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Hiring A Startup's First Sales Person

Gabriel Weinberg is a serial entrepreneur (latest startup: DuckDuckGo), an insightful blogger, and quality contributor to Hacker News. He is writing a book on how startups get traction due out this summer that includes interviews with folks like Patrick McKenzie, Jimmy Wales, and Paul English to collect lessons learned from a variety of perspectives.I was delighted when he approached me to take pa ...

Tags: Hiring / Interviews / Sales /
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Written by Sean Murphy

New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome

SaaS Free Trial: Require a Credit Card to begin?

So, should you require a Credit Card to get started in your SaaS Free Trial? TL:DR - By asking for a Credit Card up front, you will get fewer prospects into your Free Trial with no guarantee of converting more paying customers. Now, if you'd like to know why that is, read on ...

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Written by Lincoln Murphy

I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu

Value Creation vs. Value Capture

People approach creating products from many different perspectives. Some seek out customer pain and dedicate themselves to solving their problems. Others follow the technology and strive to deliver solutions that are just now possible. Some like to follow competitors and deliver better solutions in a fast-follower model. Others are simply trying to find a way to make some money so that they can ...

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Written by Marty Cagan

I'm a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, specializing

Which Comes First: Audience or Product?

In my first couple of startups, I built things in the traditional order: product first, then audience. With Think Traffic, I started blogging first, then figured out which products and services to deliver. ...

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Written by Corbett Barr

Founder of Think Traffic. Creator of Fizzle: Honest Online B

How is Your Startup Unique or Different?

In a competitive landscape, one of the most important consideration is standing out from the crowd. For startups, this is crucial because the barriers to entry are relatively low, while new or innovative ideas can quickly be replicated by agile ...

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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

Extreme Customer Insights: A Startup Marketing Secret Weapon

In my first startup marketing job I was given the task of attempting to call a couple hundred customers to try to rustle up a dozen or so customer references. That task opened my eyes to how important customer insight was for our startup's marketing efforts. ...

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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

Revenue Traction Doesn't Mean Product Market Fit

When a company launches a new product, the temptation is to immediately ramp up sales force capacity to acquire customers as quickly as possible. Yet in our 25 years of experience with start-ups and new-product introductions, we've found that hiring a full sales force too fast just leads the company to burn through cash and fail to meet revenue expectations. ...

Tags: Marketing / Mistakes / Sales /
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Via: AVC
Written by Fred Wilson

I am a VC

Sure the market seems big but what can you address?

Here is a tried and tested triangulation framework to size your opportunity Top-down: You can get an estimate of this from several secondary market research reports and analyst reports. Remember reading certain analyst firms predicting cloud spending reaching $xyz billions by 2016? That is top down estimate. ...

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Written by Rags Srinivasan

Practicing Effective Pricing

Do Startups Really Need Media Coverage?

If there's one thing startup entrepreneurs crave, it's media and blog coverage. Attracting the media spotlight can arguably be as important to them as getting customers. How come? In many respects, media coverage somehow validates what an entrepreneur is doing ...

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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

SaaS Churn Rate: Go Negative with Expansion Revenue

I mentioned "Expansion Revenue" and "Negative Churn" in my post SaaS Churn Rate: What's Acceptable? and I wanted to expand on those concepts a bit. I honestly believe that fully grasping the power of these two concepts could change your SaaS business forever. No pressure, but you might want to read this post carefully. ...

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Written by Lincoln Murphy

I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu

Startup Storytelling and Media Coverage

You might not think you have stories to tell but stories can be found everywhere from current events to hiding in your own customer data. ...

Tags: How To / Marketing / PR /
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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

SaaS Customer Onboarding: 3 Steps to a Successful Welcome Email

For many SaaS and Cloud providers, email will be the main fuel for your Engagement Engine that you use to drive potential customers through your Free Trial to conversion or to drive new customers to become deeply invested in your service. ...

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Written by Lincoln Murphy

I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu

How to Get Traffic That Converts

It's not unusual in our line of work to see the exact same landing page convert at 11% one month, and 55% the next - without making any changes. How so? The quality of traffic. The right traffic with the right expectations makes all the difference. ...

Tags: How To / Marketing /
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Written by Peep Laja

I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o

Your Most Overlooked Home Page Opportunity

UVP. USP. Value props. Whatever you wish to call 'em, yours needs to be communicated early and often. (Of course, I'm making the assumption that you're here because you have a product or service to sell on your Web site or mobile site.) UVP = Unique Value Proposition (aka Unique Selling Proposition) To save words, I'll simply refer to it as your value proposition. ...

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Written by Joanna Wiebe

Copywriter at http://CopyHackers.com. Staunch advocate of co

It costs 6-7 times more to acquire new customers over retaining existing ones ...

I deliberately let this commonly repeated statement be the title without qualifying it. Of course statements like these, (this particular one made famous by Loyalty Effect) cannot stand by themselves regardless of how popular the Guru who said this is. Let us look at this closely. ...

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Written by Rags Srinivasan

Practicing Effective Pricing

SaaS Churn Rate: What's Acceptable?

Is 5% a good monthly SaaS Churn Rate? Read on to learn the answer... As a consultant to SaaS and Cloud providers that are looking to grow, I get asked what an acceptable SaaS churn rate is all the time. ...

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Written by Lincoln Murphy

I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu

Bullseye: The Framework For Traction

Not using any structured approach for getting traction is one of the most common traction mistakes, and yet there are simply not many traction frameworks out there to help you make sense of the process. In our upcoming Traction Book, Justin and I present the Bullseye Framework for getting traction. ...

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Written by Gabriel Weinberg

Founder, DuckDuckGo. Angel investor. Family guy.

Watching your competitors release "your" features

A startup CEO sent me a pained email the other day. The gist was that a competitor (loosely defined) had just released a great new feature to their product. That feature had been on the drawing board for this CEO for months, and they even had a prototype built. But they hadn't finished. ...

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Written by Nabeel Hyatt

entrepreneur, investor, geek, product guy. vc @ spark.

How to gain traction in two sided markets

Startup ideas that involve two sided markets are notoriously difficult to get off the ground. It's the age-old chicken and egg problem. You need lots of buyers for the sellers to be interested, and you need lots of sellers for the buyers to be interested. The same goes for the recruitment space, and many other verticals too. ...

Tags: How To / Marketing /
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Via: joel.is
Written by Joel Gascoigne

Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th

Why Your Startup Needs to Market Today and Who to Hire

How did Pinterest grow from 3,000 users to 25.3 million monthly unique visitors? According to Pinterest's CEO, Ben Silbermann, it was mostly marketing. Rather than focusing on the technological capabilities of Pinterest, Silbermann went out and connected with community, mainly to bloggers to start spreading the word ...

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Retention causes virality, and vice versa

This sounds pretty straightforward: Make sure your product is retaining your users, THEN work on growth. Don't work on growth until your product is working. However, it's an oversimplification. For fundamentally social products, it's hard to separate retention/engagement and virality. Turns out that for fundamentally social products, retention causes virality, and vice versa too. ...

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Written by Andrew Chen

Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v

Want the Media Spotlight? Get Some Traction

A couple of years ago, I was working with a startup looking for media and blog coverage after launching a new online service. It hired a U.S. PR agency that promised the stars and the moon, and then the startup ... Continue reading →A couple of years ago, I was working with a startup looking for media and blog coverage after launching a new online service. It hired a U.S. PR agency that promise ...

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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

Bad Channels and The Wrong Customers

Problem: You've launched your product, it's getting plenty of coverage. People are signing up, but no one is actually using it. ...

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Written by Des Traynor

COO at @Intercom. I speak & write about UX, Customer Acquisi

Traffic Hacking: 43 ways to get quality prospects to your site

Does your company have a "Growth Hacker?" 2012 has definitely been the year of the Growth Hacker (or at least the ethos). If you arean't familiar with the term, Andrew Chen wrote a great piece called "Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing" where he proclaims "No traditional marketer would have figured this out" ...

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Written by Lincoln Murphy

I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu

Thoughts on Competition for Early Stage Startups

I was recently speaking with a colleague of my fathers who works in education and had an idea for a product in the tutoring space. He specifically wanted to know where he could find someone with technical skills to help build out a prototype. ...

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Written by Jason Shen

Co-founder of @Ridejoy, a community marketplace for rideshar

I don't care about crowded markets

One of the most common objections you hear from investors is that the market you are going after is too crowded. I have been on the receiving end of this many times and had to convince investors about the vision we saw for disrupting that market despite the existing players. ...

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Written by Mark MacLeod

Seed investor for SaaS, e-commerce and other awesome startup

How to manage your inside sales team

For many SaaS companies, the effectiveness of the inside sales team is the key to scaling up. After all, other marketing channels often either hit a ceiling (i.e. inbound marketing, PPC, etc.) or simply aren't efficient enough (i.e. all offline marketing activities). However, managing an inside sales team is tough and you need a well-oiled machine in order to get customer acquisition costs inline ...

Tags: How To / Sales /
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Written by Boris Wertz

Early-stage investor through Version One Ventures (35+ inves

Customer (not Competitor) Focused

I was recently speaking with an entrepreneur whose company is in the same space as my previous company, Performable (which was acquired by Hubspot). He was asking how I thought they should compete with a particular competitor. This competitor is good at producing software quickly and extremely adept at copying its competitors ...

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Written by David Cancel

Entrepreneur. Chief Product Officer at @HubSpot. Previously

Are You Providing Answers to Magic Questions?

The best kind of visitor is the one looking to buy. She knows what she wants and has a credit card in her hand. Now it's your job to seal the deal. If you're dealing with a motivated customer, you just need to make taking action easy and present a competitive and compelling offer - and answer the magic questions. ...

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Written by Peep Laja

I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o

Startup Branding and Selling to Martians

Should connecting emotionally with your customers be your marketing's top priority? Not on planet startup it isn't. ...

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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

Overcoming Customer Inertia

To create an anxiety relievable only by a purchase... that is the job of advertising. Advertising is used to increase... Advertising increases familiarity, reminds consumers about your product, and spreads product news. We covered all that before. Today we're looking at a fourth job advertising does: it defeats inertia. ...

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Written by Des Traynor

COO at @Intercom. I speak & write about UX, Customer Acquisi

Targeted Content: The Holy Grail of Content Marketing

For any piece of content to be successful, it has to be personalized and speak to a specific person (a potential buyer), with a specific need, at a specific point in his or her buyer journey. Put another way, you have to have targeted content that reflects a deep understanding of who your audience and where they are on their way down the path to purchase. ...

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Written by Kevin Cain

Director of Content Strategy @OpenViewVenture; world travele

Sales comes out of who you genuinely are

Successful salespeople don't pressure or bullshit the prospect into a sale. They are persistent, but they are always focused on achieving a deal where it will benefit all parties. This means that a great salesperson will never be selling something that they don't believe actually helps the customer. And that has to be the starting point of every conversation with a potential customer. How can I he ...

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Written by Daniel Tenner

Cofounder of GrantTree and Woobius, Blogger @ http://swombat

What listening to a story does to our brains

We all enjoy a good story, whether it's a novel, a movie or simply something one of our friends is explaining to us that they've experienced. But why do we feel so much more engaged when we hear a narrative about events? ...

Tags: Marketing / Pitching /
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Written by Leo Widrich

Co-founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share Tweets, Fac

How To Increase Conversion Rates 
Using Preselling

Over the years I've talked with hundreds of clients and potential clients... conversion optimization wannabees ...

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Written by Jeremy Reeves

Expert Direct Response Copywriter & Split-Testing Specialis

The right time to launch your product

In my 14 years of developing and launching products, I have launched early, late and at "just the right time". Truth is there is no "right time" if you have been working with customers and getting feedback. At that point the launch event tends to be largely a PR ...

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Written by Mukund Mohan

CEO in Residence, Microsoft Accelerator @msftaccelerator

How We Acquired 400,000 Subscribers And What You Didn't Know About Email

Sree Vijaykumar is the founder of TradeBriefs, which helps every professional become an industry expert through daily email newsletters. Sree explains how he acquired 400,000 subscribers to his newsletter. ...

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Written by Sree Vijaykumar

Entrepreneur, Thinker, Doer in Online Media and Retail. Libe

9 Ways to Improve the Impact of Your Email – The Works

By using this email for all these purposes, it blunts our ability to be effective and to get quality responses from others. We've all had that situation arise where we try to get a response from someone and we either get a lame/vague response that requires another 8 messages to get everything nailed down, or the dreaded "no reply at all." Here are some thoughts on improving your email response and ...

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Written by Chris Brogan SME

CEO&President, Human Business Works, a business design compa

The Difference Between Stealth Mode and Quiet Mode

A lot of companies still talk about being in stealth mode and aiming for a big hoorah type launch. It doesn't usually work. Worse still, startups that are in stealth mode rarely talk to customers, prospects, users, partners or anyone else before their big reveal, which means they have little to no validation for what they're doing. ...

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Written by Ben Yoskovitz

VP Product @GoInstant. Partner @YearOneLabs. Ex-CEO/Founder

Who should do the selling in a startup? Or "Is sales a team responsibility"?

In the early days (less then 10 customers) of a startup, the founder typically is expected to do most all of the selling to get the early adopters. This helps solve the problem of understanding the customer's buying process which aids in hiring the right sales person for your startup. ...

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Written by Mukund Mohan

CEO in Residence, Microsoft Accelerator @msftaccelerator

Why you should not outsource your initial sales efforts

Most technical founders are not comfortable with the sales process or the disciple of selling. They tend to treat it as beneath themselves and "sleazy". Given that most entrepreneurs I interact with are engineers, I usually walk them through an engineer's approach towards selling, which tends to mirror the agile development process they are familiar with. ...

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Written by Mukund Mohan

CEO in Residence, Microsoft Accelerator @msftaccelerator

Why do companies buy anything from B2B startups?

There are only 2 reasons why companies buy from startups - The person buying has a very good relationship with the entrepreneur, or the person buying has a dying pain that she feels can be solved by the startup's solution. ...

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Written by Mukund Mohan

CEO in Residence, Microsoft Accelerator @msftaccelerator

3 examples of startups that are doing well focused on one marketing technique

Here are some examples of startups that did very well focusing on one marketing technique (and some who are still doing it). While I am not privy to why they chose the technique they did, they are all consistently improving over time. ...

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Written by Mukund Mohan

CEO in Residence, Microsoft Accelerator @msftaccelerator

The New Marketing Machine

"Don't Wake Up With Your Website in a Ditch" Expand Your Content and Your Contributors to Keep Your Content Marketing Strategy Humming. As content explodes around you, if you are the only person contributing to your content marketing strategy, I hate to break it to you, but you're going to be in trouble ...

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Written by Aaron Dun

Vice President Marketing & Strategy for Percussion Software,

Can enterprise SaaS products be viral?

"Going viral" is often the holy grail for Internet startups, who hope to quickly scale to hundreds of thousands of users (then hundreds of millions) with relatively low user acquisition costs. However, in a recent blog post and presentation, Andrew Chen argues that SaaS products aren't viral ...

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How to lose at meetings

Every meeting is either won or lost. There are no "good" meetings. You've lost the meeting when you leave with a compliment or a stalling tactic. The parody version is "Let's talk again after Christmas... Don't call me, I'll call you[1]." ...

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Written by Rob Fitzpatrick

Founder at http://dex.io (get more speaking gigs). I talk &

Teeny bit of traction — what next?

After a year of work, my startup is now doing about $6,000/mo in revenue and $3,000/mo in profit. I just quit my day job to work on it full-time, and I have a few thousand more dollars I can put into it. What should I do next? ...

Tags: How To / Marketing /
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Written by Jason Cohen

Keyword, buzzword, half-truth, adjective, hey look at me!

Places to Start Acquiring Users

Today I want to respond to the #1 concern I hear from early stage startups: how to get people to find out about your product without having to pay for it. In this post, I'll cover some of the best growth hacks that I've discovered for the acquisition stage of the lean marketing funnel. ...

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Written by Mattan Griffel

Startup polymath, serial entrepreneur, growth hacking expert

Why tech founders can't hire in early salespeople

Spoiler: You can't hire out sales because in the early days it's about learning, not selling, and hired guns can't bring back bad news. ...

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Written by Rob Fitzpatrick

Founder at http://dex.io (get more speaking gigs). I talk &

10 Ways to Take your Site from One to One Million Users by Kevin Rose

This is the post that got me kicked off my original shared hosting service and prompted the move to SquareSpace. I couldn't figure out why so many people were reading this article. But they kept on coming. The site went down and I was told to vamoose. It finally dawned on me nobody actually cared about the article, it was the name Kevin Rose that was magic. ...

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5 Key Lessons we Learned from Pivoting our Blog

The story of why we started a fully focused content marketing strategy here at Buffer is actually one that isn't glamorous at all. It was born out of pure necessity that we couldn't get any press coverage for the launch of Buffer. For the first few weeks I was on board, I tried restlessly to [...] ...

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Written by Leo Widrich

Co-founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share Tweets, Fac

Wait! Don't Finish Your Next Product

This post dives deep into how we're developing and launching Fizzle, our new video training platform for online business builders. A little over a month ago, we intentionally launched a very unfinished product. Functionality was missing, content was meager and many questions were unanswered, yet we opened the doors to real customers anyway, on a date we had scheduled months in advance. ...

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Written by Corbett Barr

Founder of Think Traffic. Creator of Fizzle: Honest Online B

What you should know before you launch your product

The common refrain "We don't know anything until we launch" is completely false. Here's why. At a recent design meetup here in Boston I was talking to a product manager who was anxious about an upcoming release. He was talking about several new features they were adding that they had high hopes for but didn't know how well people would use them. To sum up his thoughts he said "Well, we'll just hav ...

Tags: How To / Launch /
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Via: Bokardo
Written by Joshua Porter

Director of UX at HubSpot, Co-founder @performable, Founder

The only ways hype helps startups is to a) raise money b) attract customers c) recruit employees

At TechCrunch Disrupt, legendary venture capitalist (and Sun Microsystems co-founder) Vinod Khosla warned entrepreneurs against the dangers of hype: Generating buzz too early can inflate a startup's market cap and make them a less lucrative investment of time and money for the top-tier advisors they need. That leads to critical missteps like poor hiring decisions that can doom a startup. ...

Tags: Mistakes / PR /
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Written by Chris Yeh

Entrepreneur, Investor, Writer, Dad.

The Classy Way To Get Media Coverage For Your Startup

In my previous career as a journalist, I received hundreds of story pitches with press releases attached every day. Like so many other well-meaning journos, I'd make a valiant attempt to at least skim the first two lines of every one. In those two lines, I (and almost all the journalists I know) made a rapid judgement on the newsworthiness of content, never spending enough time thinking about what ...

Tags: Advise and Tips / PR / Press /
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Written by Nicholas Holmes

S12 @Seedstartup participant. Former travel/tech journo. Fou

No Startup Has No Competition

You know the feeling when someone scratches a chalkboard? I get the same thing when a startup entrepreneur declares their company has no competitors or no direct rivals. ...

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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

Marketing Funnel is The Role of Customer Service

The marketing funnel (sometimes called the purchase funnel or customer funnel) maps a consumer's journey toward the purchase of a product or service. Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about the stages of that journey and how to maximize the number who make it from one stage to the next. ...

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Written by Tom Fishburne

Marketoonist and Founder of Marketoon Studios (http://market

Creative Destruction in Marketing

The movement towards data-driven marketing makes creativity the most important asset they can offer. Specifically, great marketers will engage in creative destruction of data driven norms and disrupt market standards to stand out. ...

Tags: Marketing / Opinion /
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Written by Geoff Livingston

Marketing strategist. Author. Agent for change. Amateur phot

Customer Retention is the key to Long-term Profitability

Profitability is one goal that most of the SaaS CEOs who ask me for help all share. Though, while they're all focused on achieving profitability, how that is measured varies from company to company. For the sake of this post we'll consider profitability to be achieved once the Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) have been paid back ...

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Written by Lincoln Murphy

I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu

SaaS products aren't viral

SaaS products aren't viral from Andrew Chen I recently gave a short talk to the portfolio companies of a SaaS investor, and prepped some notes around the topic of SaaS products and virality. For consumer internet entrepreneurs that are working on big markets, getting to virality is hard enough. ...

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Written by Andrew Chen

Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v

Sales channels often disappoint

I often find myself advising entrepreneurs to be cautious when predicting sales volumes through distribution partners or sales channels, so I thought I would reproduce my thoughts here. In my experience these distribution deals where small company does deal with big company to sell small company's product disappoint more often than they deliver. ...

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Written by Nic Brisbourne

I'm a VC in London

Make it Easy to Say Yes

Have you ever wanted something and not gotten it? I know I have. I've noticed a HUGE PROBLEM of entitlement with our generation and younger. ...

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Written by Noah kagan

hi*

How to email influential people-and get responses FAST

Today I'm going to share the 2 things you should NEVER say in an email to someone you don't know. (Especially if you want that person to promote your blog and business to their readers) And then I'll walk you through a word-for-word script that I personally used to get influential people I didn't know. ...

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Written by Derek Halpern

I'm 99% useless, but that 1% when I'm not, I'm dangerous. Fi

5 marketing tips for startups from LinkedIn's founding VP

Konstantin Guericke knows more about marketing than the typical engineering graduate. As a LinkedIn co-founder and the founding marketing vice president of the company, he helped grow the social network from zero to six million members. ...

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Software Is Eating Marketing

When I was a kid, "The Graduate" was a generation-defining hit movie, with Dustin Hoffman playing an aimless college graduate. In the middle of a graduation party, an older businessman takes the wayward Hoffman aside and delivers some wise advice: "plastics." That should be the field his generation should focus on, the field that would shape the future. Today's advice for aspiring graduates is als ...

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Written by Jeff Bussgang

Former entrepreneur turned VC at Flybridge Capital, author o

Startup Marketing

Marketing is one of those disciplines that is a bit of a black box to startup founders who come from more of an engineering background. I've heard founders think about marketing both as something that doesn't really matter (since all that matters is the product) or something that matters a lot and requires hiring a fancy CMO or VP Marketing. ...

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Written by Robgo

Cofounder of NextView Ventures. Founding advisor at Boundle

Writing Home Page Headlines For The Modern World (3 Formulas That Work)

Read any copywriting manual or article and you will learn that the headline is the most important thing in your sales copy. And it's true. The sad thing is that the advice that follows is often severely outdated and originates. ...

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Written by Peep Laja

I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o

If You Can't Explain What You Do In A Paragraph, You've Got A Problem

I strongly believe that a founder should be able to explain what they do in one paragraph. Here's an email exchange that I had in the past 24 hours with an entrepreneur. ...

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Written by Brad Feld

I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder,

8 Startup Founders Reveal Their #1 User Acquisition Tactic

Let's face it, if you're starting a business, one of your main concerns is going to be growth. It won't matter how great your idea is if you fail to gain any traction. In today's world, there are countless strategies. IN this post 8 Startup Founders Reveal Their #1 User Acquisition Tactic. ...

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Written by Erico Siu

User Growth Team Lead @treehouse

3 Ways To Build A Compelling Story

We've been talking a lot about story lately, both on this blog and around the office. What makes for a compelling story? Are we even telling the right kind of story? These are some of the questions we ask each day. Building a compelling story is essential and, as Forrest highlighted recently, can help you survive a design change. And we all know the consequences if you get it wrong. Look at Fa ...

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Written by Ryan Thomas Riddle

Editor @ZURB, Writer, Educator, and occasional Starship Com

The Shy Salesman

There is a myth that a successful salesman must be confident, slightly arrogant, outspoken, and convincing; a salesman must have a silver tongue and be able to parry any potential-customer objections with ease. This myth leads to a fear of sales. Many entrepreneurs fear sales, choosing to exclusively focus on product development as oppose to [...]. ...

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Written by Jun Loayza

Founder of @TourWoo, the easiest way to book a tour online.

The Only Time to Use the Word "We" in Web Copywriting

"We" is a bad, bad word in copywriting. You should reword every line of copy you have that begins with "we". Whether in an email. Or on your website. Because your visitors don't want to hear about you. They want to hear about themselves - about their problems, about their needs, about their futures. ...

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Written by Joanna Wiebe

Copywriter at http://CopyHackers.com. Staunch advocate of co

The rise of enterprise marketing

Building an enterprise software company used to be largely about sales, because enterprise software was sourced and purchased by high-level business people. Those business people needed to be charmed and convinced, an activity that was distasteful to many technologists. ...

Tags: Marketing / Opinion / SaaS / Sales /
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Written by Chris Dixon

Founder & investor

"Stealth mode" and other brilliant strategies

Stay in stealth mode until the last minute. The last thing any startup needs is people finding out about it. You can get attention later -- that's not difficult. You don't need the distraction of customers clamoring outside your office while you're still refactoring your NoSQL database structures. ...

Tags: Launch / Opinion /
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Written by Jason Cohen

Keyword, buzzword, half-truth, adjective, hey look at me!

What about a $1 Trial?

I do a lot of work with B2B SaaS / Web App / and Cloud companies - of all sizes - on Free Trial Optimization, helping them turn their Free Trial into a Customer-Acquisition Machine! Well, I was just asked about $1 Trials on Quora and at first, I didn't think I had much to say on the topic... but I guess I do ...

Tags: Marketing / Pricing / SaaS /
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Written by Lincoln Murphy

I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu

How to hire a salesperson

This post is targeted at tech startups that are looking for an execution focused, front-line sales person. Filepicker.io is a good example of this kind of a company. This post is not about bringing on a business co-founder or hiring your first senior business person. ...

Tags: Hiring / How To / Marketing / Sales /
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Written by Anand Dass

Tech sales & biz. dev. enthusiast with an intimate knowledge

There Are Only 3 Ways to Increase Online Sales (Are You Optimizing For All of Them?)

There are three ways to grow sales - online and offline both. Only three. However, most companies focus only on one - and are missing out on revenue opportunities. So what are these 3 ways to increase online sales? ...

Tags: Marketing / Sales /
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Written by Peep Laja

I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o

4 Vital Lessons for Marketing Professionals Going Startup

The best way to learn how to code is... well... to code. Simple as that. Of course, the theory can be really helpful, but the actual learning happens when you put it in practice. Unfortunately, a vast majority of marketers (the ones with business degrees like myself) learn their craft differently. ...

Tags: Marketing / Mistakes /
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Written by Mike Abasov

Helping startups kick ass at marketing. Running a blog about

For Startups, Target Audiences Can Be a Challenge

Within a marketing strategy, it goes without saying that target audiences are a key consideration. For all the focus on nurturing an idea, addressing a point of pain and developing a product, the ability to achieve traction hinges on the ability ...

Tags: Marketing /
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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

You don't need a growth hacker

Startups don't need growth hackers - at first. They need products that are really working in the market. This means users love it, that there's lots of retention and engagement, even at small numbers. ...

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Written by Andrew Chen

Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v

14 strategies for finding and leveraging major online influencers

Today's audiences aren't automatically sold by celebrity endorsements anymore. Instead, they're tribal to major online influencers who not only know their industry well but are the ones disrupting it and propelling it forward. ...

Tags: Marketing / Pitching /
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How to Start Marketing Your Startup While in Stealth Mode

One topic that has been debated in the startup community forever is whether or not you should keep your startup in stealth mode until it is ready for the big release. Most people, especially the ones with experience, will tell you not to be afraid of someone stealing your idea and avoid being in stealth. ...

Tags: beta / How To / Marketing /
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Written by Mike Abasov

Helping startups kick ass at marketing. Running a blog about

Don’t mention another company when describing your own

We see a lot of business plans that describe themselves as the [insert name of recently hot tech company] for [new vertical or market sub-segment]. Recently we have seen a lot of Pinterest for YY and Etsy for ZZ. Sometimes we get 'my company is a cross between [massive company x] and [massive company ...

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Written by Nic Brisbourne

I'm a VC in London

How to Identify Your Online Target Audience and Sell More

What's more important, traffic or conversions? If you send me 50k people from a classic tractor repair website and 500 from a prominent marketing site, which one is going to be better for my business? Unless you're in the pageview... ...

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Written by Peep Laja

I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o

Pyramid Pitching

Everyone knows of the mythical elevator pitch. I'm here to tell you that the elevator is real. The potent entrepreneur's life is full of inflection moments: brief opportunities to shift the destiny of your company. And a proper pitch is essential to take advantage of them. ...

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Written by Dan Shapiro

Google acquired @sparkbuy, so I now work on www.google.com/a

Test Your Value Proposition: Supercharge Lean Startup and CustDev Principles

In my last post I described a new business tool, the Value Proposition Designer. In this post I outline how you can use the tool to not only design Value Propositions, but also to test them. You'll learn how you can supercharge the already powerful Lean Startup and Customer Development principles to design, test, and build stuff that customers really want. ...

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Written by Alex Osterwalder

Bestselling author, member of the Business Model Generation,

A Startup Customer Worksheet

Great marketing is based on a solid understanding of target customers. Here I've shared a customer worksheet that I've used in the past to help me track what is known and not known about my target buyers that I use as a foundation for building a marketing plan. ...

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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

User Acquisition: Cycle Time Matters

Over the past few months I been fortunate enough to give over a dozen talks at various events and companies about user acquisition, virality and mobile distribution. One of the best parts of the experience is that, without fail, every talk yields a new set of questions and insights that help me learn and refine my own thinking on distribution ...

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Written by Adam Nash

Inevitably optimistic

The Dangerous Seduction of the Lifetime Value (LTV) Formula

Many consumer Internet business executives are loyalists of the Lifetime Value model, often referred to as the LTV model or formula. Lifetime value is the net present value of the profit stream of a customer. This concept, which appears on the surface to be quite benign, is typically used to compare the costs of acquiring customers. ...

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Written by Bill Gurley

VC @Benchmark (investor @Twitter), blog: AboveTheCrowd, BOD

The Massive Guide to Getting Massive Traffic

Growing a blog takes time. It takes consistent sharing of great content for months and months on end. Usually it takes most people about two years to get big. This means that your growth is slow and steady as your traffic coming to your site is slow and steady. While that strategy will work... it's always nice to get a huge jump in traffic every once in awhile. Would you like to know how to do th ...

Tags: How To / Marketing /
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Written by Neil Patel

I'm Kind of a Big Deal

The Lean Approach to Sales and Presentations

I had an epiphany recently about the congruence between Peter Cohan's Great Demo! methodology and a lean approach to sales and presentation practices. The simplest definition of the Great Demo! is "Do the Last thing First" ...

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Written by Sean Murphy

New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome

Shut up and ship

The startup community operates in a world of "get out of the building." Of "write more specs". Of asking "should this project even be built"? This converges on a culture of "everything except the code." Have meetings about the featureset. Write documents about the featureset. Argue with other developers about the design. ...

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Written by Drew Crawford

I run my own iOS development company.

Achieve Product-Market Fit with our Brand-New Value Proposition Designer

During the search for product-market fit. It helps companies avoid building stuff that customers don't want. Yet, there is no underlying conceptual tool that accompanies this process. There is no practical tool that helps business people map, think through, discuss, test, and pivot their company's value proposition in relationship to their customers' needs. So I came up with the Value Proposition ...

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Written by Alex Osterwalder

Bestselling author, member of the Business Model Generation,

Case Study: Which Source of Web Traffic Converts the Best?

I'm sure you've heard it before, traffic isn't important, targeted traffic is. In this post I'm going to give you some very specific results that show how much you would be missing if you focused solely on traffic volume and not at the type of traffic you are getting. ...

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Written by Dan Norris

Founder of http://webcontrolroom.com (launching soon) and ho

The Sad State of the Startup Pitch

You'd think that given the sheer volume of material written about how to pitch your company to investors that we'd be in the midst of some sort of golden age for the startup pitch. Clear concise value propositions, crisp tales of product market fit (or failed attempts at discovery), direct asks for how much is being raised and what's hoped to be validated. ...

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Written by Bryce Roberts

VC, Dad

Start-ups can't pitch

Start-up competitions are the new black. While I have nothing against trends, it's hard to miss that when something hits the Trendville, quality just gets thrown out of the window. Day in and day out we are seeing what seems to have become a required ingredient for any tech conference that wants to make a splash. ...

Tags: Mistakes / Pitching /
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Written by Alex Barrera

Alex is the founder of @42press (A matchmaking platform for

[HowTo] A Value Proposition Worksheet

Crafting great value propositions is a critical marketing job but creating them isn't easy. This template helps capture the necessary inputs and assumptions. ...

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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

If I Don't Get You, You Don't Get Me

In a world in which many people are time-strapped, multi-tasking and mentally scattered, the "get" factor is huge for startups. By "get", I mean how well and quickly a startup tells potential users what it does and what their product or service will do for them. It sounds simple but it's difficult to do. ...

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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

Startups, at times not losing is as important as winning

In complex B-to-B sales, multiple "Yes" votes are required to get an order. A single "No" can kill the deal. Understanding the saboteurs in a complex sale is as important as understanding the recommenders and influencers. We needed a selling strategy that took all of this into account. In a startup not losing is sometimes more important than winning. ...

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Written by Steve Blank

Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford,

Does offering a Free Trial increase conversions?

For those SaaS companies who've offered a Free Trial and had it fail, it is hard to see how it could ever work. For those who've never offered a Free Trial, the idea of adding an extra 30 or 60 days to the sales cycle seems like a bad idea ...

Tags: Marketing / Pricing / SaaS /
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Written by Lincoln Murphy

I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu

For startups: how to deal with large enterprise customers

When I started Visual Website Optimizer, my sole focus was on selling to small to medium businesses (SMB). However, since last two years, we started getting interest from a lot of enterprise prospects. Of course, if a Fortune 500 company contacts your fledgling startup showing interest to purchase your product, you will be very excited about this mini-validation of your product. However, dealing w ...

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Written by Paras Chopra

Startups and Online Marketing enthusiast

Developers are Oil, Marketers are Vinegar: Mix Them Wisely

Developers are like olive oil. Valuable in a variety of settings. Full of substance and flavor. The good ones are a little peppery. Marketing people are like balsamic vinegar. Sometimes a little sweet. Sometimes a little acidic. Always capable of adding flavor and zing. ...

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7 Questions That Lead to Incredibly Effective Marketing Campaigns

If you're launching a new product, designing a sale or getting your business ready now for your version of Black Friday or Small Business Saturday, there are series of steps that you need to include in the planning process in order to create the most effective campaign. ...

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Written by John Jantsch

I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us

Two Tiered Inside Sales Process for Startups

The inside sales approach for startups is nothing new but as of late it's become much more popular. Over the last few months several entrepreneurs have reached out to me specifically to learn about how our inside sales process works and what I'd recommend. My top recommendation is often something they aren't currently doing: implement a two tiered sales process where cold calling and closing are t ...

Tags: How To / Marketing / Sales /
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Written by David Cummings

10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family,

The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing

Starting a business is exhilarating. Unfortunately, the “build it and they will come” theory doesn’t hold much weight and those overnight success stories you hear about are often the result of behind the scenes years of hard work. Simply put, startup marketing is a unique challenge often times because of the limited resources, whether it’s [...] ...

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Written by Renee Warren

Geek in stilettos. Co-Founder & CEO of @Onboardly. Traveler.

Your leading characteristic

When people describe you or your company what is the first thing they say? What do they lead with? That's your leading characteristic (at least in that particular context).He's the _______ guy. That's the _______ startup. Isn't that the __________ search engine? ...

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Written by Gabriel Weinberg

My only regret is that I have... boneitis.

On stories and marketing

Your child never asks at bedtime to tell them about a press release. They do ask you to tell them a story. How would you make your story compelling to a 9 year old? ...

Tags: Marketing / Pitching /
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Written by Christopher Penn

Director of Inbound Marketing, ninja, PodCamp cofounder, Mar

You’re a Growth Rookie, not a Growth Hacker.

A Growth Hacker, like a "visionary", is only anointed with the sacred oil of growth hacking ex post facto. Once, you have delivered huge and exponential growth in users/leads/sales, you are a Growth Hacker. Before that, you are a Growth Rookie. ...

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Written by Patrick Vlaskovits

CMO at @GetDrumbi. Wrote The Entrepreneur’s Guide to CustD

This Inexpensive Marketing Plan Can Lead to More Traffic, More Leads and Higher Customer Retention

Are you up against competition that has deep pockets and can outspend you in traditional advertising methods? Does it seem like a losing battle to go head-to-head with them to get new prospects? Particularly for startup companies, using traditional advertising and marketing methods can get expensive...especially if you're up against an established company with more money than you. ...

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Written by Neil Patel

I'm Kind of a Big Deal

Guerilla Marketing, Brad Feld Style

"...companies should... focus on building amazing products. If you have amazing products, the marketing of those products is trivial. If you have $hitty products, the marketing is impossible. Instead of focusing on marketing as an activity... integrate it into (your) products." Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group ...

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Written by John Greathouse

You can check out my startup advice blog at: http://www.info

Getting Due Diligence Ready

The decision to give an entrepreneur cold hard cash is all about trust. I trust you to take my $1 and make it $5 or $10. One important datapoint in forming my trust thesis as an investor is how organized you and your company are. No matter what your company size, your key documents should be organized and readily available. And you should know what's in them. ...

Tags: Funding / How To / Pitching /
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Written by Mark MacLeod

Seed investor for SaaS, e-commerce and other awesome startup

The 6 Best Growth Hacks to Get Customers Without Having to Pay for Them

Growing a business is no easy feat. Every dollar counts. But what if we could “hack” our growth? Instead of paying $20 to acquire a new customer, we could focus on projects that continue to bring us new customers long after we’ve finished the improvement. Paying for the hack once and enjoying growth long after [...] ...

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No one cares about your crappy demo

Rather than rehash anecdotes of terrible pitches, I've collected a series of best practices, extracted from the best demos. Keep it short - Beyond wanting to fit in multiple demos, there's a good reason we keep demos to just a few minutes. With attention spans dwindling, you're racing against the clock before they lose interest and start flipping around on twitter. You may think the audience needs ...

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Written by Zvi Band

hacker/founder/community builder. CEO of @contactually (back

Why Webmasters Aren't Replying to Your Outreach

Since launching my personal blog I have been bombarded with guest post requests, with very few of them being worthy of reading, nevermind responding to. Thus, it was literally one in 267 emails that inspired this article about what makes an email that webmasters and bloggers will respond to. ...

Tags: Marketing / Pitching /
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Via: SEOmoz
Written by James Piper

Longtime and forever student of the web. All-American fantas

Pitch the future while building for now

I wanted to offer some thoughts on pitching versus product planning. In an effort to impress investors, we've all steered our products towards what we think is sexy or investable, versus what is most likely to work for consumers. I've come to believe that this is a kind of Silicon Valley disease, and we should try hard to avoid it. ...

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Written by Andrew Chen

Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v

Modelling the Customer Buying Process

Deeply understanding how your prospects move through the buying cycle is really important when structuring a marketing plan that drives customer acquisition. Mapping this process requires an understanding of the stages that a customer moves through from not understanding that they have a problem through to buying, and renewal. ...

Tags: How To / Marketing / Sales /
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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

One Size Fits None

"People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole," an HBS professor named Theodore Levitt famously told his students. Too often, marketers get wrapped up in the features and functions of their products, rather than solving the actual problems of the consumer. That leads to a lot of one-upmanship versus competition and over-bundled products ...

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Written by Tom Fishburne

Marketoonist and Founder of Marketoon Studios (http://market

Traction mistakes

Most startups don't fail at building a product. They fail at acquiring customers. The biggest mistakes I see over and over again when startups try to get traction are as follows (in order of importance) ...

Tags: Marketing / Mistakes /
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Written by Gabriel Weinberg

Founder, DuckDuckGo. Angel investor. Family guy.

Geek's Guide to Networking

When the right people meet at the right time, great things can happen, says Borys, introducing five rules of networking for geeks. Contains Angelina Jolie's right leg. Choose the events wisely, Set your goals, Do your research, Know your pitches and Follow up! ...

Tags: How To / Networking /
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Written by Hack FWD

We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and

PEST analysis for marketers: Technology factors

Have you ever heard of a PEST analysis? It's not something you do with annoying people on Facebook or around the house. It's a basic form of business analysis that looks at four key "big picture" factors that might influence your business, factors in the environment around you and your company. These factors are political, economic, social, and technological. ...

Tags: Marketing / Opinion /
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Written by Christopher Penn

Director of Inbound Marketing, ninja, PodCamp cofounder, Mar

Don't answer questions, tell a story

What we should have said to PG... "So it's like a wiki?" he says, moving his fingers in circles against his temples. His eyes are closed. He's concentrating. He has 10 minutes to understand me. ...

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Via: Rocketr
Written by Andrew Peek

Founder @Rocketr / EIR @JetCooper. I'm here to make bets and

3 Reasons to Build a Startup Marketing Plan

A lot of startups don't have a documented marketing plan. Here are three good reasons you should have one. ...

Tags: Marketing / Sales /
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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

Your Lead Problem Is Really a Leadership Problem

Marketing generates leads. Sales ignores them or only acts on a fraction of them. Marketing complains that Sales cherry picks and (excuse the mixed metaphor) leaves money on the table. Sales complains that Marketing doesn't get it. The leads they provide are for opportunities that are too small. The customer timeline is too long. ...

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Written by Matthew T. Grant

Writer, ironist, doctor of philosophy. Also, editor at Marke

Moving the needle

When you're just starting out, a lot of things can move the needle. That's why I think the right approach to getting initial traction is to intelligently try a bunch of traction verticals, see what looks promising, and focus there. ...

Tags: Marketing /
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Written by Gabriel Weinberg

My only regret is that I have... boneitis.

What does a growth team work on day-to-day?

I would break down what a growth team does Day-to-day into two major buckets: 1) Planning/modeling and 2) Growth tests. 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. ...

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Written by Andrew Chen

Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v

Assume Your Market is People Like You, Then Fail

As an entrepreneur, you should assume none of your customers is like you, yet I find that most entrepreneurs assume just the opposite. Customers don't have your technical base, the passion, and interest in your solution. In fact, even if they did, they couldn't find you in the clutter. An underrated portion of every startup effort must be about communication and marketing. ...

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Written by Martin Zwilling

Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro

Five Signs a Startup is Ready for Marketing

To many startups, marketing is a "necessary evil". It is something they embrace after recognizing the time has come to tell their story to a wider audience, or do a better job of putting the spotlight on what they are doing and why more people should know about it. ...

Tags: Marketing /
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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

Marketing Is NOT About Relationships

"Marketing is about relationships" is a common phrase on blogs or Twitter. Unfortunately, it is also very misleading. Here are three reasons marketing should not be developing relationships and what marketing needs to do instead. ...

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Written by Eric Wittlake

Focus: Digital Media & Marketing for B2B. Belief: Marketing

Value NO... Know It's Value!

Many salespeople spend their days doing everything they can to avoid having people say 'no' to them. This makes sense since we've all been taught that in sales, you are going for a YES, not a NO. As a result, many salespeople come to view 'no' as a failure and as the end of the process. However, great salespeople know that selling is a 'numbers game.' The more people you talk to the greater your c ...

Tags: Failure / Marketing /
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New Rules for Inbound Marketing

As marketers, we all know that word-of-mouth advertising represents the "Holy Grail" of promotions. When your business is so universally-known and well-regarded that you no longer need to invest significant amounts of capital in acquiring new clients, you're able to free up both time and money ...

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Written by AJ Kumar

Co-founder of Single Grain, a digital marketing agency based

Don't Worry About Startup Competitors

What startups shouldn't do about rivals is get spooked or distracted by their existence or the fact they're doing something different. The danger is that spending too much time focused on what competitors are doing means time and energy is taken away from what you're doing. ...

Tags: Competition /
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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

your ad here

When we think of paid media as a catalyst rather than as the foundation, it forces us to raise our game. There is no longer a captive audience. Our communication can't afford to be "blah blah blah". As marketers our goal in everything should be to create marketing worth sharing at the start. ...

Tags: Advertising /
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Written by Tom Fishburne

Marketoonist and Founder of Marketoon Studios (http://market

Every Mistake is an Opportunity to Surprise and Delight

Everyone and every organization makes mistakes. But if you can follow up those mistakes with a little (or a lot) of surprise and delight, you can not only erase the mistakes - you can create fans for life. How much is that worth to you? ...

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Written by Dave Kerpen

Father. Husband to @CarrieKerpen. CEO @LikeableMedia, social

The Most Dangerous Opinion in Marketing: Yours

71% of marketers pay attention to brands' feeds "all the time" on Facebook, versus just 23% of normal people (also known as your audience). 31% of those same normal people disagree that brands should invest into their customers in social media, versus just 6% of marketers. ...

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Written by Eric Wittlake

Focus: Digital Media & Marketing for B2B. Belief: Marketing

It's not all coding and design

There are three pillars to a successful digital startup: engineering, design and business. Those roles can be split amongst people or shared amongst multi-disciplinary individuals, but above all build a culture where each feels valued, where trust and collaboration can thrive, and where everyone feels motivated to excel. ...

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Written by Giff Constable

MD at Neo in New York; maker, designer, entrepreneur, and ag

Don’t let rejections affect your sales

I bet almost all of us have experienced times when we feel it is just not our day, week or month. Nothing seems to go right and we simply cannot close deals or sales. If this happens, how often have you taken some time to think about the situation and the reasons behind it? Probably not always, and the reason is usually predictable - we have adapted a defeatist attitude and accepted rejections as ...

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How to do (and what to expect from) early stage customer development

Everything I know from 4 years of intensive customer development and sales, boiled down into an 18 minutes talk I gave at HackFwd in Berlin. HD video is here, normal is embedded below. I'm pretty happy with this one and think you won't have heard the content elsewhere. Watch it! ...

Tags: Cust-Dev / Sales /
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Written by Rob Fitzpatrick

Founder at http://dex.io (get more speaking gigs). I talk &

Marketing Needs a New Metaphor

In the world of co-creation, marketing needs a new metaphor -- one that embodies the notion of shared purpose. What if we replaced the art of war with a finer endeavor? Let's say: marketing is dance. In this paradigm, customers are not prizes, nor the spoils of war. Customers, and even competitors, are willing partners with whom a company moves according to a shared melody. ...

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Written by Philip Granof

CEO of Protobrand, consumer insight and brand development. B

The Toolbox: From Idea to Launch in 10 Hours

Last week, I launched The Toolbox, a directory of useful one-page sites and apps. It got upvoted a lot on Hacker News, then went viral on Twitter, and got about 11k visitors on the day of the launch. Since then, I've had a couple people ask me why I launched that site, and what kind of tools I used to do it. But first, let me share some stats for the first 10 days. ...

Tags: Ideas / Launch /
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Written by Sacha Greif

Designer from Paris, now living in Osaka. Creator of @YoFoly

Sales Rep Training Programs for Startups

When developing a sales rep training program internally or evaluating outsourced ones, here a few things to keep in mind: Soft skills like presence on the phone need to be taught, in addition to more formal methodologies like Solution Selling or SPIN Selling ...

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Written by David Cummings

10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family,

Are You Falling Into the The Pit of Mediocrity?

Good advertising will make a good business more successful more quickly and more efficiently. Good advertising will make a bad business go out of business faster. If you're in between, languishing in the PitofMediocrity, you'll try advertising, and it won't work very well (if at all, depending on a few factors) - at least, not nearly as well as it could. ...

Tags: Advertising /
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Written by Tim Miles

dad-writer-repairman-designer-nerd-husband-advisor-speaker-p

Which of These 3 Case Studies Will Grow Your Sales?

The Teaser-Trailer Technique - It creates an immediate sales spike. The Second Closer Strategy Usually boosts sales by ~10% permanently. The Testimonial Getter Gets you testimonials, a proof-asset that will also help grow your conversion rate permanently. ...

Tags: Marketing / Sales /
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Written by Neil Patel

I'm Kind of a Big Deal

Product Launch Planning: Sales Channel and Sales Cycle Complexity

As it relates to your sales channel and channel partner readiness, there are two things to consider when developing your own product launch time line. First is the size of your sales channel. The second is the complexity of the sales cycle. By focusing on the sales channel and channel partners you address what is typically the most time consuming and riskiest part of a successful product launch. ...

Tags: Marketing / Sales /
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Written by David Daniels

Product marketing evangelist, entrepreneur, recovering tech

Do long-form sales letters still work? Even for "Professional" businesses and startups?

It's becoming more clear that design is being used as a credibility and professionalism booster, so I'm beginning to put my own preferences aside and join the crowd. That's why in this article I'd like to show you a few examples of how people are mixing the power of long-form salesletters with the professionalism many of today's consumers are coming to expect. ...

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Written by Jeremy Reeves

Expert Direct Response Copywriter & Split-Testing Specialis

The Importance of After-Sale Marketing

For startups, attracting a user (free or paid) can be a huge challenge and an accomplishment given their fickleness and the intense competition. It means having strong messaging about what the product does, the value propositions and benefits,and then making sure enough people become aware of it through different marketing and sales channels. There's a lot of moving parts to win over a customer. ...

Tags: Marketing / Sales /
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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

Why Churn is SO critical to success in SaaS

Illustrates graphically why churn is a huge problem a SaaS company gets larger. It also looks at a very surprising factor that can massively accelerate SaaS growth: negative churn. (This article is applicable to any recurring revenue business, not just SaaS. ...

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Written by David Skok

Serial entrepreneur turned VC. - Author of forEntrepreneurs

Why Startups Shouldn't Be Afraid to Sell

In my opinion, too many startups are afraid to sell their products. They're afraid there's too much competition, they're afraid not enough consumers will be willing to pay for it, and they're afraid of not getting the traction to attract investors or an acquirer. Instead, they take the easy way out by offering their product for free ...

Tags: Freemium / Sales /
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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

Eleven Compelling Startup Pitch Archetypes (with examples from YC companies)

Paul Graham is, among other things, really good at boiling companies down to their essence. When practicing for Demo Day, you'd see founders start to pitch their company and Paul would say "Wait, don't say that. Why do you say you are doing ____" which summed up the company in a more beautiful and compelling way than anything the founder had previous pitched. ...

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Written by Jason Shen

Co-founder of @Ridejoy, a community marketplace for rideshar

Does Your Advertising Make You Look Cheap?

I opened up the bright blue Val-Pack envelope this morning like I sometimes do, more out of a marketer's curiosity than anything else. I don't use coupons; it's too much of a hassle for me to save a few bucks. But I do leaf through the coupons just to see who's advertising, what they're advertising, and if can find anything in there to blog about. Just kidding. That's just and added bonus today! ...

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Written by Carolyn Higgins

I help small business owners get more customers! Also profes

What’s Your Story, Morning Glory?

Everyone likes stories. Our love of stories starts when we're children, and keeps on going. For startups, telling a good story is as important as creating a product or service that solves a problem, makes life easier or simply entertains. ...

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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

B2B Lead Generation vs B2B Advertising: What You Need to Know

Among paid media and advertising tactics, lead generation programs are a key source of leads for B2B marketers, especially in the enterprise technology space. Tell a B2B publisher that you are interested in lead generation and the majority will point to some form of white paper syndication program they offer. ...

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Written by Eric Wittlake

Focus: Digital Media & Marketing for B2B. Belief: Marketing

Turn Your Company into a Customer Platform

The idea that customers can't or shouldn't participate much in the innovation process is one barrier to creativity that companies are rapidly knocking down. Many firms are rethinking their businesses, envisioning themselves less as providers of internally-created products and services, and more as platforms that allow customers to create their own experience and value. This new view and way of ope ...

Written by Bill Lee

Bill Lee is a business consultant and professional speaker w

Startups and the Seductive Powers of Blog/Media Coverage

You can enjoy the coverage when or if it happens but don't spend too much time or energy worrying about it. Instead, focus on the task at hand: developing a great product or service that drives sales. What you might discover is sales and success will get the blogger/media as a nice and well-deserved dividend. ...

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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

To hire or not to hire a PR firm?

It's up to you if you would like to hire a firm to take care of your PR. For a lot of companies this is a real brainteaser. Which is why we're glad to help you a few steps in the right direction, the one that suits your company best, that is. ...

Tags: PR /
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Written by Press Doc

A new format for press releases, optimized for the social we

Product Marketing Contribution

Jane is supporting the launch of Product X, a new release her company is really excited about. She is on the marketing team. Armed with her launch checklist, she schedules a meeting with John, the product manager. At the meeting, John answers all of her questions, draws a market segmentation on the white board, and talks about the key features and why they are important. Jane takes lots of notes ...

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Written by Martina Lauchengco

High-tech marketing advisor and consultant

Must-read for founders: A VC explains how to build a killer value proposition

At the center of that value proposition is you. What problems do you understand uniquely well? What can you deliver uniquely well? What sort of disruptive business model can you bring to bear? Be true to yourself and play from a position of strength. A little self-awareness can go a long way in crafting a value proposition with power. ...

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Written by Michael J Skok

Former entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. Twitter handl

Ways to Grow Your Business - 9 Proven Strategies

If you're business isn't growing, it's probably dying. Inflation and costs increase whether we expand along with it. Customers, markets, and trends are changing whether we are changing along with them. Those who do not grow get left behind. ...

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Written by Dave Lavinsky

New User Experience, Engagement

One of the great things about working at Greylock is meeting with entrepreneurs and discussing product strategies for virality and self-distribution. Recently, I've been struck with how many of these conversations have reflected back on another topic I'm extremely passionate about, the new user experience. ...

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Written by Adam Nash

Inevitably optimistic

Should You Ever Fire A Customer?

It was tough deciding to stop working with this customer especially because we could see that other companies were able to meet this customer's needs. They could do it and we couldn't. It is a tough, tough reality to face, but an incredibly valuable one. ...

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Written by David Feinleib

Investor, operator, and entrepreneur

Sales Pipeline Tips

No matter whether you are a salesman, small business owner or charity fundraising expert, working with a deal pipeline makes your life so much easier. It brings out the best of people, and perhaps even more importantly, it makes things so much simpler to measure, manage and improve upon. ...

Tags: Sales /
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Written by Timo Rein

Co-Founder of Pipedrive, the Sales Management Software

How to Add More Value to Your Outreach Proposition

As both a PR and blogger, I often spent time thinking how value can be added to outreach, and be done in such a way that it benefits all parties and achieves the desired earned media for clients... PRs can offer value to bloggers in many different forms and I've created this list to hopefully pique your interest and help you make your proposition that bit more valuable. ...

Tags: Marketing / PR / Press /
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Written by Ben Cotton

Remote working, insight delivering PR guy @EdelmanDigital. I

Lessons Learned from an eBook Launch

One month ago on March 20 I released a short eBook entitled "Step by Step UI Design". Since then, I've sold the eBook over 2000 times and almost reached $10,000 in profits. A lot of people have asked me for more details about how I wrote, launched, and promoted the book, so here is a post-mortem to see what went right, what went wrong, and what you can learn from my own experience. ...

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Written by Sacha Greif

Designer from Paris, now living in Osaka. Creator of @YoFoly

6 Skills That Will get you a Startup Marketing Job

The skills startups are looking for in a marketing hire are remarkably consistent. These are the skills I hear about the most and how you might easily get them. ...

Tags: Marketing /
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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

How to Build Your Own Agile Marketing Team

I've spent a tremendous amount of time working with software developers who have taught me the ins and outs of their Agile development process. The goal is to minimize the overall risk by allowing the project to adapt rapidly. Over the past few years, I've developed a marketing methodology that borrows heavily from that process. ...

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Written by jascha kaykas-wolff

Husband & Dad of 3. CMO @mindjet. Info: http://about.me/kayk

Focus on Delighting Early Customers Over Accumulating Followers

Too many "viral launch" strategies require a prospective user or customer to tweet or e-mail friends or post a badge on their blog before they have had a chance to experience any aspect of the service. ...

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Written by Sean Murphy

New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome

Some Thoughts on Branding Startups and Communities

After a great 30-minute talk he took questions. Somebody asked the question, "What do you think about the term "Silicon Beach?" It was not a planted question by me. My views are pretty well known. Brad wrote up his answer here – you should read it because it's very instructive for how I believe communities ought to think about naming conventions. In his blog he says, "I responded that I thoug ...

Tags: Branding /
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Written by Mark Suster

2x entrepreneur. Sold both companies (last to http://salesfo

User Acquisition: Mobile Applications and the Mobile Web

Native applications generate organic traffic, at scale. Yes, I know this sounds like a contradiction. In my first blog post on the five sources of traffic, I wrote: The problem with organic traffic is that no one really knows how to generate more of it. Put a product manager in charge of "moving organic traffic up" and you'll see the fear in their eyes. That was true... until recently. ...

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Written by Adam Nash

Inevitably optimistic

Startup Marketing: Does the Competition Matter?

Prospects are evaluating your solution against alternatives (which may not be products) and communicating how you are better than those alternatives is a key part of great startup marketing. Simply put - you should care about competitive alternatives if your prospects do. ...

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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

Ben and The Impressive Bum

Sales Technique - Step 1: Ask a simple yes/no question to start the conversation (get your foot in the door) Step 2: Ask for something grand (like a lot of money or time) Step 3: Ask for the thing you actually want (like a couple dollars, a 20 minute phone call, a simple partnership) ...

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Written by Rishi Shah

I tweet about funny comics, marketing, and fun facts.

Today Startups Can Win Customers From Big Business

You can't succeed in your new startup if you can't win customers, and the new Internet-empowered customers are tough. They are in control, and they no longer care where or from whom they buy, so here is your chance to win. They do have a specific purchase progression with key milestone moments that determine your win or loss outcome in every transaction. ...

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Written by Martin Zwilling

Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro

User Acquisition: Viral Factor Basics

It's About Users Touching Non-Users. Look at your product and ask yourself a simple question: which features actually let a user of your product reach out and connect with a non-user? The answer might surprise you. ...

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Written by Adam Nash

Inevitably optimistic

Perfect Pricing Part Deux – More money from fewer sales

Jarrod released his eBook about Design on exactly the same say as Sacha. He earned more money while selling only 1/6th as many books. Here's how, and why it's sometimes the best strategy. ...

Tags: Pricing / Sales /
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Written by Jarrod Drysdale

Bootstrapper. Designer+developer. Author of http://Bootstrap

Emotion V. Reason

In this Sunday's New York Times Book Review, I read about a cool new title called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. In a review titled Why Won't They Listen?, the writer got into some territory that has direct bearing on our craft in advertising. Which is this: a proposal is more persuasive when it is pitched to a listener's emotions versus their intellect. ...

Tags: Sales /
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Written by Luke Sullivan

Author of Hey Whipple, Squeeze This and THIRTY ROOMS TO HIDE

Brand is a Critical Part of the End-to-End Experience

Brand Experience = A cohesive combination of devices, people, brands, channels, services, and content that exist over time. ...

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Via: cek.log
Written by Charlie Kindel

Created some cool stuff. Now creating more. Addicted to cars

How We Saved Millions (and got an 800% ROI) By Asking Customers 5 Simple Questions

You can save money AND increase customer satisfaction. You can make higher profits AND create an awesome customer retention machine. Just by asking customers 5 simple questions (And of course, writing down, sorting, trending, and analyzing what you find out). ...

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Written by Terry St. Marie

Writer, Husband, Friend, Entrepreneur. I write about (and h

Some Thoughts about Selling at Startups

Many MBA programs still cater too much to the needs of large, corporate management jobs or prepare students to enter big consulting companies or investments banks. If you haven't read Adam Lashinsky's awesome new book about Apple, you should. It takes on many of the lessons MBA programs and Corporate America have been teaching about [...] ...

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Written by Mark Suster

2x entrepreneur. Sold both companies (last to http://salesfo

Design the Marketing First

Jake Knapp states that "build first, market later" is still a common approach today. He shares a simple, but very interesting, excercise on getting the right focus in your design process. ...

Tags: Design / Marketing /
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Written by Johnny holland

How to give a #@%! about your customers before you launch

Make sure you personally reply to the first 1,000 customer interactions. After you pass customer 1,000 the it will be hard to change a broad perception that has been formed about your new company/product. So make these people extra happy even if you lose money on some or make a tweak they recommended that maybe you weren't planning on rolling out for a couple of months. ...

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Written by Evan Hamilton

Head of Community @UserVoice in San Francisco, singer in the

People Are Irrational, But Teams Don't Have to Be

When most organizations design new work processes, they assume that team members will make the best possible use of them to improve team performance. That is, they assume that team members will act rationally. In most cases, this assumption is wrong. ...

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Written by Francesca Gino

Francesca Gino is an Associate Professor in the Negotiation,

How You Make Money

Here's a very big secret - if you get this it will change your life - there's a very, very small amount of everything you do each day that matters. Figure that out, focus on that and you'll never go to work the same way again. Only a handful of your clients matter when it comes to making money. Figure out who they are and how to amplify what they mean. Make your products, services, processes and v ...

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Written by John Jantsch

I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us

Value Propositions and USPs: "My Product Is the One That..."

I talk pretty constantly about one simple but uber-critical component of any brand, product or company's messaging: the value proposition. AKA the unique sales proposition (USP). Value propositions help separate you from your competition. Great value propositions focus on the one thing that is both unique and highly desirable about your solution. ...

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Written by Joanna Wiebe

Copywriter at http://CopyHackers.com. Staunch advocate of co

Sales - Percent Relationship and Percent Product

People buy from people they like — we all know that old adage. All too often people purchase inferior products even after reviewing the superior product. Yes, there are reasons like price, functionality, implementation timeframe, etc that drive purchasing decisions but people underestimate the importance of the relationship in the sale. ...

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Written by David Cummings

10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family,

Top 10 Answers To Your Frequently Asked Networking Questions

On the journey towards better networking I have come across a series of questions that come up fairly frequently. I've decided to answer 10 of them in this post and if needed am prepared to answer more – Just ask. ...

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Written by Natalie Sisson

I'm a Suitcase Entrepreneur addicted to travel, Frisbee & us

My Secret Sales Weapon

I have a secret. A secret that helps me close more sales than just about anyone I know. In fact, it not only helps me close more sales, it almost magically turns prospects into long-term client relationships. I have been using it successfully for years and years ...

Tags: Sales /
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Written by Richard Gallagher

#1 bestselling customer service author, workplace communicat

Offense is the Best Defense for Startups

Once in a while I find myself in a product or strategy or biz dev discussion at a startup which goes something like: "we are doing xyz to defend against". My reaction is to ask whether xyz is also part of what the startup was trying to build in the first place. If the answer is no, then I will argue strongly that they shouldn't do it at all. ...

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Written by Albert Wenger

VC at http://usv.com

Using your business plan

Business plans come in several flavors and you will need each of them to successfully raise money. I’ll briefly describe the forms of your business plan, but more importantly, explain how to avoid common mistakes in using your plans. ...

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The Magic of a Y Combinator Pitch

If you're out raising money, or thinking about it, there's a lot you can learn from a YC pitch. I've been to a bunch of Demo Days, but it's a real eye opener seeing a team evolve from way before YC, through YC, to Demo Day. Here are some key takeaways ...

Tags: Pitching /
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Written by David Feinleib

Investor, operator, and entrepreneur

How To Get Media Coverage For Your Startup: A Complete Guide

Mashable featured us 6 times, TechCrunch twice, over 10 articles in The Next Web, plenty of write-ups from ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm, LifeHacker, VentureBeat, Inc. Magazine and others. In total, there were over 40 stories by these notable sites written about us, each one based on the tips in this guide. ...

Tags: Marketing / PR /
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Written by Leo Widrich

Co-founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to post on Social Me

Why You Should Think Twice Before You Send That Intro Email

Intros. They're the lifeblood of networking – the currency of mavens. They are your route to angel money. Your entry to sales meetings. We couldn't live without them. But when misused, overused or abused they can diminish your personal brand, consume your valuable time and waste that of the relationships you value the most. ...

Tags: Networking /
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Written by Mark Suster

2x entrepreneur. Sold both companies (last to http://salesfo

How to Discover Your Perfect Target Customer in 5 Steps

One of the most important elements of a marketing strategy is the development of an ideal target customer profile. Effectively understand who makes an ideal customer allows you to build your entire business, message, product, services, sales and support around attracting and serving this narrowly defined customer group. ...

Tags: Cust-Dev / Marketing /
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Written by Josh Jantsch

Small business marketing consultant, speaker and author of D

Startup Founders/CEOs: Do Your Own PR Outreach

Having an external PR person pitch on behalf of a startup seems like the wrong approach. Maybe it comes across as too "corporate" or impersonal, particularly given reporters and bloggers are getting pitched by PR people all the time. So what should startups do when pitching a story to a blogger or reporter? ...

Tags: Marketing / PR /
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Written by Mark Evans

Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad,

Why There's No Space for Competition on a Lean Canvas

Someone asked me this question recently, and it's a good one. Understanding your competition is important, but ultimately it should have very little impact on what you do. For starters, your biggest competitor is likely not another company, but in fact the most difficult alternative to overcome: doing nothing. ...

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Written by Ben Yoskovitz

VP Product @GoInstant. Partner @YearOneLabs. Ex-CEO/Founder

Engineering your marketing outcomes

Marketing comes naturally to some people. Unfortunately, few of them go on to found software companies. Patrick talks about types of marketing that use engineering skills and won't be rabidly opposed to your developers. ...

Tags: Marketing /
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Written by Patrick McKenzie

I'm a small software developer. Blog: http://www.kalzumeus.

How to Evaluate Your Startup Idea Part 2.0: User Acquisition

In my first post in this series I listed a number of criteria I use to evaluate startup ideas. The very first was user acquisition. It and the second one (revenue model) are closely related and, I think, are the easiest way to at least disqualify an idea upfront. ...

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The essential startup team: content, analytics, design, engineering

I was recently thinking about what would a minimal, initial team for a software startup comprise of. Imagine you have a brilliant idea for a startup and you have some funds to hire an initial team. But like most smart entrepreneurs, you want to hire a minimal team first and only expand late Possibly related posts (automagically generated):Beautiful Design by JayAppointment Reminde ...

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Written by Paras Chopra

Startups and Online Marketing enthusiast

Know Your Customers and How They Decide

Everything you design—from slide decks to email newsletters, from marketing sites to company t-shirts—has a goal, and that goal is to get someone to decide to do something that benefits you or your company. To achieve this with a design, you need to understand two variables: who are they, and how do they make their decisions. ...

Tags: Design / Sales / UI/UX /
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Written by Des Traynor

COO at @Intercom. I speak & write about UX, Customer Acquisi

From Miserable Launch to Decent Success in 3 Months

As you probably missed it on HN's front page three months ago, my post entitled "A Tale of a Miserable Product Launch". In it, I described our major face plant when launching illico, a little chat application. At the time, my intention was mainly to share our failure with fellow programmers on HN, and let the steam go off a little bit. After all, there's nothing better than a good laugh to compens ...

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Written by stangeek

Learning from competition

Reacting well to competition requires critical analysis of your own product and its shortcomings, and a complete, open-minded understanding of why people might choose your competitors. They're not fanboys. They're not brainwashed by "marketing". Your competitors' customers aren't passing on your product because they're stupid or irrational. They're choosing your competitors for good reasons ...

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Written by Marco Arment

Creator of Instapaper. Amateur writer. Coffee nut.

How to pitch your startup at conferences

I attended the Launch conference in San Francisco yesterday and saw quite a few pitches. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs are still making the same mistakes... Because many of the presenters were first timers and early stage companies... Here are a few tips for pitching ...

Tags: Networking / Pitching /
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Written by Rocky Agrawal

11 tips for entrepreneurs on dealing with the press

Chris Dixon has one of the best posts I've seen on how startups should deal with the press. I added a few items in his comments, but thought they were worthy of sharing here. ...

Tags: Advise and Tips / PR / Press /
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If you saw your competitor's roadmap would it matter?

I'd like to take everyone's advice and talk to potential customers and investors about my ideas, but what if someone else steals my idea? If a competitor got ahold of this - especially a well-funded one - I could die before I ever got started! Don't VCs do that? Almost all founders I encounter are leery about discussing their product plans. Now with the Social Network movie promulgating this fear, ...

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Written by Jason Cohen

Keyword, buzzword, half-truth, adjective, hey look at me!

Why your product will never seem like it's good enough

Anyone working on getting their first product out to market will often have the feeling that their product isn't quite ready. Or even once it's out and being used, nothing will seem as perfect as they could be, and if you only did X, Y, and Z, then it woould be a little better... it leads to unlaunched products that are endlessly iterated upon without a conclusion. ...

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Written by Andrew Chen

Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v

Startups: Attack The Problem, Not The Competition

Do not become obsessed with beating the competition. Instead, obsess over beating the problem you are out to solve. ...

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Written by Dharmesh Shah

Entrepreneur. Founder/CTO @HubSpot inbound marketing and st

Some tips on interacting with the press

Here are a few things I've learned over the years about the best ways for entrepreneurs to interact with the press (by press I mean blogs as well as traditional media). - Don't be afraid to ask what the rules are. Is this on or off the record? If they are writing an article about your company, do they require exclusivity? What is the angle of the story? ...

Tags: PR /
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Written by Chris Dixon

Founder & investor

A/B Testing your way into a great product launch

Your first sales goal is to get as many of the the right set of customers signed up as possible. You can absolutely A/B test your way into a successful launch. A launch with a laser focus, the right price, and a line around the block of people shaking fistfuls of money to give you. Here is how ...

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Written by Josh Ledgard

Pitching Your Business vs. Planning Your Business

I feel like recently, as the Lean Startup movement gains more and more traction (I love the Lean Startup principles) and there are more incubators, accelerators, innovation centers, etc. helping startups get off the ground, that I'm hearing more and more this idea: "you don't need a business plan, you need a great pitch" ...

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Via: Forbes
Written by Sabrina Parsons

Don't Advertise Until You Read This.

Is there much disagreement in your company? I'm not talking about where to head for lunch – I mean real, passionate, fundamental disagreement on product, marketing, operations, etc. I hope so. Even more so the earlier you are in your business. Running it is a messy business. There are tons of decisions to be made. ...

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Via: Forbes
What a Unique Selling Proposition Really Means and Why Your Business MUST Have One

If you're interested in business and marketing, at some point you'll learn about the need to have a unique selling proposition. The Entrepreneur.com encyclopedia defines a unique selling proposition as follows: The factor or consideration presented by a seller as the reason that one product or service is different from and better than that of the competition. ...

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9 Ways To Make Your Startup Grow Virally

If you want your start-up to become the next big thing, it's not good enough to just build a great product. Unless you can afford to buy users, you'll have to grow virally. The difference between getting one of your new users to convince one friend to sign up and that person getting two new ...

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Via:
Written by Vinicius Vacanti

Co-Founder and CEO of @Yipit. Sharing lessons learned as a f

Startups Should Approach Everything as Marketing

Startups are great because they have a clean slate for all aspects of the business. While daunting, it's also empowering in that there aren't notions of "that's the way we’ve always done it." One theme I'm a fan of is the idea that startups should approach everything as marketing. Everything? Yes, everything. ...

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Written by David Cummings

10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family,

Best Sales Secrets

Do you often wonder what other people's strategy is for reeling in sales? Wonder what they say or do to get customers buying their products? Well I am always curious, so I reached out to my experts for their advice and they have some ideas for you below. ...

Tags: Marketing / Sales /
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Written by Sarah Shaw

Ex-handbag designer brings you the coolest handbag organizer

Ad Budgets Evaporate as Earned and Owned Media Grow

Many marketers have been shifting their ad budgets to digital media. The move usually comes as a way to also reduce spending by building efficiencies into the overall program. According to a new survey of about 600 marketers, agencies, technologists and digital industry insiders, that ratio is $1-to-0.20. The survey was conducted by the Society of Digital Agencies in partnership with Econsultancy. ...

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Written by Valeria Maltoni

Sr. Director Strategy, Empathy Lab. [Make sense. Make do. Ma

The B2B Backdoor Strategy

My first startup was a B2B Enterprise software vendor. In those days enterprise software companies went to market by building a really expensive direct sales force with sales reps and sales engineers out in the field in key cities. We had little visibility into which deals would close when. And we routinely had to replace [...] ...

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Written by Mark MacLeod

Seed investor for SaaS, e-commerce and other awesome startup

With marketing it is never just one thing

Marketing Gurus have simple and universal solution to your business problems. Perhaps, too simple. There is always one simple answer that broadly applies to all businesses. Whether the business is small or a large enterprise, whether it is a startup or a well established player and regardless of market conditions they recommend their one solution ...

Tags: Marketing /
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Written by Rags Srinivasan

Practicing Effective Pricing

5 things that destroy a company's value

Although the goal for most startup founders might be to build your company's value, many companies are inadvertently taking steps to kill it. Marty Wolf, the founder of Martinwolf M ...

Tags: Branding /
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Via: Gigaom
Design is Marketing

Everywhere you turn, people are talking about design. It's been hailed as the core ingredient to the success of everything from ad campaigns, to products, to entire companies. In this post we'll look at how to design for the success of your website or Web app. ...

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Written by Chuck Longanecker

Saas Math: Why are you NOT spending on marketing?

Often when I meet new SaaS startups they tell me proudly that they have grown their user base without "spending a dime on marketing". While that is a great accomplishment and a testament to the quality of the product (product = marketing for great web services), it does lead me to ask why! ...

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Written by Mark MacLeod

Seed investor for SaaS, e-commerce and other awesome startup

What is the ultimate sales formula on web? (PV - PR = PD)

When most people think of increasing their conversions, they think of cool little tricks they can do… slight word changes to various parts of the page… or changing the colors. And if this is you, you're missing out on an enormous opportunity to not only increase your conversions, but increase the long-term results of your business… including getting the most profit possible. ...

Tags: Conversion / Sales /
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Written by Jeremy Reeves

Expert Direct Response Copywriter & Split-Testing Specialis

Fucking Ship It Already: Limited Products vs Shitty Products

Look, I know that building a product with one or two engineers and no money is tough. As an entrepreneur, you almost certainly have far more ideas than you have resources to create those ideas. And it doesn't help that you have people like me screaming, "Ship it! Ship it!" before you're really ready. ...

Tags: Development / Launch /
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Written by Laura Klein

Principal at Users Know. Director of Product & UX at One J

Sales Tips Revealed: The Must-Do Sales Strategy That Will Shock You

There's a way for you to make more sales by asking a few simple questions. This strategy is based on some surprising research about the human brain and how it works... and when I share it with you below, you'll realize just how powerful it is for making more sales. ...

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Written by James Clear

Entrepreneur. Travel Photographer in 17 countries and counti

How to find that first big customer

Q: I've read somewhere in your blog about how you had a very large organization as the first customer for your software. I'm putting myself in the same boat now with the solution I'm developing so could you tell me: 1. How did you reach out to your first customer? 2. How you convinced them to pay up when code review at that stage was nonexistent? ...

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Written by Jason Cohen

Keyword, buzzword, half-truth, adjective, hey look at me!

Don't Practice Veterinary Marketing: Talk to Prospects

My father used to complain that a friend of his would make his doctor practice veterinary medicine.  The doctor would ask him what was wrong and his friend would reply in a non-committal way.  Some entrepreneurs, especially in the early market, seem to prefer veterinary marketing:  running tests and making changes in their application ...

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Written by Sean Murphy

New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome

Red Flags To Avoid When Talking About Competitors

One of the most important questions you will be asked by potential investors is how your solutions beats the competition, not just today, but over the three to five year life of their investment. There is no perfect answer to this question, but there are many wrong answers which will immediately jeopardize your credibility. The concept is called “sustainable competitive advantage.” A good ans ...

Tags: Competition /
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Written by Martin Zwilling

Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro

Just F*king Sell

The past few weeks have been really interesting at Graphicly. We have achieved product/market fit, our new product launch has been overwhelming, and there is a clear direction and focus in the company. Revenue is doubling week over week, and our internal mantra has gotten equally clear. "You are either building, selling or leaving." ...

Tags: Sales /
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Written by Micah Baldwin

A Tale of a Miserable Product Launch

A good laugh is the perfect remedy for misery, so here is the story of our latest product launch a.k.a. How to End 3 Months of Hard Work on a "Revolutionary Product" with a Major Face Plant ;)  It all Started With the Idea of the Century: Illico  To give you a bit of background, our startup, lollicode, has been around for 3 years, and came up with a few ...

Tags: Launch /
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10 Rules of Networking for Startups

Networking is essential for startups: in order to build trust and credibility in your business you need to be visible and to make personal connections. Whether you want to recruit, attract funding, or win clients, it’s the personal touch that will win people over.  You almost certainly need to build new contacts as you get your startup off the ground and, if you’re innovating a br ...

Tags: Networking /
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Written by Hack FWD

We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and

Visual Website Optimizer: Solo Bootstrapper Lands 1,000 Paying Customers – with Paras Chopra

This is an interview I've been waiting to do a long time. When I first talked to this guest, I urged him not to do an interview and we both agreed. Now I think it's time to do it... ...

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Via: Mixergy
Written by Paras Chopra

Startups and Online Marketing enthusiast

Got Early Startup Competition? Here’s Why I Think You’re Fine

If you’re creating something interesting then you should expect other teams to be working on similar ideas. It’s just the way it is. Any new idea is had by 3 other people at the exact same time as you had … Continue reading → ...

Tags: Competition /
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Written by Dan Martell

Canadian living in San Francisco. Founder of http://Clarity.

Why branding a startup begins with a question - and not the one you'd expect

By Andrea Shillington Founder & Owner  Brands for the people The first question every leader should start with is this: why does your business exists other than to make money? It may come as a surprise to you that the first questions in a branding process is not about what the product or service is, or even how it’s delivered ...You're reading Why branding a startup begins with a que ...

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Via: 47 Hats
Written by Bob Walsh

Developer, author, podcaster, blogger & consultant helping s

Resegment If You Aren't In The Top Three

Six months ago I wrote a post about how I think about competition which included a list of topics that summarizes my philosophy. I covered the first item, Be The First Mover, but then went on to other things, like thinking about competitors every single day. I’m back today with the second topic, “Resegment If You [...] ...

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Written by Brad Feld

I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder,

On Branding: Is Branding Useless for Service Providers?

Logos, color schemes, web layouts.  As small businesses, we spend a lot of money on efforts to create the ultimate brand-  a brand that defines the business, conveys credibility and sets us apart from competitors.  However, if you are a service provider—particularly in certain industries—I am going to say something that is going to make [...] ...

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Written by Carol Roth

NY Times Bestselling Author (The Entrepreneur Equation), TV

Infusing Your Business With Platform Thinking

Infusing Your Business With Platform ThinkingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Infusing Your Business With Platform ThinkingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Phil Simon (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen) I’ve been talking about this idea of a bu ...

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Written by John Jantsch

I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us

5 Ways to Get Your Customers to Create Content For You

5 Ways to Get Your Customers to Create Content For YouThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing 5 Ways to Get Your Customers to Create Content For YouThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing You’ve heard enough about the need to produce content that I’m guessing you’re probably blogging away and curating, aggregating and filtering all manner of content. But there’s one type ...

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Written by John Jantsch

I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us

A Reality Check About Who Really Owns Your Business And What You Can Do To Protect Yourself

If you think that you are a proud owner of your own online business, think again. We are often ignorant of this harsh truth, yet it’s there – lurking behind like a thief at night. This truth hit me on the head a few weeks back when Twitter shut down my empire of some 130K followers. Then, as… Read the rest of this entry » ...

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Turning Marketing Strategy Into Action

Turning Marketing Strategy Into ActionThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Turning Marketing Strategy Into ActionThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Today I’m speaking with a group of small business owner that want to know about how to develop a marketing strategy that truly allows them to differentiate what they do from others. I wrote recently about how to find your point of differen ...

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Written by John Jantsch

I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us

The Hierarchy of Contagiousness

The key to applying science to marketing is being prescriptive. Calculating and analyzing data that is interesting is fun, but information becomes useful when it tells you how to achieve a specific goal. Throughout my career, one of the goals I’ve focused on is [...] ...

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Written by Dan Zarrella

HubSpot's Social Media Scientist.

Build Your Personal Brand Online or Risk Losing Control of It

Before the Internet, when Gatorade advertised itself as “energizing,” or when Folgers claimed to have “better flavor,” there was nowhere to easily verify these claims aside from people you knew personally, and even they might only know as much as you did. Occasionally there might be a story on the 6 o’clock news about a [...] ...

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Written by Murray Newlands

Scrawler & vlogger, social media events & consultancy

Can You Buy Coverage?

Industry analyst firms like Forrester and Gartner Group won't write about you just because you pay them. You should be happy they don't. Related posts: Working with Analysts is a Pain (but you Should do it Anyway) How to Build a More Targeted Startup Pitch Your Company Can Ignore Social Media but You Can’t ...

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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

How Useful Is Your Marketing?

We know our marketing materials solve our problems. We have a product launching and need to get the word out, so we produce a press release. We want to improve our search rankings, so we blog like crazy. Sales people want something to leave behind, so we give them a deck, a brochure, a white [...] ...

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Written by Matthew T. Grant

Writer, ironist, doctor of philosophy. Also, editor at Marke

What’s the Difference Between Demand Gen and Lead Management? [Whiteboard Video]

A guest post by Lauren Carlson of Software Advice (with video of the Daily Fix’s own Carlos Hidalgo) One of the best perks of living and working in a city like Austin, Texas, is the talent that rolls through regularly. Recently, we got a visit from Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of Annuitas Group and executive director of [...] ...

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The smartest thing you can do is wear your company t-shirt

Chances are if you’re working in tech then you’ve spent time deliberating over which of the multitude of conferences, events and shows you should attend in 2012. Time out of the office is a luxury most startups can’t afford, so … ...

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Written by Henrik Lenberg

VP Platform at SoundCloud

10 Things to Do When They Don’t Call Back

I pitched a TV show and they loved it. I was going to mike up tables in a restaurant and tape record dates. I would [...] ...

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The holy grail of marketing is loyalty

The holy grail of marketing is loyalty. Every marketing plan includes a flow chart on how to migrate consumers from awareness to trial to repeat to loyalty. Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts even defines a brand as “loyalty beyond reason”. Yet many brands approach loyalty primarily through loyalty programs and loyalty cards that bear little relationship to true loyalty. It’s “loyal ...

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Written by Tom Fishburne

Marketoonist and Founder of Marketoon Studios (http://market

Pitching to Bloggers (and Journalists) – Tips for Startups

Most startups don't have an agency helping them get coverage in blogs and publications. Here are some tips based on my experience. Related posts: Infographics: 5 Tips for Product Marketers Politics in Startups vs. Big Companies Startups: 10 Reasons Customers Won’t Switch to Your Product ...

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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

Influence Through Storytelling

I found this presentation on SlideShare and have been meaning to share it forever but keep forgetting. I was reminded of this when watching the Eames documentary I wrote about yesterday. Charles & Ray Eames came up with the concept of Power of 10 and made things with dense data so simple. Joyce Hostyn argues [...] ...

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Written by Om Malik

Founder of GigaOM. Venture Partner at True Ventures

How to Create a Viral Sweepstakes With Social Media

Are you considering using a sweepstakes or contest for an upcoming social media marketing campaign? Ever wonder exactly how a social sweepstakes ties in with the idea of “viral” marketing? In this article, I’ll analyze the concepts affecting a social media “viral sweepstakes” and how marketers can and (potentially) should take advantage. What Exactly Is [...] ...

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Written by Kane Russell

Mobile marketing executive - follow me @waterfallmobile

Being a brand advocate: Informing Or Shilling

Being a brand advocate shows up in many community jobs. It even appears as one of Jeremiah’s 4 tenants. The problem should be obvious. A community manager can’t spend much time saying nice things about a brand without sounding like... ...

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Written by Richard Millington

Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy

Opening the Box

The experience of opening the box is just as much a part of marketing as the graphics on the box. Apple knows this, as we appreciate whenever we open a new iPhone or Mac. Opening the box is our first introduction to the product and Apple thinks through every detail of that process. I recently bought an HP printer that [...] ...

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Written by Tom Fishburne

Marketoonist and Founder of Marketoon Studios (http://market

Zaarly: How To Get 100,000 Subscribers In 3.5 Months – with Bo Fishback

Bo Fishback is the cofounder of Zaarly, a marketplace that changes the way people buy goods and services locally. In this interview you'll learn the story of how Zaarly started right out of the gate, balanced two markets, and got 100,000 subscribers in the first few months. ...

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Via: Mixergy
Written by Andrew Warner

I run Mixergy.com, where entrepreneurs teach how they built

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