Inbound on a shoestring - Searchlove Boston
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Transcript of Inbound on a shoestring - Searchlove Boston
Inbound on a shoestring
logoWILL CRITCHLOW
Fame done cheap
“We want the best. Better get the cheapest”
-- No-one, ever
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/30/business/la-fi-mo-richest-woman-20120830
Did you see this article?
I didn’t actually think it was a great promo video.
(Though I do love the kickofflabs product and team)
http://blog.kickofflabs.com/how-to-do-a-great-product-promo-video-for-less-than-200/
Most cheap marketing is one-shot
It’s not scalable or repeatable http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/174088066/
“Hyper-successful marketing activities you can do with no money that scale up, stay free and stay wildly successful”
“Good luck with that”--@willcritchlow
Let’s invent a perpetual motion machine
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Murphy's_law_application_for_antigravitatory_cats
Who can tell me who this is?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmaresca/8098982355/
Steve Blank: Entrepreneur, Lecturer
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmaresca/8098982355/
His hardest marketing challenge:
Selling Apple Mac graphics cards
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngreathouse/2012/10/15/steve-blanks-most-audacious-guerrilla-marketing-stunts/
Marketing team of 14 spent $4m / year
http://www.flickr.com/photos/msimdottv/4012752000/
15,000 customer registration cards
He personally called the first 300
They run 4 main applications. Read 3 main publications.Speed is what matters.Price is irrelevant.
An engineer would ask to speed up the card
Steve asked for one 10% slower and one 20% slower
Then hiked the price of the top end
If you can’t afford marketing, you probably aren’t charging enough
Gave magazine editors access to their benchmarking tool
“For 3 1/2 years, neither the magazines nor my competitors realized that our company was on Potrero Street and that the address of the Potrero Benchmark Organization was the identical address of SuperMac”
There are 2 kinds of “bootstrapped”
#1 Pay using something other than money
#2 Spend someone else’s money
A quick note on measurement
ROI is a terrible metric for bootstrapped marketing
This isn’t a useful divisor
If you don’t have money, you need at least one of…
Talent
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beleaveme/5840856849/
Relationships
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beleaveme/5840856849/
Assets
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jedlangdon/7369276320/
…or even just balls
But the big one is TIME
Pixar spends 1,825 man-days...
...on each minute of movie
http://www.quora.com/Pixar-Animation-Studios/What-are-some-mind-blowing-facts-about-Pixar-Animation-Studios#ans1573197
Read Dr. Pete on “big content”
“Spend” your effort & skills
or spend someone else’s money
The democracy of the web works in your favor
You’ve heard of kickstarter
You won’t want to ship them yourself
Warning: not zero budget! [www.shipwire.com – check out the API]
Check out Printfection.com
Not only fulfillment – but also print on demand so no up-front cost
If you take credit card payments, invest early revenue in acquisition
You can make this cash flow-positive http://www.flickr.com/photos/doyoubleedlikeme/2520228943/
2006
40% offRumors that Thresher was
“going to go bust” after viral spread of their voucher
2008
They did it again
“Later it emerged that the scheme had been a huge
marketing success”
Appsumo-type deals exchange margin for marketing
And it can even spread further than the people they reach directly
Action:High gross margin? Use deep discounts
…or even giveaways. You can use the discount to drive your marketing
http://www.flickr.com/photos/68751915@N05/6710895025/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/panapp/3413589725/
I want to tell you the story of Dortmund concert milk
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1
A concert hall took their orchestra to dairy farms
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1
Farmers took care of packaging and logistics
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1
Invited bloggers to private concerts, served the milk at the concert hall
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1
And got their “advert” in all the local shops
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1
The concert hall had their most successful season of all time
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1
The farmers made a return within the first year as well
Find someone who has what you want
Got content? Find traffic. Got traffic? Find content.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/russelljsmith/12043344/
Ladbrokes wanted to put beermats in 100s of pubs with a free bet promotion
http://www.flickr.com/photos/russelljsmith/12043344/
It’s surprisingly expensive to print and ship beermats to 100s of pubs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ladbrokes.middlesbrough_007.1.jpg
A partnership with KP peanuts gave free distribution and point-of-sale promotion
Neither the app makers nor the film studio paid for this media
Do you have distributors?
Timberland have an e-commerce store and feature on others’ sites
Best recent example I’ve seen(from Rainforest Alliance)
Follow the frog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iIkOi3srLo
Green rooibos isn’t a huge brand
But they make it into this great video
They get featured because of the rainforest alliance logo [arrow theirs]
“Spend” your effort & skills
This infographic was about 10% of Oli’s guest post on SEOmoz
Check out unbounce.com – he’s earned it!
Real guest posting brings real business benefits
Not only links (or even traffic) but conversion rate improvements
It should be obvious that you really win if you get people creating this content for youWell done Rand
Get in other people’s emails
This is traffic to distilled.net from the moz Top Ten
Cold emailing totally works
But only if your product kicks ass
Without the nudge, we wouldn’t have even created this offers page
LinkedIn – use “people you may know”
This
Means this button connects directly with no awkward questions
The LinkedIn API doesn’t ask awkward questions if you know an email address
This is the rapportive plugin for gmail. Highly recommended
Most people have email in their profile
Don’t be a ****
No connections? Rapportive makes it easy to find email addresses
http://www.distilled.net/blog/miscellaneous/find-almost-anybodys-email-address/
Bonus – you can re-use content you already have
Make your next guest post pitch a guest email pitch
Wavelength helps you find similar email newsletters to your own
http://wavelength.mailchimpapp.com
I want to see more blog commenting
Not like this. But thank you Mr Fiorenza881.
Some blogs (like AVC) have more value in the comments than in the posts themselves – which often serve to spark the discussion. This is a compliment to Fred Wilson BTW for the community he has built.
Commit to trying a new community Commit to sticking with it for a month
That’s long enough to create a habit (if you like it)
Localize, personalize
Local hairdressers work because of economics
Local is a feature and it’s hard for the big guys to compete with
http://www.flickr.com/photos/unwomenasiapacific/7370927212/
Local events work for the same reasons
@SpaceTheShiba at our Seattle meet-up
We think of Pinterest as the archetypal “product-driven growth” startup
But you should read this AllThingsD article on how they really grew
Many local events feel big budget because they worked
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was just employees the first year
http://www.flickr.com/photos/musicwala/5209170537/
The Tour de France was a promo for a newspaper
It put their rival out of business
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjr-images/6949648280/
“Go to a race with a digital camera and a banner.Take thousands of photos.Use mechanical turk to identify the participants.Repeat at weekly meets.Get famous.???Profit” --Cycling website owner
Opportunity is like serendipity
Linford Christie wore Puma contact lenses to a press conference where endorsements were banned
Lego recreated the Red Bull freefall
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/video/2012/oct/15/felix-baumgartner-skydive-lego-video
So how do we do this online?
Mash things up
Embrace the trolls
Bodyform’s exceptional response to a Facebook troll
A guy named Thomas Cook asks Thomas Cook for a holiday
Thomas Cook says “no”
LowCostHolidays.com says “yes”
No-one here knows who Urs Meier is
do they?http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/British_tabloids_let_rip_on_Swiss_referee.html?cid=3967910
He was a referee at Euro 2004 (soccer!)
He disallowed a goal that screwed England
ASDA immediately started offering free eye tests for the Swiss
http://www.flickr.com/photos/derrickding/323218989/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/14174853@N04/3751824078/
You could do the Swiss thing online
(With some careful monitoring and without too much at stake)
Target the tech sector (and press)
What other groups could you target?
Country / city (sports?)
Windows / Mac
Mobile / Non-mobile
iPhone / Android
If you run a magazine site, why not detect the device and play up this research?
Remember this OKCupid data?
No time, talent, fame or friends?
Then you need balls
WePay dropped a 600lb block of ice full of money at a PayPal conference
I’m not saying WePay have no friends, BTW
Celebrities work
Just a little message
I thought I’d get an endorsement from the other side Unfortunately Mr. Romney couldn’t be
reached for comment
Celebrities are expensive