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If i build, will they come?

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Re: If i build, will they come?

#11

Post by 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://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/landing... * http://www.formstack.com/the-anatomy-of-a-perfect-landing-pa...

Re: If i build, will they come?

#12

Post by 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!

Re: If i build, will they come?

#14

Post by 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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