Gopro cameras are promoted with customer-taken photos

Founder’s Guide to Internet Marketing

Great promotional content is the key.

Early marketing has two major parts: (1) get the first paying customer, and (2) get more of them easier and cheaper. The process is simple. Figure out your message. Create convincing content. Push it through some channels. Get the first customer. Try new things and measure results until you reach your initial revenue target.

Start with investment in content, not channels. Great text, brand identity, customer pictures and landing webpage make a big difference. First visitors are likely to come from friendly sources.

Time-to-first-customer is critical. Can it be today? This week? The shorter are your cycles of promotion, the faster you build an effective marketing strategy for your company.

Action steps

• Create promotional content.
• Push it to some channels.
• Measure results.

Online marketing overview

Promotion campaigns have simple cycles. Get a promotion idea (new message, new channel), implement it, measure results, and update your main promotion strategy. There are four major steps of a promotion campaign:

1. Value proposition and message. What promise are you making? Whom are you targeting?
2. Content. How do you describe your product and its benefits?
3. Channels. How do you reach prospective customers?
4. Measurement & analysis. How effective is your campaign?

Explore & exploit. What channels do market experts recommend? What channels work best for your competitors? Look for message that works. Look for channel that works. Then use them as much as you can. Use different channels for early adopters and mass market promotion.

Step 1: Message

Position your product by category and defining qualities. Test it with random people. Do they understand, what are you promoting? Focus on your current product, not the long term vision.

Identify key values and differentiation. Why should customers choose you? How do you change their life?

Choose call for action. What exactly do you offer? What is the next step for a customer? Visit a website, register, buy, visit a store, buy tickets, start a trial, schedule a sales presentation? Is there a special introductory deal for new customers?

Step 2: Promo content

Content is critical for promotion campaign. You should spend at least around one third of your marketing time on creating promotional content. Different content works best in different circumstances. Focus on a few forms that work best for your case. Let’s review most common forms of marketing materials.

Texts

• Product oneliner. Product name, category, and its defining qualities.

Molly’s, the oldest Irish bar in the city.

• Profile description. Three to five sentences describing what your product is, what is special about it, and why people should care. Shorter is better. Use the minimum amount of verbs.

E.g. Molly’s is the oldest Irish bar in the city. Great drinks, live music, located on a main street, open all night, was in a famous movie.

• Description for press. What it is. Key facts: when was it started, who is a leader, what are the key economic and user statistics? What is most special about it? Why people should care? How is it different from other things. Is it trustworthy? Where can I find more?
• Reviews. Direct reviews from customers, mentions on social networks and blogs, reviews on directory sites (e.g. yelp.com).
• Press about project. Links to best articles and the key quotes from them.

Images and video

Most people are visuals. Be great to look at.

• Logo. Start with professional looking text-based logo. You can add symbols and mascots later.
• Features and benefits. Illustrate advantages of your product.
• Pictures of customers. How do they use your product or services? Do they look happy? Are they young or old? Rich or poor? At home or at work? Do you have pictures of celebrities next to your product?
• Pictures of your company in action. Photos from events, product presentations, product development, “behind the scenes”, funny moments, historic photos from the first days of your company.
• Photogenicity. When people come to Paris they love to take picture of themselves next to Eiffel tower. Do you have anything of similar attractiveness? Special place in your office? Do customers love to take pictures with your product? Can you create any desirable wall posters related to your product?
• Video trailers and video reports. Just a talking head is not very effective. Focus on showing the product and customers in action.
• Live streams. Broadcast online key events from your company.

Educational content

• Short-form materials. Lists, advice, ideas, case studies, success stories. Put them on your blog and a newsletter.
• Long-form materials. Presentations on Slideshare, guides, ebooks, and original long-form video content.

Step 3: Online channels

Once you have promotional content, look for the best channels to deliver it to prospective customers. We cover offline marketing in a separate chapter. Here are key online channels:

• Professional media. Traditional paper magazines and newspapers with active online presence. The biggest professional blogs in your area.
• Social media. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Medium, Quora. Public pages and groups on social networks. Collective blogs, mailing lists, forums.
• Search. Organic search results and search marketing.
• Reference resources. Wikipedia, guides, maps, textbooks, slides. Industry directories.

What media does your customer base is reading? Who is writing about your competitors? What channels are most likely to influence customer choice?

Your own media

• Personal media of founders. Social accounts, blogs, mailing lists.
• Company website.
• Social networks profiles.
• Mailing list.
• Personal participation in third-party events: as a speaker, a guest, or with expo booth.
• Free advice and consulting.

Partnerships

Look for companies who already have a strong and trusted relationship with your prospective customers. Figure out how you can be useful to each other.

• Non-competing companies with similar concept. E.g. vegetarian restaurants in different parts of the city.

Independent coffee shops of San Francisco had a promotional program called “Disloyalty Card”. Visit eight coffee places and get a free coffee at any of them.

• Companies with similar customer base. E.g. a winter sports shop and a ski resort.
• Neighbors. Drive web and foot traffic to each other.
• Media partners. How can you increase their readership and distribution? Create great original content? A guest column? Offer space for their events?
• Communities and events.
• Personal media of opinion leaders (blogs, social, email).

Paid advertising

Get early adopters through organic promotion first. Postpone advertising until you have reference customers, a proven value proposition, tested marketing materials, and high-conversion onboarding process.

Step 4: Measurement and analysis

Define and measure your objectives. With a new product on the market, look for the following general AARRR metrics (credit to Dave McClure):

• Attraction. How many people learn about your product. This includes site visits, registrations, subscribers (social networks, mailing list), email reads, and Youtube views.
• Activation. How many of them convert into your customers.
• Retention. How many of them become repeat customers.
• Referrals. How many of them recommend you to their friends.
• Revenue. Monthly revenue, revenue per customer.

Anything you measure starts to get better.

Put your initial focus on activation (new customers) and revenue.

Take into account seasonal effects. Customer behavior is affected by time of year, vacations, holidays, and enterprise purchase cycles.

Increase conversion. Promotion content defines conversion. Work with consumer doubts. Questions? Objections? Prove your points, illustrate benefits. Give answers to frequent questions. Give guarantees for great results. Refund if unsatisfied.

Analyze your customers. Create customer profiles. How have they discovered your product? Why are they coming in, what is the underlying need? What do they like most? What should be improved?

This article is a part of Earlydays, an open guide for first-time entrepreneurs.

Written by Yury Lifshits — yury@yury.name — @yurylifshits