
If you build it, they won't come, unless... - grep
http://blog.asmartbear.com/startup-marketing-ideas.html
======
edw519
_It took me five years to figure out (a) I needed a story and (b) what the
story was. It's hard. But one story beats a pile of AdWords A/B tests._

I have found that there are 2 kinds of stories: classes and instances...

Class: "X can solve problem Y using our product."

Instances:

"Acme saved $30,000 per month by figuring out how to better load their trucks
using our optimization software."

"The Smith family had their first ever reunion when John and Linda Smith
realized how easy our family organizing software was."

"Jones Gifts doubled their sales in 3 months using our bolt-on e-commerce
solution."

The class is good. The instance is better. People love stories and the
instance is a real story, while the class is the framework for a potential
story. The class is a commercial; the instance is a testimonial. Also, an
example cuts through all the clutter right to the reader's reptilian brain.
Naturally, the closer the instance is to the reader's situation, the better.

OP's story was a class. I would have loved to hear a few instances of that
class: some real stories about people who got real benefit from his product.
People naturally want to know about other people.

~~~
_delirium
Does that vary based on the kind of product (and has anybody studied with any
rigor how class v. instance stories work)?

The BigCorp engineers I know _really hate_ instance stories when trying to
find information on possible products they might use; they view those stories
as being mainly targeted at managers. Especially true if it's hard to find
anything _but_ those kinds of stories, which is the case with a lot of
enterprise offerings. "Tell me what the damn thing does, not this
marketingspeak about how SomeCorp leveraged your solution to save $3m" kind of
thing.

~~~
Dylanlacey
Raising the interesting question, do _manager_ types or _developer_ types
drive people past your product?

IE, professional bloggers and journalists. Are they more likely to be appealed
too by the story, or the function? Sure, they're not buying your product, but
they're advising the people who do.

And, you're right, some of them ARE technical people, and PREFER the function.
But just as likely, more in my opinion, they're not.

If you're trying to market an optional solution (IE, one that adds value but
isn't critical... Fun Unit Testing status lights, instead of IDEs) then you
might NEED the story to let people know they WANT your product.

I agree entirely it's great to know what something does. I prefer it, but I
don't think 'the market' (God I sound like a douche) does.

I often say when out, "What's inside counts... But what's outside gets them
close enough to find out", because it's true. Look kinda creepy? No-one's
going to want to find out the weird scar is from when you had an accident
while drift-racing to fundraise for the "Save the Adorable Baby Panda from
Breast Cancer" foundation.

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terra_t
Maybe I'm old school, but I think it comes down to work.

When I was the publicity directory of a college radio station at a small
school, I'd put up 300-400 letter-sized posters to promote a dance with maybe
7-8 distinct designs. This would change the appearance of the campus and pack
the house.

A lot of people, doing the same job, would put up 10 or 20 posters of the same
design and waste more energy vociferously defending their right to be lazy and
that "everybody will see them" than it would take to just make all the designs
and walk around putting the signs up.

The main reason people fail at SEO and SMO is that they radically
underestimate how much work is required to succeed. That's good news for
people who do work hard, because out of 20 potential competitors, 18 of them
are easy to beat.

~~~
QuantumGood
...and getting backlinks is one of the areas where people most underestimate
the amount of work required to do well. Everyone _wishes_ on page factors made
a much bigger difference than they actually do.

~~~
terra_t
you bet.

sometimes you get in a groove and you can get a lot of good links very
quickly; over time you might develop relationships with people who can help
you.

but, overall, this is emotionally difficult work where you can sometimes feel
like you spent a whole day and accomplished nothing. it's a lot like cold
calling, and it's just as necessary/

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nadam
"Yes, you're going to do those things, but since millions of other people are
doing that too, you're still invisible. Visibility-fail. Anyone-gives-a-crap-
fail."

Hmmm..., I think we can say millions of people do (or will do in the near
future) the methods you describe. I don't see why are those methods harder to
do than the methods you categorize as default stuff.

I think what is hard is product market fit. You say:

"Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he'll proudly describe his
stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun."

I think mostly this is the most important stuff unless someone is really
incompetent at marketing. I think a really good product cannot win without any
marketing, but a really good product can win with 'routine' marketing.

Product market fit is always important. Whether even technical merits are very
important depends on how hard the problem technically is. Why there are no
other machine tranlators than Google Translate? Because they have bad
marketing? No, because the problem is incredibly hard technically.

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cpr
Or, if you're not VC-funded, just start small and grow organically by word of
mouth, if it's truly a good idea? Rather than try to hit a home run at launch?
That also gives you more time to ramp up for demand, as you learn how to do
it.

That's certainly the approach I plan to take...

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Mc_Big_G
_While everyone else is mucking about with a new blog...we're years ahead in
the marketing war._

So, we should "tell [our] story" but we'll really just be "mucking about"?

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kwamenum86
Question: by triage did you mean arbitrage and if not what does triage mean in
the context of Adwords?

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steveklabnik
The greater lesson in here is to stay on top of the times, to differentiate
yoursef:

> The obvious problem is that every new startup on Earth says exactly these
> things. Nowadays the "strategy" above sounds the same as:

>> "We'll have a website so people can read about us."

>> "We'll have an email address so people can communicate with us without
picking up the phone."

> Yes, you're going to do those things, but since millions of other people are
> doing that too, you're still invisible. Visibility-fail. Anyone-gives-a-
> crap-fail.

I've certainly been guilty of thinking this way, but that example certainly
casts such 'strategies' in a different light...

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adrianscott
unless we linkbait? ;)

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jhuston
Thanks. Great piece and useful tips.

