
How to fail at marketing - songzme
http://blog.songz.me/how-to-fail-at-marketing/
======
thenomad
Do you have any metrics proving that these tactics don't work?

I mean, sure, I can see why you don't like them - but having a marketing
tactic that is wildly unpopular and having a marketing tactic that doesn't
work are not the same thing.

Case in point: a lot of people _hate_ the "one wierd tip" ads that The Truth
About Abs uses - but they seem to work pretty well -
[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2011/11/02/the-truth-
ab...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2011/11/02/the-truth-about-abs-
mike-geary/).

~~~
JustinSeriously
Another example: long form sales pages. They've been discussed here on Hacker
News before, and many people here hate them, but they do (apparently) convert
very well.

~~~
thenomad
I should have thought of that example.

Yes, long-form sales pages are an excellent example, which I can personally
attest do indeed work.

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pdenya
When I'm comparing products or deciding to use a service i'll often search
[product under consideration] vs [competitor]. Entering this conversation by
titling your articles with relevant search terms seems smart to me.

Here's a link to the vsee vs skype article: <http://vsee.com/skype>

Here's an excerpt:

    
    
        So Why Skype?
        
        Of course, Skype is an excellent service if you're on a good network and don't have to be too concerned about data security. In addition, you can
        
        make phone calls to recipients on traditional telephone networks
        be part of the 663 million registered Skype users as of September 2011
        Skype from almost any platform: desktop (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux), mobile (iOS, Android, Symbian) and smart TVs
    

As you can see there's way more to it than "attacking competitors" they're
legitimately explaining the differences between the services.

------
Dystopian
I think having those posts are important for SEO reasons (I often times look
for comparisons by typing in Product X vs Product Y in Google - there's
probably nobody )

The problem is just how they're framed, as there's a number more of them vs.
general marketing and usability posts. If they hid them away a little better
in the back (kind of how RingCentral does here -
<http://compare.ringcentral.com/>) it wouldn't be as much of a problem.

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annableker
"When running a startup or business, the goal is to create a better user
experience and help advance technology.".

This. I love Apple commercials because they describe the good parts of their
products, infomercial-style.

Pretty consistently, shitty products have shitty ads that try to slam their
competitors and try to associate their brand with some sort of cheesy
emotional stock footage, 1970's-bullshit-advertising-firm-style.

~~~
SODaniel
I don't understand this at all. Apple is one of the companies that invented
the 'Us vs. Them' marketing scheme with their 1984 commercial, Mac vs. PC etc.

~~~
annableker
This is true. I was trying to think of a commercial that highlights product
design and features and this popped into my head. I had forgotten about their
Mac vs. PC ads.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I remember lots of people dancing etc. Now even Microsoft is doing it - the
product is a prop in a Busby Berkely number. So who's showing product
features? Maybe for Apple, the flashy case IS the feature?

------
rthomas6
The first comment is actually from the CEO of VSee. It's worth reading.

~~~
smalter
True. Reproduced below for convenience. <http://disq.us/8bqidj>

Dear Song, this is milton, CEO of VSee. I actually agree with you - we suck at
marketing - and I am personally to blame for this. I did my PhD at Stanford on
human factors of virtual team work via video. I never did any company before -
and I have struggled a lot over the years learning how to do it - and to not
disappoint my team (who works long hours). from my psychology background -
almost the entire company is focused on making a great product - we have a lot
of designers and great engineers and this is our singular focus (as you will
see from using vsee).

For marketing - I am a complete dummy here - and I wish I know the secrets to
do it well. I asked Anne, our writer, to write the vsee vs. competitor X
articles since I get asked how is vsee different from X about 10 times a day.
I was tired of repeating myself - and doing a bad job at it. So I asked Anne
to write it down for our users. I was also pleasantly surprised that it is
actually working for inbound marketing - we are now the top page for many of
our competitors - they spent money on marketing - we ride their coattail :)

We actually love competition, why we are the ONLY company who lists all our
competitors on our home page (see the bottom link). From my PhD days working
on vsee by myself - I love competition since it pushes me to make a better
product - and everybody wins.

One decision I do regret is not spending more time learning about marketing
over the last few years. I spent quite a bit of time traveling and working in
refugee camps - from Syria on the Iraq border to Africa to South East Asia. We
got pulled into these projects since vsee requires less than half the
bandwidth of Skype and has fast screen share - so refugees is now one of our
biggest user segments. I have been to Africa 5 times and MidEast 6 times in
the last few years - and when not going there - I spent most of my weekends
working with developing countries from Egypt to Nepal to Gabon to use vsee for
their telemedicine to virtual team work. If I didn't go to these refugee camps
- I would have more time to learn about marketing - and vsee would be in a
better shape. And I can always go work w/ refugees After vsee is successful.

Thanks for the thoughtful critique, with warmest regards,

Milton CEO VSee

~~~
boise
@milton: it's a phony excuse for being "bad at marketing" (which you claim and
then cite your excellent SEO results) and kind of shoehorned in here to CYA,
but your work with refuges sounds awesome and commendable. It's a great use of
your product and talking about that more on your blog would be fantastic to
read.

~~~
milton_vsee
@Boise, please believe the following is the sincere truth :)

1\. i am BAD at marketing. vsee does not have hundreds of millions of users.
vsee uses managed peer-to-peer secure streaming to allow massive scalability
but without the security downsides of skype. my goal is to create a tool that
can impact millions of people. i have tried all sort of things to get
marketing traction - and they have mostly failed - ie - we don't have millions
of users yet.

2\. we have a lot of competitors - so I get asked all the time how is vsee
different from X. We wrote those articles to help our customers decide. We
actually try to be fair in the articles - why we always include why they
shouldn't use vsee. We are also the ONLY company that includes a list of our
competitors on our home page (see the bottom :). I know vsee is not ideal for
all users - so they should be able to learn all the options.

3\. this marketing tactic is working a little (but not at the scale we would
like). ie - we steal a lot of customers from tokbox. if you search 'opentok
alternative' we are the first one :) if our goal is to compete w/ OpenTok -
you may say we are great at marketing - but on the large scale - we are pretty
bad since we don't have hundreds of millions of users.

------
SODaniel
It seems really odd to conclude that their marketing tactics do not work just
because they 'bash' their competition in a series of blog posts.

The theory also seems to disprove itself by the fact that the very posts in
question are the most popular on the blog.

I agree that there are 'classier' way of marketing yourself then semi-
duplicate link/SEO-bait posts but does it work? Absolutely.

------
boise
don't know anything about their product but tacky marketing tactics don't make
me want to find out.

------
milton_vsee
Dear Everyone - this is milton, CEO of VSee. VSee is bad at marketing - I
would be the first to agree with you! :) I would like to share what we have
tried, and what we are doing.

First - we created vsee to change how people work. When I as a graduate
student, I worked at Intel Research Lab every Fri - and the 101 drive back to
Stanford Fri night was killing me - and I did that for 5 years :( I noticed
that the hottest tech companies - Apple, Google, FB, etc - did not truly
embrace remote work. The reason is that productivity drops by 50% when people
are in remote offices. so our team set out to create a tool that allows people
to work remotely w/o the productivity tax. We are spread across 9 cities - and
our company policy is that even the local staff only comes to the office on
Fridays (free lunch, fun, etc) - vsee is designed to let us work (thus the
fast screen share, live annotation for design, pair programming, sales, etc).

Next - we do want to make money and have a lot of users :) Because our company
is almost all designers and engineers - we struggled with marketing a lot. We
tried getting on Tech Crunch, other press coverage, etc - and we have mostly
failed. Our top users use vsee a lot - but I couldn't figure out a way to
describe vsee where the press would care. People just assume this is another
skype or webex copycat - while we are solving a different problem (we want to
allow people to work, vs. making a remote presentation).

We also tried partnerships - it is slow and painful. contact me privately and
I will share our war stories.

I attended a talk by Rand Fishkin - and I loved it. so 6 months ago we decided
to focus on inbound marketing. we wrote a lot of vsee vs. X articles as a
sales tool previously. so we posted them, and added SEO keywords. the result
suggests this is a good marketing move :) we get a lot of customers from
Tokbox, Skype, etc. if you search for competitor X alternative - vsee is now
on 1st or 2nd page for most of the big guys in this space. We tried buying
google ad words, but our space is too hot - we can't afford it. so riding on
our competitors' coattail seems reasonable.

However, our goal is to get to hundreds of millions of users - and toward that
marketing goal we have failed. Our challenge is that vsee is not a video
conference tool, but a tool to let you work. we couldn't figure out how to
describe this in a marketing way.

We did notice that our top users are telling their coworkers verbally - 50% of
our web visitors download vsee and sign up (i was told this is insanely high).
But vsee didn't have a viral loop - so the spreading factor was less than 1.
so 2 months ago - we decided to focus on viral loop design. I attended
<http://growthhackersconference.com> last Fri - and it was the best event
ever!!! :)

Our marketing focus now (in terms of resources): 1\. viral loop growth
hacking: 90% 2\. inbound marketing: 5% 3\. press outreach: 4% 4\.
partnerships: 1%

hopefully millions of people will be able to use <http://vsee.com> for free
soon!!! :)

ps: why do I travel to and work in refugee camps? to be brutally honest, I was
not a save-the-world type. In school, I was probably the biggest nerd you
would ever meet. I spent most of my time in libraries and writing code -
research and hacking were my passions. since VSee requires less than half the
bandwidth of Skype, and its fast screen share makes it a simple work tool - we
have a lot of users in developing countries. As i learned about our users - I
became part of their world - and I started traveling to refugee camps to work
there. I have traveled to Syria on the Iraq border where Hillary Clinton used
vsee, worked with Angelina Jolie to vsee w/ Chad/Darfur. After working in many
countries in Africa, Mideast, Southeast Asia - now supporting our users there
has become my passion. But I do struggle with how to spend my time - so that
vsee the company is not hurt by my refugee activities.

