

If i build, will they come? - TheSmoke

Almost all of us in this community has built something and at some point we have either succeeded or failed. Some of us are trying to build something as well. The question here is how to gain recognition by the people and gain active members for what we built. If i build, will they come? How? I know that "build, they will come" is just a metaphor however there must be a way to spread it. Spreading like a virus or one by one each day, the speed does not matter at all. The outcome is what matters. I honestly do not mind if i have 25K users in the very first day or month or year.<p>How did previous entrepreneurs do that in the last 5 or 10 years? What were their strategies? What they didn't have at their time and what do we have now and vice versa? What should be our spreading strategy? Social networks? Social media? Word of mouth? How does one trigger the spread? How should we use our imagination or should we? Are there any proven methods? Which books should we read about this? How should we educate ourselves on this matter?<p>Let's discuss this. Thanks in advance.
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rajdesai225
The short and sweet answer is NO :) Just because you build something does not
mean everyone will come. Actually, at times - even if you build some thing
absolutely awesome - people may not come.

The reason behind this is called "Value Attribution" - if you really want to
understand the concept behind this - please refer to a very famous experiment
conducted by Washington Post but here’s the summary of what they did.

The Washington Post asked world renowned Violinist – Joshua Bell to play on
his 3.5 million dollar violin at Washington D.C metro station without
revealing his identity.

The hypothesis was that Joshua Bell, who had given tons of sold out
performances on auditoriums where tickets averaged $100/person, would be able
to gather a large crowd just based on his sheer talent.

But, after playing some of the most intricate music ever written on a 3.5
million violin that was hand crafted by Antonio Stradivari in 1713, Joshua
Bell could not get ANY TRACTION. During his 45-minute performance – no one
really stopped by to listen to his performance let alone gathering a crowd to
appreciate it!

So we might wonder – what went so wrong? Why did Joshua Bell fail to get any
traction?

Well the answer lies in Value Attribution and Crowd Mindset!

The people traveling through Metro station that morning did not recognize that
the person-playing Violin was a world famous violinist Joshua Bell. They also
did not realize that the violin that was being played was worth 3.5 million
dollars. To them, it was simply a guy playing violin on a busy morning. What
is a value of a guy-playing violin on subway station? Nothing right? So – no
one really stopped or even paid much attention.

The same thing is true when you build a product. People subconsciously
attribute value to every product. This is the primary reason I believe that no
one will come just because you build a product.

From above example, you should be able to tell that even if your product is
world-renowned but if people fail to recognize the value of your product, they
will not come.

So, it is very important to create a good product but then it is even more
important to communicate its value to the users. Once you are able to do those
two things then only are you ready to talk about user acquisition and user
retention.

Your product value creation is your sales funnel or better known as your value
proposition. The users whom you plan to acquire must first travel through your
sales funnel in order to understand the value of your product. So where or how
you pick up your users it is not that important. What is critically important
is what you show them along the way.

The second thing that is equally important during user acquisition cycle is to
understand their mindset. For example, it is easy see that the mindset of the
crowd on a subway station in above example was surely different from the
mindset of the crowd in a live theater. The people at subway station were
there to catch a train and you can safely assume that they were not interested
in listing to music. The music was probably the last thing in their mind so
even though, more than 1000 people passed by, no one really stopped or
appreciated the music.

Similarly, bringing a crowd of 25K users to your site on day one may make you
feel good but it does not add any value unless it’s the right crowd with right
mindset! I think the focus should be on acquiring the right customers but that
will only happen if you truly understand the value proposition of your product
and then be able to communicate it with right set of customers!

------
cd34
Your site needs to have a strong benefit statement. I need to find out in two
seconds whether it is worth me reading more. Your primary message needs to be
well above the fold and needs to solve some pain point. Without that, any
visits you get to your site are somewhat wasted.

Next, you need to think about how to get your target customers to visit the
site. Who is your target market and where do they gather? Advertising on
Facebook can be fairly well targeted so that you're not throwing away money
advertising to people that aren't in your target market.

Finding people that are social 'kingpins' and getting them to become advocates
is another method. Who are the bloggers that cover your space? Can they be
contacted to tweet or blog about it? Can you develop a referral system or
offer the app for free/reduced price in exchange for the referrals. Perhaps
Klout.com can be used to identify some of your targets, or, technorati, etc.

J Conrad Levinson wrote some good books on Guerilla Marketing that talk about
leveraging this, cross-promotions, etc.

Getting Press Releases accepted by the sites/magazines/periodicals that cover
your market is another way. A well written Press Release directed to the right
person can sometimes get you noticed.

Social buttons, Facebook Page, Twitter account - all generate buzz and make it
very easy for someone to like/share the page. Include referral codes/bonuses
so that your client become your best salespeople.

Your sales message needs to do two things. It needs to convey your Unique
Selling Proposition (Rosser Reeves, from the 1960's) very quickly, and, tell
me what pain you're going to remove. I need to have that 'aha' when I read
your site that says, yes, I have experienced that, I hate that, this site
solves that problem, let me try it out.

You also have to overcome the 'hot doorknob' syndrome. Someone passionate
about the product has to get out there and knock on doors and recruit clients.
Since you have the passion behind the project, when you're selling that to
someone, that passion will infect them. People that see how excited you are
about having solved their problem, will become advocates.

Network, network, network. You know people, they know people, surely someone
that you know, knows someone that might use your product.

Get the product noticed. While writing X, we discovered Y was a problem with
performance. We documented Z which fixed a problem with multithreaded quantum
mechanics. Those stories bring readers, those readers look at what you're
doing that caused you to discover that, they recommend what you're doing.
Carsabi.com comes to mind regarding Solr - they solved a unique problem,
documented that and I would bet probably got a lot of people to recognize
their site from the blog post.

Almost any sales book will talk about what it tells to market. Service America
is a pretty good book. Tom Hopkins, How to Master the Art of Selling. There
are a few other good books, but, almost every sales book has the same message
- solve someones pain.

Follow up. Both Twilio and Tropo do very well with this. Recently I had a
situation I needed to fix, I set up demo accounts with both Twilio and Tropo.
In five minutes, I had a simple script working with Twilio that took about 20
minutes with Tropo to get the same functionality. Tropo's documentation didn't
make it extremely clear and I never did find a complete example without having
to use urllib to get an auth key to talk with their service. However, that
aside, both have sent follow up emails (automated I'm sure) that checked on
progress, asked if I had questions, offered help and suggestions. While Tropo
ultimately didn't do what I needed and I used Twilio for this quick project,
Tropo's followup email mentioned a potential solution to another project I've
been mulling over. Without that followup, I may not have reconsidered Tropo.
And I knew about Tropo from superconf.net - they were a sponsor and I used
their app to be SMS'ed a URL (ok, not a great use case), but, I did have prior
exposure and I knew either could solve the first project.

Thirteen contacts with a person to make a sale and it costs more to get a new
client, than to keep an existing client. Almost every sales book in the world
will tell you this.

Simply. Build something awesome, spread the word, someone will pick up on it
and it'll grow. The speed at which it grows is directly proportional to the
number of people you pitch.

Some bookmarks referenced above:

Guerilla Marketing: * <http://gmarketing.com/>

Landing Page Design * <http://blog.kissmetrics.com/landing-page-design-
infographic/> * <http://unbounce.com/101-landing-page-optimization-tips/> *
[http://bococreative.com/blog/30-tips-for-building-a-
successf...](http://bococreative.com/blog/30-tips-for-building-a-successful-
landing-page/) * [http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-
blog/landing...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/landing-
page-optimization-tips-increases-sales-conversions/) *
[http://www.formstack.com/the-anatomy-of-a-perfect-landing-
pa...](http://www.formstack.com/the-anatomy-of-a-perfect-landing-page)

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AznHisoka
I believe in 3 "wheels":

1st wheel is PR, and reaching out to bloggers. Best time to do this is before
you launch. develop a relationship, tell them you want to pick their brain for
feedback. Of course not everyone will respond, maybe even 1%. But those
handful can easily lead to 1000 new users.

2nd wheel is content marketing (or SEO). Develop content where you share
information with others. People will see you as an expert, and give you
attention. That's where you can link your content to your product.

A great example is EngineYard: [http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2009/your-
pages-will-load-fas...](http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2009/your-pages-will-
load-faster-with-rails/) They created this blog to tell you tips about Rails,
so people are interested right away. But they then connected it to their
product and how it can help.

3rd wheel is build engagement into your product. Make something people will
naturally want to tell others about.

~~~
TheSmoke
These are great advises. I have been reading many articles on this issue and I
have never read such a great summary. Thank you.

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idoh
User Acquisition isn't the only thing, but it should be the first thing. Once
you figure out how to get users, then you do need to build a good product to
retain them.

First figure out a strategy to get people to use something, and then build out
the product around that. For instance, I know Facebook virals pretty well, and
it is through that lens that I look at new ideas - is this something that
they'd post to their wall, share, like, comment on, etc. If not, how can the
idea be shifted around to work? In my experience getting users is a lot more
important than building a good product. I know lots of really bad products
that have lots of users because they nailed the UA part. There is even one app
I know that is basically nonfunctional that has over 1MM users.

Outside of FB I can only speculate, but I'd imagine that you have to think
about how you could get users. If it is through ads, there is nothing stopping
you from running ads before you've built the product, to see what type of ads
or products people are interested in. You could find out how to get people to
leave their email for invites, or what would get people to post to blogs or
tweet, etc.

~~~
TheSmoke
I agree with you. In my belief, we have built a great product yet in 6 months
we only have 86 users. However I think we have not made it clear for people so
they would share on their walls or timelines -which is something I'm working
on.- Some of our visitors got the point and signed up but most of them did
not.

Do you think "invitation only" launches are more successful? I think they are
for a certain degree because from what I see people want to feel special and
they want to have their place on that new thing before somebody else or
everyone else does.

~~~
idoh
I don't know much about using that, because I mainly play in the FB app space.
It certainly works for some people, I think pinterest is the poster child for
that. On the other hand there is something to be said for letting users use as
much of your app as possible before logging in, e.g. see reddit where they ask
for an account only after you try to rate a link or post a comment.

If you got users already, then congrats! That means you have data, and with
data you can make decisions on how to improve the app. The framework I use to
evaluate what to do is based on three factors, UA/virals, retention, and
monetization. Let's set aside monetization. I'd look at your metrics and see
if where you are weak. If you don't have metrics, then that's the first place
to start.

For UA/Virals, you want to know what your conversion funnel looks like, for
example how many people that land on your app become users, what channels do
you get users from, and from there a/b test to make those better. You can also
try to have incentivized virals, for instance dropbox gave users more space if
they referred a friend. In my world it is inviting the user to get some sort
of benefit or unlocking some part of the app. Once you hit upon a strategy
that seems like it work, you have to a/b test like crazy because even small
changes can have a big impact. If your app monetizes really well, then paid UA
can be workable, basically it becomes an arbitrage problem where you try to
acquire paying users for a lower cost than they will spend in the app.

For retention, you want to know what the second day retention for your app is.
If I have over 10% second day retention I find that workable, above 20% is
really great. The retention curve seems to be that 14th day retention is about
half of second day retention, so if you get 100 users on day 0 and have a 10%
2nd day retention then you can expect to keep 5 users from that cohort 14 days
later.

To boost retention you could improve your app, but that's usually not the low
hanging fruit so to speak. Do you do anything to try an reengage your users,
such as sending them welcome emails, or other bacon-y emails. If it is a FB
app, do you send app-to-user notifications or post stories on their wall?
Basically, you need to find a way to reach out to them and get them to come
back to the app. It depends on your comfort level, but I don't mind pissing
off 80% of my day 0 users if I can get 20% of them to come back, because
without being aggressive hardly anyone will come back anyway.

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paulhauggis
It may be 5 years. Are you willing to wait that long? Most people just give up
before this point.

If you have money, you can pay for advertising. If you don't, you will need to
spend lots of time finding creative ways to market your app/service.

We fortunately live in a great time where this is very possible. But I don't
think anyone here can give you a blueprint to your marketing success. It's
different for every idea.

Twitter is a good start. I got 200 beta testers in a week by following people
that I thought would be interested in my app. The trick is to not spam people
to death.

Link your app in your profile. People like private betas because they feel
like they are part of an exclusive group that gets to see your app before
anyone else (and they are).

You will also have a group that is genuinely interested and can give you
honest feedback. This is a key to success: build the foundation with some
interesting features and have your customer base give you the rest through
feedback/ideas.

It's not an easy road to follow.

~~~
TheSmoke
Thanks for the response paul.

I don't believe in overnight success. A baby does not become a teen right
away, it takes years, with the patience and caring of parents. I think
businesses are like babies as well. When you work hard on them, when you be
patient with them and if it is useful for your customers or visitors then
either this way or that way you succeed, as the baby grows.

The difference between now and then is you can spread your ideas, your tools
and your products faster and easier. The only thing you need is knowing how
and when to do that. This is what I am trying to learn.

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SuperChihuahua
Ive tried to collect some videos how previous entrepreneurs did that here:
[http://www.ideaoverload.com/Find-ideas/Finished-
ideas/Media-...](http://www.ideaoverload.com/Find-ideas/Finished-ideas/Media-
about-sales-marketing/)

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mjs00
"Crossing the Chasm" is definitely a good book to understand one perspective
about how technology is adopted. Basically find any way to get early adopters
who are known by their peers to visibly use your product/service, then
reference those folks in your marketing to start the bandwagon to get a larger
user base who start self referencing and recommending. This played out at
several startups I was with.

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ct
If it's really good and people like it they'll tell their colleagues and word
will spread almost automatically once you drop the initial seeds.

You can try to force a viral marketing campaign, but if you have an inferior
product eventually people will see through whatever marketing B.S. you've
built.

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uris77
Interesting discussion. Would be really nice to hear how some start-ups dealt
with this.

