000 to receive the rest of his services as I had a huge ROI on my initial investment. At KISSmetrics, upsells make up almost 10% of our new monthly revenue. We’ve found that a lot of companies at first don’t want to pay for our higher plans, but within 3 months of using our product, they’ll upgrade to a higher end plan after seeing a positive ROI.
  • Focus on how you are better than the competition If people didn’t see the value in cars like BMW or Mercedes Benz, they would just buy something affordable like a KIA. The fact is a car like a BMW or Mercedes Benz not only has more features than a KIA, but also is better built. Consider creating a comparison chart that shows how you differ from the competition. This is done on the homepage of Crazy Egg. It provided a single digit increase in conversions, so not a huge boost but better than nothing at all. It also reduced support questions by almost half in regards to our prices versus our competitors’ prices.
  • Stress the drawbacks of a lower price point In many cases, lower prices will come with a drawback. If you can explain the drawbacks of the lower price you can persuade people to pay your premium prices. A good example of this is RackSpace. They are one of the largest hosting companies and possibly one of the most expensive. They charge a lot, but their uptime rate is phenomenal. If you ever speak with one of their sales representatives they’ll quickly explain they are expensive, but they rarely if ever go down. They’ll also explain that their competitors may be cheaper but tend to go down more often. Then finally they’ll close hard at the end by asking what it would cost you every minute your website is down. For this reason they have done extremely well with their high price points. The company is worth almost 9 billion dollars as of today.
  • Leverage perceptual price points There are a lot of little tricks you can do to make your price points seem like they are lower than they actually are. Walmart has actually mastered this. Instead of charging you $50 for something, they’ll charge you $49.97. That way you emotionally feel like you are getting a good deal. If you want to learn more about physiological pricing, you should check out this blog post on KISSmetrics. It has some great tactics with examples you can use and learn from. Even the smallest thing can have a huge impact on your sales. Such as removing the “$” sign from your price points, which can cause a boost in sales and reduce price objections.
Jas P

The Truth about a Failing Startup | Hacker News - 0 views

news.ycombinator.com/item

startup failure vc funding

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • "investors are in a sense "buying" your time, not much different than consulting"Brilliant. I've never heard the concept of investing in a startup phrased so well.
  • My company has a really good chance of succeeding, but I still face these doubts every day. Here are some of the things that make the game worth the candle for me, even if we end up failing: * I'm proud of the product we've built. Even if it doesn't take off, nobody can take that away from me. * I'm incredibly proud of my engineering team. We're "a bunch of kids" who've built something incredible. Even if the company ultimately doesn't survive, we will have done really well. * I love my work and I love the people I work with. There are conflicts, sometimes I have to deliver bad news, deal with stress and monotonous work, firefight problems, etc. but in aggregate the work I do and the people I do it with bring me joy. I will always remember this time fondly. * When I started, I was a good engineer and a terrible product manager. Now I'm a good engineer and a good product manager, which makes me 100x more valuable. There is a bazillion other things I've learned, but this alone makes everything worthwhile.
  • * Facing doubt every day made me face the darkest corners of my soul. I stopped being an obnoxious cynical windbag and started appreciating the nuances of life, people, art, poetry, strength of human spirit and true magnitude of human dignity. * We're taking a real shot at building hard, sustainable technology that has a good chance to change the world. Even if we fail, I'll never regret taking the chance. * I met hundreds of people on my path. I dismissed some of them, but in retrospect I've learned from them all. I appreciate humanity a lot more now, and I understand where the dark parts of it come from much better. * Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. If you start a company you gain a lot of perspective. I could keep going, but I hope I've made my point. I'm not trying to sugar-coat anything -- failing may very well be the worst thing you've ever experienced emotionally to date. But keep everything in perspective and don't get cynical. You might still change the world in a big way. You might still change it in a small way. It doesn't matter. Enjoy the people around you. Get into adventures. Try to do something meaningful. Do the best you can -- things may not turn out how you wanted them to, but they'll probably turn out ok.
Jas P

Defining A Growth Hacker: Growth Is Not A Marketing Strategy | TechCrunch - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...th-is-not-a-marketing-strategy

growth hacking

shared by Jas P on 13 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • “Growth teams are constantly iterating and developing new concepts,” said Dan Martell, founder of Clarity.
  • This process can be an unnecessary distraction to core product development. This is why it is best for an autonomous team to test and focus on growth.” Growth teams and growth hackers are in a perpetual state of “work-in-progress,” which can slow core product momentum with its mindset of iteration and testing.
  • “Ideally, a growth hacker can single-handedly put in a bunch of changes, such as A/B tests for copy and buttons,” said Mike Greenfield, 500 Startups Growth Hacker-In-Residence and co-founder of Circle of Moms. “One person with both technical and marketing skills can reduce friction and facilitate rapid iteration. Growth success comes from a lot of this background work.”
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.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 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 We Fight - Cofounders in Love and War « Steve Blank - 0 views

steveblank.com/...ght-cofounders-in-love-and-war

partnership

shared by Jas P on 21 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • often get asked about finding cofounders and I usually give the standard list of characteristics of what I look for in a founder.  And I emphasize the value of a founding team with complementary skills sets – i.e. the hacker/hustler/designer cofounder archetype for web/mobile apps.
  • But Jessica Alter, Cofounder & CEO of FounderDating, pointed out that cofounders did not mean two founders in the same room.  She suggested that I was missing one of the key attributes of what makes successful startup teams powerful. She suggested that how cofounders fight was a key metric in predicting the success of a founding team.  
  • one of the key things to pay attention to in a search for a cofounder is how you fight.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Taking Time How you fight with your potential cofounder(s) matters for a lot of reasons, the simplest of which is that you have time to fight – meaning you’ve worked together long enough to hit disagreements or bumps.
  • But in order to figure out if you can work together you have to (wait for it…) actually work together.
  • That could be starting a side-project, heading over to a Startup Weekend or other hackathon, working full-time for a few months or some combination of those options.  However you do it, you need to build something together.  It doesn’t ultimately matter it if ends up being the right product, you will still have areas you disagree on throughout the process. Ask yourself: Have we had disagreements? If you haven’t, maybe you should consider a longer courtship period.
  • What’s difficult is making sure you’re aligned on the softer side: Why do you want to build a company? What kind of company you want to build? What are your working styles? What are your values?  What are your other priorities (family, etc.)
  • let’s agree you’re going to fight. That, in and of itself, doesn’t mean anything. In fact, it’s quite healthy. What matters in real life is what are the fights like? Do they escalate rapidly or become knock down, drag outs? Can you recover quickly and keep moving?
  • Entrepreneurship and early stage companies are about moving fast; if you’re caught in a disagreement for days at a time it means decisions are not being made and/or people are walking around feeling resentful.  Either one will eventually lead to failure.  Ask yourself: When we fight do we get over it quickly and respectfully?
  • it matters what the fights are about.
  • A lot of people approach finding cofounders as just a skill set need and believe once that box is checked, everything will be smooth sailing. Complimentary skill sets are important and if you’re fighting about one functional area  (e.g. design, product) it might be a sign you have too much skill set overlap.
  • Simulating Real-Life Consider what real startup life is going to be like.  For a long-time (longer than you plan) things are not going to work and you’ll have to figure out what to do – together.  If you do eventually reach a point where the company is making real progress, you’re still going hit crazy challenges on a regular basis that you’ll have to navigate together
  • But you better make sure you’re on the same page as your potential cofounder about those topics. These are the issues that break up relationships, not button colors.
  • Jas P on 21 Oct 12
     
    I like the importance this post places on finding the right partner, and some uncommon questions that end up unraveling many partnerships that aren't the commonly expected questions.
Jas P

How to do a great product promo video for less than $200 | KickoffLabs Blog - 0 views

blog.kickofflabs.com/-promo-video-for-less-than-200

explainer video

shared by Jas P on 21 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Jas P on 21 Oct 12
     
    Great article highlighting how you can pretty easily make an inexpensive and basic explainer video inexpensively for your startup.
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