Category Archives: Marketing

Learning, Marketing

The liberating power of focus on the one thing for Marketing

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Most startup founders who are looking to launch their product or are figuring out ways to grow their usage / customer traction come with a plan that includes “a little bit of everything”. The assumption is that since they dont know which technique works best, (or in other words – gets the most customers with the least amount of effort or money) so, they tend to spread their bets among many techniques.

Typically this means, do some SEO, some Google ads, some blogging, and some outreach to the press.

I used to tell folks to make a list and focus on the top 3 techniques to market their product.

I was wrong.

You need to be awesome at one, rather than good at three.

Here’s the simple math (the irony that the math is easier than reality is not lost on me) to get to 10,000+ B2B users (not all paying) in < 12 months (which is a great metric to focus on)  for a SaaS company.

You try to double your users each month. So if you start with 5 users at the end of the first month, you will get to 10,000+ at the end of the 12th month.

If I were marketing a SaaS product and I need to get users there are multiple mechanisms I can use to generate awareness for my company / product without any out-of-pocket costs for advertising.

1. Guest blogging

2. Content marketing with blog posts / infographics

3. Engaging potential users on twitter

4. Search engine optimization

5. PR outreach with bloggers and key websites

6. You tube videos

7. Presentations on Slideshare

etc.

Now, my recommendation is to NOT do the top 3, but pick just one and be the best at it.

For most entrepreneurial teams that are comprised more of engineers, than marketing professionals, this is a very liberating process.

They no longer need to track multiple techniques and try to optimize them all. Their focus should be on experimenting within the one technique and be the best at it alone.

While focusing on the one technique you will discover more things you need to do better and be great at.

Lets take an example of guest blogging.

To the outsider, guest blogging might just be make a list of 10-20 top blogs, then write posts that are relevant about your company and that blog, find the blog writer’s email address and submit your post.

There is a more nuanced process than that.

Coming up with unique and interesting posts is hard. Very hard. Especially hard if you are trying to learn SEO at the same time, or experimenting on Google adwords at the same time.

So, free your mind.

Focus on the one thing that you believe will add value to your potential customers.

I know its hard to know which is the “one thing”.

Truth is being awesome at any one of these things is very hard and I have seen enough examples of companies meeting their customer acquisition goals picking ANY ONE of these techniques, without trying to experiment on several.

So go ahead and focus on the ONE thing.

Marketing

The best marketing conferences that I’d like to attend in 2013 (Marketing conference list)

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Here is the list of the best digital marketing conferences that I’d like to attend in 2013. Practically I may attend 1 or 2 at the most as a speaker, but if you are looking to build your 2013 list of marketing conferences to attend, here’s a good place to start.

The format of this post is hard to get right on the blog, so here’s a handy Google doc of the 2013 Marketing Conference list.

There’s also a neat infographic from Marketo that is worth the eye-candy showing a smaller list by map of the United States.

# Conference URL Dates Location
1 Blogworld & NMX http://nmxlive.com/2013-lv/ Jan 6-8 :as Vegas
2 Ad Tech http://www.ad-tech.com/newdelhi/adtech_new_delhi.aspx Feb 2013 New Delhi
3 Email Summit http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2011/07/infographic-must-attend-marketing-events-a-guide-to-marketing-conferences-in-the-us.html Feb 19-22 Las Vegas
4 Mobile Marketing http://www.mmaglobal.com/events/forums/sanfrancisco2013/overview Jan 29-30 San Francisco
5 Adobe Digital Marketing Summit http://summit.adobe.com/digital-marketing-summit.html Mar 4-8 2013 Salt Lake City
6 SMX West http://searchmarketingexpo.com/west/ Mar 11-13 San Jose
7 Blogwell http://www.socialmedia.org/blogwell/ April 17 New York
8 Sirius Decisions http://www.siriusdecisions.com/live/home/document.php?dA=ConfAnnSummit2013 May 8-10 San Diego
9 Mirren Live (Agencies) http://newbusinessconference.com/home/ May 2013 New York
10 BMA http://www.marketing.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=5681#.UJ6o-ofqkaw May 29-31 Chicago
11 Inbound Marketing http://www.inboundconference.com/ Aug 19-22 Boston
12 http://www.ad-tech.com/bangalore/adtech_bangalore.aspx# Sep 2013 Bangalore
13 SES http://sesconference.com/sanfrancisco/ Sep 10-13 San Francisco
14 Content Marketing World http://contentmarketingworld.com/ Sep 9-12 2013 Cleveland
15 Mobile Marketing http://www.mmaglobal.com/events/forums/india2012/overview Sep 2013 Delhi
16 SMX East http://searchmarketingexpo.com/east/ Oct 1-3 New York
17 Pubcon http://www.pubcon.com/ Oct 2013 Las Vegas
18 DMA 2013 http://www.dma13.org/ Oct 12-17 Chicago
19 Future M http://futurem.org/about.aspx Oct 2013 Boston
20 Marketing Profs http://events.marketingprofs.com/b2bsite/speakers-321CF-18808U.html Oct 2013 Boston
21 Distilled SEO http://www.distilled.net/events/searchlove-boston/ Nov 2013 Boston
22 Ad Tech http://www.ad-tech.com/ Nov 2013 Delhi
23 WOMMA http://womma.org/summit/agenda/ Nov 24-26 Las Vegas
24 SES http://sesconference.com/delhi/ Dec 2012 New Delhi
Marketing, Review

Book review: The curious digital marketer

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Last week Kapil from AFAQS campus gave me a copy of his book “The curious digital marketer” at Shangri La in Delhi at an event.

Curious Digital Marketer
Curious Digital Marketer

I had a chance to read it on my flight back from Delhi to Bangalore for about 1-2 hours. Breezy in style and fairly simple, the book tries to provide curated answers to multiple questions about digital marketing. From what is CPM? to Why should you select CPC as a method to buy ads vs. CPA? etc.

The book itself has about 100+ frequently asked questions in 4 sections of facebook, digital, mobile and search advertising.

I liked Jack Welch’s approach to converting frequently asked questions into a book, “Winning”, so I am a fan of the Q&A book style.

While this one has its good parts, I was not sure it would help educate a newbie into digital marketing. It feels like its more aimed at marketing (traditional) arms of large companies which have fear of “all things digital”. For the marketer who still likes radio, print and Television, this is a great starting point.

For first-time entrepreneurs (which is the reason Kapil gave me the book to review) it seems a little advanced, but if you are responsible for marketing as part of being a cofounder, and you have been doing some reading up and still have questions, this book is worth a read.

The part that would make it great for the first-time entrepreneur is some overview of the basic terms before the Q&A. Rather than just the Q&A (which is curated from over 15+ contributors), if there was a synopsis to each chapter, I felt it would be a good guide to digital marketing 101.

While nothing in the book is a new concept, the value of not having to google multiple terms and read multiple pages is certainly worth the INR 250 it sells for online.

I left the book on my flight, the way back, so I am unfortunately not able to give it to you like I do after reviewing books.

Entrepreneurship, Focus, Learning, Management, Marketing

My discipline will beat your intellect

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I meet 4-5 new entrepreneurs every week as part of my office hours on Go-to-market help for young startups. Most are based in Bangalore, but surprisingly some are from other parts of the world (Chennai, Singapore and Estonia, even, via Skype).

I have an observation about work ethic that I wanted to highlight among startup entrepreneurs from various parts of the world.

Most every entrepreneur will tell you they work extremely long hours. That’s par for the course. Some “older” entrepreneurs (usually over 35 years of age) will share their ability to “strike a balance” between work and life. Practically speaking (I hate to break this to them) that does not exist in a startup. If you have that balance, you are not serious enough about your startup.

I understand they have families and kids, but I have come to the realization that both smart work and hard work are necessary (but not sufficient) to run a successful startup.

For purposes of this post lets define success as a company that’s growing significantly and rapidly, but does not have an exit yet.

The difference between a rapidly growing startup and one that’s growing “well” is productive (smart) hard work, not just long hours.

If you mistake activity (# of lines of code, # of code check-ins, # of customer discussions) with progress (shipping product, usable and must-have features, or # of active users) then you are just doing long hours.

If you mistake milestones (funding secured, new employee hired) for achievement (# of paying customers, churn rate of existing customers) then you are just doing smart hours.

What then makes smart and hard work such a potent combination? And what really is “smart work”? And how many hours make up “hard work”?

I define “smart work” as a combination of 3 things – asking the “right questions“, having a plan and maximizing the number of experiments in unit time.

I define “hard work” as the most amount of productive work time, with limited to no distractions and ability to do it consistently, for years (not bursts of weeks, not months and certainly not just for a few hours).

Lets look at both smart and hard in detail. Smart, first.

The smartest people I know have learned the art and science of asking the right questions. They usually start with asking a lot of questions, and having literally, no or very few answers. Each answer leads them to more questions. Asking the “right questions” is what they derive from experience.They have assumptions that need validation, hypothesis that need testing and results that need to be measured.

They are also willing to conduct a maximum of 2-3 experiments and have a DIY (Do it yourself) approach towards conducting those experiments to see if their assumptions and hypothesis were valid.

Finally they have a plan to approach their experiments. Not just a “lets try this and if not lets try that”. They rarely “wing it”.

Its very easy to spot smart teams. They have a sense and measurement of what “Continuous Visible Productivity” is. They come to me with a list of 2-3 questions that they want to address in a meeting. They dont just come to the meeting and pick up the whiteboard and start to “brainstorm”.

Now lets look at teams that work hard.

Hard working teams dont ever mention “how many hours they did put in last week or yesterday or that they hardly got “any sleep”. They realize and are aware of their physical limitations and are usually well within those limitations. Rarely do I hear from them “We work the hardest of all the teams” or “We have not slept for 2 days”. They keep looking for time they can cut away from unproductive work to do more questioning, experimenting and planning. In other words they dont brag about their long hours. They assume its a given.

Hardworking teams also tend to compartmentalize very well. Some people call this “bucketing” or “chunking”. Just because they work hard, does not mean they dont give their brains a rest and goof off for a while. Rather, they “compartmentalize” their goofing off or exercising to derive the benefits of a relaxed mind and body.

Finally hardworking teams are consistent. They show up day after day, week after week and go through questioning, experimenting and planning with rigor and consistency.

I realize a that being smart at work and working hard as I have laid out is extremely difficult. In fact its rare. That’s why successful startups are rare.

The combination is what I call startup discipline. Which is why I firmly believe one startups discipline will beat another’s pure intellect (given that hard work is assumed) any day.

Entrepreneurship, India, Marketing, Mentors

Startups and mentors: How to look for a great marketing mentor? & A list of top marketing mentors in India

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After the first post on technology mentors in India, the next person who can help the most as a mentor to startups < 2 years old is someone that can help with product & customer knowledge (or understanding user / customer behavior if its a consumer startup).

There are 3 primary categories of “marketing” mentors I’d recommend you think about. You dont need them all, just be clear who you need for what kind of mentorship.

Product mentors are people who can distill what customers would need and say into what you need to build in your product. There’s a big difference between a product manager and a business analyst. The latter, typically found in many Indian services companies, tries to give the customer exactly what they want, and end up building largely a custom piece of work for that client. Product experts on the other hand, observe customers, ask them tough questions and direct the technology team to build what the customer really wants.

Sales mentors are people carrying a quota (target). They are pounding the street or directing teams that are selling every day. They understand targets, compensation, lead nurturing, managing deals and sales opportunities. There are many types of sales people but largely they are either “farmers” or “hunters”. Farmers end up expanding your current opportunity and Hunters get new business from new clients. They both have their place. Mostly, I have found sales people dont make very good mentors because they are largely unavailable, but there are a few good guys around. Ideally they would help you understand and grow your sales team from “CEO is the sales guy” to building a repeatable, growth-oriented team.

Marketing mentors would help you with positioning, building awareness, lead generation and digital marketing. They can typically help you at the stage when you need to launch (largely after product-market-fit). Most marketing people tend to talk lots and do little, so if you get someone that can give you practical tips on how to build your funnel and grow your customer base by spending as little money as possible, then you have the right person.

The question usually is why do you need so many mentors. The answer is you dont. It all depends on the team you have and if they need advice, help and mentorship. I have seen startups with 5 mentors and many with none. Most have 2-3 mentors to complement the team. You can get as much value from mentors as much time you put into the relationship. I typically recommend most entrepreneurs to setup 1 hour every other week during the initial days (<6 months) and then 1 hour every month and finally 1-2 hours every other month.

Some recommended Product mentors:

1. Amit Somani (Make my trip)

2.  Varun Shoor (Kayako)

3. Vijay Anand (The Startup Center)

4. Girish Mathrubootham (Fresh Desk)

5. Sridhar Ranganathan (InMobi)

6. Amit Gupta (InMobi)

8. Preetham VV (InMobi)

9. Dhimant Parekh (Hoopos)

Some recommended Sales mentors:

1. Madhu Lakshmanan (ex Photon)

2. Abhay Singhal (Inmobi)

Some recommended Marketing / Online customer acquisition mentors:

1. Pankaj Jain (Startup Weekend)

2. Ravi Vora (Flipkart)

3. Karthik Srinivasan (Flipkart)

4. Sanjeev Gadre (Consultant)

Humor, Marketing

A new type of agency will be born – Klout Score Optimization (KSO) agency

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<Disclosure: Joe F (Klout cofounder) is a friend I was one of the early beta adopters of the Klout API at BuzzGain. We benefited greatly from his product>.

I dont claim to understand Klout. I mean I do, but I really dont. I dont understand what its trying to measure. Michael has a post on how he changed his mind.

I had a friend who recently told me that he was looking at his Klout score and wanted some help to figure out how to make it go higher. I was shocked. What? Why? Who cares about your Klout score?

Turns out his potential employer did.

Maybe its because deep down I hate these numeric ranking lists, given my own low score.

Maybe its because in India there’s still a VVIP list for *everything*. Even to buy groceries, which really is very irritating.

Maybe it because I believe in a more egalitarian society.

Maybe its just because I dont have influence or “Klout”.

So what Klout really measure?

1. How many followers you have on twitter? Which you can apparently buy at $18/thousand followers?

2. How many people Retweet you? Which I think is more a measure of the content than the fact that you tweeted it?

3. How influential (their Klout score) are your followers? Which can be gamed.

Any many other such inane metrics.

Michael says its like Google’s pagerank, which has many (over 200+) signals and is an indication of “authority” of the page.

Hence my prediction:

In a year from now, there will be multiple KSO (Klout Score Optimization) agencies which will help you grow your Klout score.

They will help authors, politicians, musicians, artists and many other vain folk who will use these agencies to “pump” up their Klout score.

And we will all live happily ever after.

<No really I am not being sarcastic>.

For those who care, my Klout score is 78. Which means you need to bow down before me and genuflect when you see my cape.

Entrepreneurship, Marketing

The perfect startup team: Asterix and Obelix

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Asterix vs. Caesar

As a child (and even now) I was a huge fan of Asterix and Obelix. I would spend hours reading and re-reading Asterix and son and imagine what it would really be like if I had special magic powers. The possibilities were endless.The names were funny. The fights were amazing. The adventures were awesome.

I did believe for the longest time that the Silicon valley folklore of “Two guys and a dog startup” came from Asterix and Obelix.

On a more serious note, I think there are 3 amazing things about them that make them the perfect startup co-founders.

1. They really respect and enjoy each others company. You can see it in every book and episode. Obelix is the one everyone makes fun of (since as we know he fell into a cauldron when he was a kid) but he’s also the most dependable. They each have their quirks (Obelix loves boars and Asterix, is just nuts for most parts).

2. They compliment each other amazingly well. One is a superhuman (magically gifted) and another learns (or drinks magic portion) his way into super-power. Asterix is supposedly the smarter of the two, but Obelix shows his smarts (Corsica, Spain).

3. They are both focused. I love this the most. They do fight (like most people do) but they know the real enemies are always the Romans. Most episodes do have some fight between the two, that brews for a few pages or panels, but put them in front of a common enemy and they are back to being old friends again.

If you are a startup team, I’d highly recommend you read a few of their comics and keep a few in your office. Things always get tough in small startups and when the going gets tough, the tough laugh it off.

If you have read any of the comics, which one is your favorite?

Marketing, SaaS, Tips

Dont remind me that I am “stup*d”. I know that already. SaaS Application User Experience

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I had a teacher in 6th grade who disliked me. Not sure why. He was both our class teacher and taught us English literature. I was the new kid in town and new to the school and (worse) I was from Bombay (Mumbai to you younger folks). That automatically meant my Hindi was way better than my English.

He’d point out every mistake I’d make in front of the entire class for the first few weeks. Grammatical errors, misplaced pronouns, adjective modifiers, were all mentioned in every essay, every book report and composition for everyone in the class to mock. Seemed to me he liked picking on me. In fact since this was the ’80’s even calling my “stup*d” was par for the course.

What’s he got to do with SaaS applications?

Many of the applications I use are like that teacher. I hate them. I have to use them, but I hate using them.

I make mistakes. Every user makes mistakes. As humans we are all prone to making mistakes.

Your application does not have to make me feel stup*d each time I make a mistake. We all have significant others who perform that role very well thank you.

Your application has to help me recover from that error. 

Let me give you an example:

I was trying to setup an account with a new SaaS app.

Username, password (twice) and 3 seconds later:

“That username is taken already” in BOLD RED.

10 seconds later, new user name, password (twice again) and again:

“That username is taken already” in SCREAMING BOLD RED.

15 seconds later, new user name, password (twice) and:

“Your passwords dont match” in BLOOD (mine) RED.

I gave up with the signup.

What you could do?

1. Give me username suggestions that you believe dont exist in your database already.

2. Check after I have typed the password the first time and give me some responsive feedback before I submit the 2nd time so you can see if the passwords match.

3. Use my email address as a user name.

But dont remind me that I am “stup*d”. I know that  already.

P.S. That teacher from the 6th grade. Turned out to be my champion by 8th. The trick – my mom’s bisi bele bath. Two days a month I’d get mom to cook rich, flavorful and finger-licking BBB and suddenly he was my “protector”. The way to a man’s heart is absolutely through his stomach.

Marketing, Sales

A new trend in pricing pages at SaaS applications

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<Wordpress has eaten up 4 versions of this post, so I am removing all images and only providing links, apologies>.

The pricing and signup page of any SaaS application is the most critical part, which is the main reason companies spend weeks and months, A/B testing and validating pricing, options and packages.

A new trend I have noticed in 2 particular websites – Highrise and GetBallPark is something very different from most websites.

If you did not go to the links above and notice the change – they have put their highest priced offering on the left and the least priced offering on the right.

This was counterintuitive to me at first, since “everyone else” does the exact opposite. Progressively expensive options should go from left to right.

Most website heatmap track research suggests users read from top to bottom and left to right. So, I guess there are higher chances of getting someone to sign up for your highest priced offering if you put it on the left.

Any other reason others might think of designing the price offerings the “opposite” way?