A presentation I prepared in 2008. Special thanks to all of the people and companies that responded. I'd love to give this presentation again, but with new information.
that are designed to motivate your customers to buy, and then to get them to actually buy. Marketing is the techniques used to attract and persuade consumers. Can include everything from pricing and product design to advertising and sales techniques.
• Guerrilla Marketing (coined in 1984 by Jay Conrad Levinson in a book by the same name) • Viral Marketing (coined in 1996 in Fast Company) • Product, Price, Place, Promotion (the 4 Ps) • Forehead Marketing
we are actually shipping overnight vs. before, it is the same... The only difference is that we are choosing to surprise our customers instead of promising it. Hope this helps! :)” - Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com Source: http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2008/03/zappos_true_to_their_sole.html Photo: http://flickr.com/photos/ebayink/2587643747/
I learned from the success of JotForm. We first released a small, useful, stable and free version of JotForm. That helped us get a lot of a?en@on from bloggers and get feedback from our users. Since we received a great amount of feedback, we had a proof of concept and mo@va@on to con@nue on development. While we worked on the complete version, we received a lot of word of mouth and search engine placements. It took us another year to complete the full version but when we released it we already had about 30,000 users and hundreds of users upgraded to our Premium edi@on in the first month. Aytekin JotForm JotForm
that was un@l recently a two‐person startup. And, we have a small budget from venture capital. So, we have largely relied on word of mouth to promote Tumblr. Even the media interviews that our founder/CEO has done have generally happened because a journalist heard about Tumblr from a friend or colleague. I would say making a product people like enough that they want to evangelize it to others has been the main focus for Tumblr. It seems to have worked well so far. Marc LaFountain Community Ambassador Tumblr Tumblr
to as “The Law of Focus” • Words can be a single word such as “safety,” or two words like “fights cavities.” • Forces you to focus on your core objective. • Once you own a word, it’s yours unless you abandon it. Suggested Reading: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
we decided to create an iPhone op@mized version of Harvest. We made sure the interface looks sharp and slick, and the Harvest + iPhone story for us has been overwhelming. Our interface was featured in many blogs and the Harvest iPhone web app was featured on Apple's iPhone app directory as a 'staff pick'. That generated a lot of buzz and traffic for us. We started a program called the New Founders Program, and basically we give out a year's worth of free Harvest service to a new business in its first year. The only thing we ask of our New Founders par@cipants is to answer a few ques@ons for an interview that we put on our blog. So we get to help out these young companies, we get to share their story with our community. This does not necessarily translate to traffic or dollar immediately ‐ but I think it's a cornerstone of our business, and it shows our customers that we're out here to not just make a business but also here to help the community. Shawn Harvest Harvest
built a product that is easy to use and offers a robust set of features that do a great job of engaging our audience. The worst way to spread the word about a product is through a campaign that doesn't have an effec@ve product with "s@cky" features to back it up. The best way to spread the word is through posi@ve user experiences. If the product is good and the viral flow is implemented correctly the people will come. Also, one of the main things that Geni has done well is funnel users and engage them right from the >me they sign up. An ac>ve community has been crucial to our growth and development. If you take a look at our forum it is super ac@ve and the en@re Geni team actually listens to the feedback and interacts with the forum members. Keith Geni Geni.com
better: buckets or custom pricing? Buckets. How do I know we learned this? Since changing the pricing page on our site, our sign-ups/trials have increased 30%.” – Michael McDerment, CEO of Freshbooks
you building web apps based on monthly subscriptions: have a plan for getting people off of the low-paying plans. Or maybe don’t offer a low-paying plan at all.” - Ryan Carson, CEO of Carsonified Source: http://www.barenakedapp.com/dropsend/number-of-users-on-each-plan
best way to get people to upgrade is by offering them a coupon. By upgrading before a specific date, they would save anywhere between 10% - 100% of the first month.” - Ryan Carson, CEO of Carsonified Source: http://www.barenakedapp.com/dropsend/number-of-users-on-each-plan
marke@ng Cashboard was the integra>on with Basecamp via their API. It really helped people take no@ce of what we were doing, especially when nobody had heard of us. It's a lot easier for bloggers to write about us when they have a frame of reference. Basecamp already had a huge following, and providing a service that was complimentary helped boost our userbase and reach. One thing which I also constantly do is take part in social marke>ng on sites like twiEer, blogs, and forums. It takes tremendous @me, but searching around the "blogosphere" for people who have wri?en about similar apps and personally invi@ng them to try the app but it pays off in the end. Seth CashBoard GetCashboard.com
iden@fying complemen@ng products or services you can create a mutually benefi@ng rela@onship that helps both en@@es grow. We've witnessed substan@al growth and credibility by partnering with companies like Versions (Mac subversion client) and EngineYard (highly respected Ruby on Rails host). When compared to tradi>onal adver>sing (The Deck, Daring Fireball), these partnerships cost almost nothing and produced significant results. Hope this helps. I could go into more detail, but I want to keep it short. We've had similar success by integra>ng with other applica>ons like Basecamp, Harvest, and Campfire. Chris Beanstalk Beanstalk
on marke@ng and word of mouth has been crucial to Wufoo's popularity. So that being said, we've been able to generate word of mouth by trying to be remarkable and exceeding customer expecta>ons wherever possible. I know that isn't really one idea, but by always having a focus on "wowing" your customer, you start taking that extra step in everything you do. And taking that li?le step @me acer @me ends up in a product full of areas that your customers will remark on and talk about. Three areas in par@cular that we take pride is our simplicity, personality, and customer support. Another thing we do is send out handwriEen thank you and holiday cards, and you'd be surprised how much a $1 card can brighten somebody's day. Chris Campbell Wufoo.com Wufoo
into our applica@on, most visibly in the form of Give Thanks, where you can thank another member for bookmarking something. When you bring happiness and posi@ve emo@ons to your customers, they will want to spread the word about what you're doing. Cheers, Larry Halff Founder Ma.gnolia
pay for photo sharing and storage when there are so many free sites? The only thing that works for us is word of mouth and referrals from our fana@c customers. When someone is hooked to our service, they tell all their friends and family, that works every@me. Markham Benne? SmugMug
your people, and your product. • Build up the personal brand of your founders. • Contribute articles to online and print publications. • Spread the word about how your customers use your product.
aggregates all of the times people mention Zappos on Twitter. It also makes a nice central hub for following Zappos and allows Zappos to introduce people to Twitter.
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