
Ask YC: How to get your startup noticed by non-techies - hamgav
How would you go about getting your startup noticed by non-geeks? It's all very well appearing on TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb, but what if this isn't the target audience?
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rokhayakebe
Setup a Google BLog Alert with the keywords/phrases that relate to your
product. Every time someone talks about it,contact that person and tell them
what you think of their article (be honest) and shamelessly plugin your
application. They expect that and they need the stories.

Affiliate marketing. I can never promote this enough. Sign up for PepperJam,
Commission Juntion or Sharesale and pay only when you make a sale. Or pay for
sign ups.

If your product may interest businesses, then cold call. Or warm call (email
then call). Even if your product is free, you can find a few enterprises that
may benefit from using it. Call the top dogs, decision makers and tell them
how your "new blog/app" is the ISHT and they oughta to stop working and check
it out.

Be agressive. Passively.Luck is a "myth" for most people. If someone says no
that means "not right now". Keep pushing every other week.

Repeat. If something works, repeat it. Exhaust it.

Try and try more. There is no set way to market or sell. Try everything you
can. The beauty of emails or phone calls is that you can be anything you want
and anything the other guy/gal wants. "Be water", Be a chameleon.

EDIT: IF you could be more specific about what you do, you could get better
advices from readers.

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maryrosecook
Get it noticed by techies.

Non-geeks find out about technical stuff via their geeky friends and
relatives. Firefox is the perfect example.

The only counter examples I can think of are things like Facebook. However,
even here, there is no harm in going after techies, unless your product is one
of the few that they won't like.

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run4yourlives
This is not exactly bad advice, but it's not a good solution either.

Techies live in a bubble. Let's be frank - most people don't have a clue what
IE is, let alone Firefox. Using early adopters as a gateway to a larger market
only makes sense if those early adopters are a subset of such a market.

What if you're selling to say: law offices? Doctors? Accountants? HR
Directors? None of these markets fit the geek->masses model. You'll fail
miserably if you don't target these niches where they already live.

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mixmax
This is the hard part.

I would look at advertising agencies, they do this stuff for a living. Look at
how they sell detergent and cars. It's very lowest-common-denominator stuff,
but that's what works. Unfortunately the stuff they do tends to be quite
expensive, but learn from what they do.

If you don't have money I would suggest reading up on marketing psychology,
there are a lot of tricks, and try out different ad platforms on the Internet
monitoring your return on investment through funnels, click-throughs, etc. to
find out what works.

Create different ads, viral videos, games, silly websites, and whatever else
you can think of. Don't be afraid of "punch the monkey" and "you have just
won" ads - they work or they wouldn't be there. You don't have to tell us here
on HN you made them ;-)

And don't sell on technological merit, nobody besides techies care about that.
Sell on emotion.

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phil_KartMe
considering finding a niche group that you can really saturate with marketing
in multiple forms (flyers, bookmarks, display ads, PR in industry magazines,
etc.), and who then might talk about your product.

but if its a tech product targeted at an audience you can't reach online, be
prepared for very low conversion rates from offline forms of marketing.

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unalone
Make your product stand out so that it spreads via word-of-mouth. I know it's
an overused catch phrase, but if you're good enough that people want to tell
others about what you've done unbidden, then you've got it made.

Just keep focusing your efforts on your product. Make it shine. Make every
single part of it wonderful. People will talk about it. That's what happened
with Facebook: I remember getting an account when high schoolers were first
allowed, and feeling the need to tell all my friends. It had such a wonderful
interface. Most of my friends did the same.

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sh1mmer
The trick is to give people something they want to tell their friends about.
The more viral, the better. It might start with a few geeks but once it's got
out to non-geeks it'll spread.

Obviously viral will only help you if you have something worth sticking around
for. Otherwise you'll just drum up a huge bandwidth spike and nothing to show
for it.

Facebook app was the perfect example of getting it right. While it was still
novel (rather than annoying) the ability to invite people to use apps (and
Facebook) was interesting enough to a lot of people they did share it.

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SingAlong
Flash it everywhere you go. Word-of-mouth. Literally I mean word-of-'MOUTH'.
There isn't any better way.

But I've also noticed that non-geeks tend to signup for a lot of junk stuff
out of curiosity. Ex: I get mails from a dozen new social networks everyday
saying that my friend has signed up and is waiting for me to get on the site
(sick).

And forwarded mails(read junk. most are so) are a better examples.

And they won't return anymore if it isn't a good site.

So it should be easy to get people(non-geeks) but if they like it they will
surely go on with your site. I teach a lot of old guys around me(includes my
father) about how they can use simple tricks to use the internet better. And
it goes on spreading among people in their age group and friends circle. And
it does so because it isn't boring. If I taught my dad how to get a Merb app
running then he would probably be thinking about the next month finances or
the flavor for tomorrow morning's coffee.

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gscott
A good Google ranking can't be understated. That is driven partially by blog
exposure. I am #1 on "Free Intranet" and "Free Extranet". That probably drives
half the signups each day. The rest comes from a low budget Google Adwords
campaign and a low budget Adbrite.com campaign. As for other search engines it
is like they don't exist.

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symptic
Permission Marketing <http://www.sethgodin.com/permission/>

~~~
pwoods
Seth is that you?

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callmeed
Send a basic press release to the local newspapers and TV stations in your
city (and surrounding cities). These people actually need material. We got a
write-up/picture in the local paper once and I was shocked at how many people
recognized us over the next several months.

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wensing
What worked for us was to get in their face as content, not as advertising. If
possible, develop an API that puts your content or functionality in and on the
outlets your non-techies frequent.

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ssharp
would techies have any interest in your startup? what's nice about this
segment is that they are relatively easy to reach and are very interested in
seeing what's out there. in most product lifecycle, you're going to have
innovators and early adopters before you have a large audience. the trick is
to figure out who your initial audience is going to be, engage them, and
provide methods for them to spread the word.

if you are willing to post more about your startup, i might be able to give
you some more targeted ideas.

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Brushfire
Be simple/focused, easy to understand, and obvious after the fact (inspiring
the wow why didnt I think of that syndrome).

And include a refer feature that is non-ridiculous.

~~~
Brushfire
BTW, whether you should care that your startup is noticed by non techies is
totally dependent upon your industry and model. Especially if you are B2B...
this may not be important.

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terpua
Posting on HN and asking advice is a great first step.

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utnick
guerilla marketing is a pretty interesting book..in summary it says try a
whole bunch of things for many months and track what works

