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We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

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161–170 of 211 posts

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#161
post #34

This is such impressive blather that I’m now convinced I know nothing at all about modern sales and marketing. It may as well have been written by an ancient alien civilization for all I understood. Probably we’ll hear something very like this when SETI receives a signal from another star system.

It kind of reminds me of people discussing stock using what looks to me like numerology. They don't really focus on the underlying company or what it does, they mainly look at the stock graph and use more or less complicated models to try to predict future performance. Sometimes they actually have no idea what the company does. I feel a bit the same way reading this article. There's a lot of talk about conversion rat…

Did you read the article? Your last paragraph refers to a demographic and should be accounted for in a rung in the awareness ladder.

The reason people focus on conversion rate is because you can easily calculate spend and predict RoI. Coke can spend on a TV ad because it's a drop in the bucket but every dollar is valuable to a bootstrapped company. Exactly why you want to know what you'll get before one blow 50k on adwords.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#162

Left a comment on the IndieHackers page. Keeping a copy here for those who aren't reading the comments section. I have noticed this a lot in various websites I have helped in ad campaigns. Their biggest problem is their landing page. Just like this article uses lots of jargons to explain simple concepts, their landing page reflects the same. For those of you wanting to know more about landing page optimization just w…

Edward Tufte suggests just the opposite. He claims most people underestimate the intelligence of their audience

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#163

Left a comment on the IndieHackers page. Keeping a copy here for those who aren't reading the comments section. I have noticed this a lot in various websites I have helped in ad campaigns. Their biggest problem is their landing page. Just like this article uses lots of jargons to explain simple concepts, their landing page reflects the same. For those of you wanting to know more about landing page optimization just w…

Edward Tufte suggests just the opposite. He claims most people underestimate the intelligence of their audience

But you aren't putting up a website to test the intelligence of your audience. You are putting up a website to sell your product/service. When you walk through a market you find vendors shouting out what they have on offer. They keep it precise: the item they are selling and the price. That is it. This is a tried and tested method of selling. One that humans have adapted to over generations. Tufte might have said that in the context of visualizations. Doesn't mean it applies to marketing as well.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do recruiting consulting and it blows my mind how every time I ask a startup how they differentiate from other startups and what specific advantages they want me to discuss, they give me a bunch of meaningless phrases. Its like founders are being taught a different language that they think provides value but makes no fucking sense.

I'd love to know where they learn that. In my university years, I used to invent such ridiculously overblown phrases for simple things I did, as a form of mockery of corporate culture and my general pastime. But at some point I did realize that these phrases are hashing functions - like the ones you use in a hash table to put objects into buckets. So for a particular thing I do, say "adding colors to terminal applica…

I think it's pretty much spot-on.

People try to summarize their thoughts, but if they are not good at it the summary ends up being "We're pretty cool, not like those other non-cool people, and we stand for good things". And then, having arrived at that thought, they express it using the words they have heard before in similar circumstances.

And boom - pretentious mediocracy seasoned with hollow platitudes!

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#165
post #153

Left a comment on the IndieHackers page. Keeping a copy here for those who aren't reading the comments section. I have noticed this a lot in various websites I have helped in ad campaigns. Their biggest problem is their landing page. Just like this article uses lots of jargons to explain simple concepts, their landing page reflects the same. For those of you wanting to know more about landing page optimization just w…

How does this landing page read, we provide a similar service: https://imagefix.io

Perfect!

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#167

Left a comment on the IndieHackers page. Keeping a copy here for those who aren't reading the comments section. I have noticed this a lot in various websites I have helped in ad campaigns. Their biggest problem is their landing page. Just like this article uses lots of jargons to explain simple concepts, their landing page reflects the same. For those of you wanting to know more about landing page optimization just w…

You have inspired me to add a simpler landing page to one of my services: https://imgz.org/?v=s Also, should landing pages differentiate based on the query string ("?v=s" here), or be hosted on a new path?

This pricing:

    BUY THE SITE
    $999,999.98 Per Year
    1 GB
    What do you care? You own the site.
    Still no support
    BUY NOW

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do recruiting consulting and it blows my mind how every time I ask a startup how they differentiate from other startups and what specific advantages they want me to discuss, they give me a bunch of meaningless phrases. Its like founders are being taught a different language that they think provides value but makes no fucking sense.

> they give me a bunch of meaningless phrases. Because you are asking a meaningless question. Firstly, they are no experts on their competitors. Secondly, how can anyone even be, unless they have used all of them for a long time? Who can do that comparison??

You're mocking the idea that the founder of a company would understand their market...?

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#169
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do recruiting consulting and it blows my mind how every time I ask a startup how they differentiate from other startups and what specific advantages they want me to discuss, they give me a bunch of meaningless phrases. Its like founders are being taught a different language that they think provides value but makes no fucking sense.

I'm curious how often you push back on that and say "no, 'full stack adaptive delivery' doesn't really mean anything. Tell. Me. What. You Do."

As the person below said, a lot of these people have answers for pretty much everything. I'm the person you're responding to and it pretty much always goes like this:

"Arent there other companies working on fraud on the blockchain? How are you different?"

"Our team is amazing and is made up of myself and my founder who have 3-4 years of experience and need to fill it with 8+ year experienced engineers because before then no one is really useful here."

Me: "..."

OR

"Do we really need another machine learning solution to classify documents? What is different from you and your competitors?"

"Well, we think everyone else is doing it wrong and that we've found the perfect solution."

"What is that?"

"Myself and my cofounder are far smarter than any of our competitors".

OR

"How do you talk to candidates about salary?"

"Well, we don't give any actual numbers, but we share our compensation philosophy doc, which ive linked here".

"Right, but can you afford these people? why do you expect them to take a huge pay cut to make you a millionaire?"

"The right person will have faith"

There's always an answer that feels like it was fed to them by a VC who knows it won't really work, but is just hoping and praying.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#170
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great! Your default landing page is pretty clear and to the point, too. I think a new path. "/simple"? "/nobullshit"? "/what"? I don't know.

Thank you! In the interest of fairness, I have added a complicated landing page as well: https://imgz.org/?v=c I will break them out into new paths, thanks.

Those two pages are a brilliant summary of this entire thread. Well done.
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