Posts Tagged "marketing"


Over the past year I have been horrible about blogging. In fact after writing 50+ articles in a year, I went to virtually nil. What happened? It was all going so well. Well, life happened. Between building a business, helping my wife start her business, having a new baby, moving to a new home, traveling, trying to stay in shape etc. etc. I haven’t been on the ball. This is no excuse, because others seem to do it, but something I need to fix. I recently completed some personal projects and now am going to make some time for more blogging. Not necessarily for other people, but for myself. I found it to be a wonderfully cathartic exercise that I miss out on. Here are some updates that I will be sharing News on Printchomp – There is so much goodness going on that I need to do a better job sharing how awesome our team is and how much we are growing. Lots of news on this coming soon! Community News – Last year, I wrote my then last blog article on Why I moved back to the Waterloo Region. I have been kindly asked by Kara Swisher to contribute to her new kick-ass blog Re/code. You can expect for me to do a killer update on all the goodness going on with startups near me and the entire scene Startup lessons learned – Over the past 2 years with Printchomp and interacting with other startups, I have learned so much. After having a series of dinners with friends and colleagues namely ones with Scott Oldford and Alkarim Nasser, I realized that if I don’t share these lessons, I think I am missing out on the opportunity to crystallize them in my head and more importantly share them with others. I had an amazing trip to San Francisco a couple months ago and was so neglectful not to share all the cool people I got to meet with. Nope I won’t review your product – I am still getting regular requests to review new products. Unless it is something I stumble upon myself and is absolutely amazing I probably won’t write about it. I won’t do fake sponsored blogs either, unless what you are shilling is absolutely amazing and you’ll give me one (or have a truck full of cash show up). Trends – Being head down in my startup I am seeing a lot of cool technology trends, more importantly potholes and things to avoid. I’m going to try to share this stuff because there are some amazing things going on. Video Studio – I’m happy to...

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Lately, I have had the opportunity to sit across the table for a coffee or a beer with a lot of technically talented people. Some of them I have actively recruit into Printchomp, because I recognize their skillset and ability and what they bring to the table. I have however seen some irritating trends. So people may be working on their pet project, which is totally fine, but then as an after thought they wonder how can I get millions of people to using it.  This point leads me to my general hypothesis: that there are two equally important parts to balance the equation, the business part and technical part. I just sat in on a MBA class of students pitching their company ideas, and one resounding thing came back time and again. Many spent the presentation talking about a cool new technology, but not the pain it was solving. This is how I feel sometimes when I am listening to pure technologists describe their product to me. Yes it might be technically excellent but why the hell would I want to use it? There are some interesting lean principles regarding validation and testing hypotheses that can help pure technical people avoid those traps. That said I don’t think enough technical folks test those assumptions. It really comes back to why are you building this feature or product. One of the other judges at this university pitch presentation hit the nail on the head, build what you can sell not sell what you can build. I will go to my final point. There is a lack of respect for marketing and business development. Converting people to using your service or product doesn’t “just happen”. There are some instances where things can strike a nerve and go bonkers, but the vast majority of things need to build an audience. Audiences are built using  good messaging and tactics, executed by a person who knows what they are doing.  If you are an engineer and approach a friend to help you with marketing, don’t expect that they will impart all their knowledge in 10 minutes. Imagine your disgust if they expected you to tell them all about development in 10 minutes, it ain’t gonna happen. People need to consider tough questions like Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). They also have to know whether it is even worth it to acquire that customer, if you don’t have a downstream strategy, what is the point. One company in the pitch competition was stating their key differentiator to Dropbox was unlimited storage. I went on to painfully explain how one user could effectively break their business...

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Ever since game dynamics really took center stage with things like Foursquare, I have become very interested in how people become so quickly enticed in to getting badges and earning points. There are have been other companies who have taken gamification to websites. Two companies, specifically Badgeville and Bigdoor, have caught my attention. I will be writing a detailed article on both. In the interim, I have decided to gamify my website using Big Door’s plug-in. Now by interacting with my site you can earn points. Right now you can’t use these points for anything (I am still figuring that part out). If you want to earn some points you can start by: Checking In using the bar below  (10 points)  Commenting on any article (15 points) Liking my page (10 points) I am still experimenting with Gamification, but would like your input on how I could either improve the experience and make gamification a worthwhile addition to my site. I would encourage you to to interact with my site and see game dynamics in...

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Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that’s a straw, you see? You watching?. And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake… I… drink… your… milkshake! – There Will Be Blood. Daniel Plainview was brilliantly acted character played by Daniel Day Lewis and this scene won him the Oscar. It does say something about competition and going after your competitors’ resources. Your competitor’s most valuable resource is their customers. So how do you “Drink Their Milkshake”?. These strategies are really suited to a David and Goliath approach.   Here are 5 really simple steps (some are quite aggressive) to target and win over your competitors customers in a digital age. Here are some top tips: 1.     LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a powerful tool for understanding competitive information. There are a number of different ways to effectively poach your competitors clients. a.     See what their sales force is doing – Watch what the sales reps from your competitors are doing, and see who they are connecting with. It is likely that those people are either their leads or customers. Target those people and begin discussions of your own. b.    Infiltrate their LinkedIn groups – Most of the people who manage LinkedIn groups quite honestly don’t pay attention to who they let in. Some of the people there are likely either users or power users. You have to be discriminating to who you begin to contact, as usually these groups are teeming with consultants and members of that company. It can be a quick way to generate a really quick list. 2.     Twitter – It is very simple to go after your competitor’s customers in Twitter. The rule is simple: if they are following your competitor, it is likely they are customers. So the next step is easy – you follow them 500-1000 at a time. You wait a week and see who follows you back. By virtue of them following you back, they have self-identified that they might be interested in trying a different service. At the very least, you see what topics are resonating and can derive new messaging from that. 3.     Facebook – Fans and people who actively post on their wall are obvious targets. Depending on the product or service you can begin to run ads for anyone who “likes” your competitor. This is a hyper targeted approach to catch the eye of these potential clients. 4.     Event Sign-ups – Many companies are using 3rd party sign-up tools for their events or webinars. Search and scrape any sign-up sheet to see the...

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1.  Create several key use cases for people to use your site – Why are people on your site? You spent energy getting them there, so now what? I always advocate to create a really few well-defined and streamlined use cases. You may already have a working site or be in the process of designing it from scratch. Ask yourself this question: If a visitor to your site was a tourist, what would you like them to see in your “site” or “city”? Are you sending them to a bad neighbourhood, or are they seeing the sights? Here are some examples of use cases: Get them to sign-up Find out more about your service/product – watch a video or read more Get them to purchase or sign up for your product/service These seem simple stupid, but it is shocking how many sites (especially web start-ups) don’t seem to have simple use cases defined to push people to these important steps. Don’t be one of those sites, make sure you have tightly defined use cases and your website is tuned around them. 2. Make it super easy for them to sign-up, so you can get their information – When a person comes to your site and is about to make the leap of faith to share information, make sure you are there for them. This is a big psychological leap for many; you need to make sure you do the right things to help them take the next step. Here are a few suggestions: Keep your form clean (don’t ask for information you don’t need)  – People don’t want to feel like they are doing their taxes by entering countless pieces of personal information. Keep things lean and mean, get some initial buy-in and you can always ask more questions after you get to know them. Think of it like dating. Add options like Facebook or Twitter connect – This has become a no-brainer these days. Gone are the days where some get uber-concerned about their personal profile (well some people at least). It is amazing how the click of one button vs. filling out a form has reduced inhibitions to share information. Style sometimes means substance – People are used to the finer touches when it comes to UI.  This could be a refined button, and it could be AJAX/JS pop-ups. The days of boring Post forms are dead. Take a little bit of time and even a bit of money on your primary form to ensure it looks the part in today’s web. People are not only looking for these refinements, they are expecting them. The bar is...

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