Category Archives: Marketing

The least action principle applied to the “call to action”

I met with an entrepreneur who has been looking to gain traction for his new SaaS application for payments. Having talked to a few of the top notch marketing and conversion experts in the Bay area to learn about drip marketing, which allows you to set a set of messages over time I was eager to help him figure out how to apply that to his problem.

The problem he had was that his “call to action” – what he wanted his prospects and customers to do was creating a “very high barrier” to prospects going to the next level with the website.

I find this often the case with many startups and SaaS applications in particular. The “barrier” for a prospect to become a customer is very high, so while you generate a lot of traffic and visits to your website, the number of conversions is abysmally low.

While you could offer better design, clear case studies, A/B test your pricing, there’s another technique that’s fast gaining traction among those that believe in a sales term called “lead nurturing“.

Its is the least action principle applied to prospect behavior. Before you “riff” me on this, yes, I believe physics gives the answers to most marketing problems.

The summary of this principle is

 ”Nature is thrifty in all its actions”

So this principle applied to conversion marketing is to make users do the least amount of work to get to the “next logical step” in your progress to convert them to be a customer.

Instead of asking users in the first page to “Sign up”, which may well be your ultimate goal, ask them to view a video instead. Then sign up for a newsletter. Then send them 3 emails (over time, drip marketing, remember) to get them to review a case study, provide them with ROI analysis and finally ask them to sign up.

This entire set of steps can be done in days or in 2-3 minutes with a “guided” website interaction, instead of just a single call to action.

If you remember that most people want to do the least amount of work to get the maximum benefit, then you will appropriately break down your final call to action into multiple “Least User Interactions” each of which gets the user to commit some more (time, energy, etc.) to your application.

This is similar to the method FB for example applies to its interactions. You might just be a viewer of content, then your path to least action is a “like”, then you might comment, then set your status and finally upload a picture. There are more actions no doubt, but the path to least action is a like.

So when you look at your call you action, think about how you can break it down into multiple steps to get users to interact with your website without having to “commit” to marrying you before your first date.

How to do very bad marketing – an example

<Being rant>

The latest trend among US marketing folks is to put a blog post of 50 sentences into 50 slides. Not sure why a simple one page blog post wont cut it – actually wait, I do. Its to get “multiple outposts” which all say the same thing in “different ways”. Some viewers prefer SlideShare as the way to read stuff instead of text.

So what ends up happening is to read something in 2 minutes you will end up clicking 50 slides to read 50 sentences.

The part that makes no sense is that its just text in those slides. No images, no visuals, not storytelling.

Which makes it look like a Word document pasted into a PowerPoint deck.

Rather lame. Dont you think? Or am I missing something?

</End rant>

The 99-0.9-0.1 rule for Indian Startups

Jakob Nielsen is given credit for the 90-9-1 rule of Internet participation.

The “90–9–1″ version of this rule states that 1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content without contributing.

In the last 6 months, I have gotten 21 Indian web and mobile consumer applications data on visitors, engagement and contribution.

In India the numbers are closer to the 99%, 0.9% and 0.1% in terms of lurkers, participants and contributors of any consumer application.

This explains a lot of things, including the 2-speed nature of Indian market adoption.

Its not that we don’t have early adopters, its that most people (99%) are really laggard adopters.

The difference between 1% and 0.1% is dramatic for startups who need the early contributors to get the community going.

To give you an example. Lets take a mobile application which has 3 competitors in India. Each of the 3 products has been in the market for about 6 months and still they total about 140K total downloads.

In the 1% scenario they would total 1.4 Million downloads. This assumes 140M total Internet users for both mobile and web. In reality there are only about 50-80 Million real broadband users.

Is it cultural? I have heard many folks blame (yet again) our Indian culture & education system which values listening to others than voicing our opinions. I don’t quite agree with that though.

I don’t know why exactly we have only 0.1% of people contributing.

This however has dramatic implications for “traction” among startups.

If you are going to show traction and have between 20K to 50K users or downloads, then you should realize that the 99, 0.9 and 0.1 % rule applies again to your users.

Only 0.1% of those who download will actually be contributors (such as check-in to locations if you are Location based service).

So the engagement metrics will be consistent but woefully low compared to what our US counterparts are seeing.

Traction among Indian consumer startups is not really “traction” in other markets.

P.S. I am still trying to see if this is the same for ecommerce startups. I am hesitant to think it will be the same, but among new and smaller (lesser known) ecommerce companies, these numbers are in the range. However, among established companies, the US engagement (or purchase) numbers are probably more valid.

How to B2B is morphing into B2A, B2D, B2M

From the broadly 2 types of companies, those that focus on consumers (B2C) and those that focus on businesses / enterprises (B2B) there is an explosion of new types. While most of the new types are still a subset of B2B or B2C, the increasing sub segmentation of B2B is creating multiple niches among those trying to sell to the “enterprise”.

The problems with B2B are fairly well documented – Long & slow sales cycles, multiple decision makers with largely different agendas (procurement wants it cheap, CIO wants it to fit into their technology stack and end users want it to be usable).

There are a 2 very interesting articles over the weekend from Dave McClure and Christina Cordova  which document the changed landscape in B2C. What I am seeing among our startups in the Accelerator is consistent with what Christina mentions in addition to the initial problem with most mobile consumer startups – which is getting users.

Essentially the marketing mechanisms (ads, PR, email) create a lot more friction to getting users to try / download the mobile app versus the web app.

So you have to primarily use a combination of reviews, recommendations or in-app ads to get users.

What’s happening on the B2B front is even more interesting.

B2B is morphing into B2D (developers), B2A (Architects, as an example) or B2M (Marketers).

Thanks to SaaS and Cloud pay-as-you-go services, the products are inexpensive enough to get enterprise segments without the hassles of going through the entire Purchase order process for many products.

So most B2B companies are targeting a specific user who is also the person to approve, buy and select the product / service that works for them.

The implications are obviously dramatic and ones that change the landscape completely.

In a follow on post I’ll document the ways this changes the marketing and sales techniques.

Always be an individual contributor as well

Most of the entrepreneurs I meet and share thoughts with, tend not to be engineers. Or at least not practicing developers, marketers, sales people or business development individuals. This is consistent with the anatomy of the Indian technology entrepreneur, who is typically male, between the ages of 29 and 40, has about 2-10+ years of experience and had been an individual contributor “several years ago”.

I read the quotes by multiple folks in the piece shelf life of an engineer in technology . They consistent theme is one of constant learning, which most of us are probably aware of. Ignore the age bias that’s blatantly obvious in the piece for a few minutes, which is what most of the 250+ comments are focused on.

Two things stand out: (1) Ferose’s quote on “I can’t be just a manager, I have to be technically hands-on.” and

Ravi “ In the first five years, the employee is a technical contributor. In the next five, he or she moves on to become a team leader or an architect , understanding the P&L (profit & loss) requirements of the company. Subsequently , the employee takes on much stronger leadership responsibilities”.

From what I have learned, there’ no choice but for every level of individual to be “hands-on” and play the role of an individual contributor as well at a startup.

If you are an engineer, you cant just be focused on hiring and managing your engineering team (however small or large it is). You have to pick up a few pieces of the puzzle and solve them yourself. Which might mean deploying, developing and shipping parts of your software.

If you are a marketer, then not copy writing or doing your own SEO, or running your ad campaigns is a disaster in the making.

If you are a sales person, and if you are not doing cold calls or opening new doors to customers each week, you will find it extremely hard to direct and motivate the team.

Most founders who come from larger companies have not been been doing any individual contributor roles for several years. So the reorientation is very hard on them. They find it hard to do things they did a few years ago and since in most every area the specifics have changed so dramatically over the last few years, the adjustments are hard.

The best way to do this is to keep 30% of your time each week to have a personal accomplishment.

What I have found is the the FIRST thing I do each Monday on my weekly to-do list is to identify one deliverable that I will work on to complete without anyone else’s help.

Over the last few weeks  it was working on website copy and mockups for the new design. Over the next few weeks it is cold calling multiple prospects for making some inroads for a few of our startups. The weeks of Dec 15-30 is mostly going to be spent on writing new pieces of our Borg’s UI using Twitter bootstrap (which is surprisingly easy to pickup).

So on your quest to be a leader and entrepreneur dont forget to be a doer as well.

The liberating power of focus on the one thing for Marketing

Most startup founders who are looking to launch their product or are figuring out ways to grow their usage / customer traction come with a plan that includes “a little bit of everything”. The assumption is that since they dont know which technique works best, (or in other words – gets the most customers with the least amount of effort or money) so, they tend to spread their bets among many techniques.

Typically this means, do some SEO, some Google ads, some blogging, and some outreach to the press.

I used to tell folks to make a list and focus on the top 3 techniques to market their product.

I was wrong.

You need to be awesome at one, rather than good at three.

Here’s the simple math (the irony that the math is easier than reality is not lost on me) to get to 10,000+ B2B users (not all paying) in < 12 months (which is a great metric to focus on)  for a SaaS company.

You try to double your users each month. So if you start with 5 users at the end of the first month, you will get to 10,000+ at the end of the 12th month.

If I were marketing a SaaS product and I need to get users there are multiple mechanisms I can use to generate awareness for my company / product without any out-of-pocket costs for advertising.

1. Guest blogging

2. Content marketing with blog posts / infographics

3. Engaging potential users on twitter

4. Search engine optimization

5. PR outreach with bloggers and key websites

6. You tube videos

7. Presentations on Slideshare

etc.

Now, my recommendation is to NOT do the top 3, but pick just one and be the best at it.

For most entrepreneurial teams that are comprised more of engineers, than marketing professionals, this is a very liberating process.

They no longer need to track multiple techniques and try to optimize them all. Their focus should be on experimenting within the one technique and be the best at it alone.

While focusing on the one technique you will discover more things you need to do better and be great at.

Lets take an example of guest blogging.

To the outsider, guest blogging might just be make a list of 10-20 top blogs, then write posts that are relevant about your company and that blog, find the blog writer’s email address and submit your post.

There is a more nuanced process than that.

Coming up with unique and interesting posts is hard. Very hard. Especially hard if you are trying to learn SEO at the same time, or experimenting on Google adwords at the same time.

So, free your mind.

Focus on the one thing that you believe will add value to your potential customers.

I know its hard to know which is the “one thing”.

Truth is being awesome at any one of these things is very hard and I have seen enough examples of companies meeting their customer acquisition goals picking ANY ONE of these techniques, without trying to experiment on several.

So go ahead and focus on the ONE thing.

The best marketing conferences that I’d like to attend in 2013 (Marketing conference list)

Here is the list of the best digital marketing conferences that I’d like to attend in 2013. Practically I may attend 1 or 2 at the most as a speaker, but if you are looking to build your 2013 list of marketing conferences to attend, here’s a good place to start.

The format of this post is hard to get right on the blog, so here’s a handy Google doc of the 2013 Marketing Conference list.

There’s also a neat infographic from Marketo that is worth the eye-candy showing a smaller list by map of the United States.

# Conference URL Dates Location
1 Blogworld & NMX http://nmxlive.com/2013-lv/ Jan 6-8 :as Vegas
2 Ad Tech http://www.ad-tech.com/newdelhi/adtech_new_delhi.aspx Feb 2013 New Delhi
3 Email Summit http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2011/07/infographic-must-attend-marketing-events-a-guide-to-marketing-conferences-in-the-us.html Feb 19-22 Las Vegas
4 Mobile Marketing http://www.mmaglobal.com/events/forums/sanfrancisco2013/overview Jan 29-30 San Francisco
5 Adobe Digital Marketing Summit http://summit.adobe.com/digital-marketing-summit.html Mar 4-8 2013 Salt Lake City
6 SMX West http://searchmarketingexpo.com/west/ Mar 11-13 San Jose
7 Blogwell http://www.socialmedia.org/blogwell/ April 17 New York
8 Sirius Decisions http://www.siriusdecisions.com/live/home/document.php?dA=ConfAnnSummit2013 May 8-10 San Diego
9 Mirren Live (Agencies) http://newbusinessconference.com/home/ May 2013 New York
10 BMA http://www.marketing.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=5681#.UJ6o-ofqkaw May 29-31 Chicago
11 Inbound Marketing http://www.inboundconference.com/ Aug 19-22 Boston
12 http://www.ad-tech.com/bangalore/adtech_bangalore.aspx# Sep 2013 Bangalore
13 SES http://sesconference.com/sanfrancisco/ Sep 10-13 San Francisco
14 Content Marketing World http://contentmarketingworld.com/ Sep 9-12 2013 Cleveland
15 Mobile Marketing http://www.mmaglobal.com/events/forums/india2012/overview Sep 2013 Delhi
16 SMX East http://searchmarketingexpo.com/east/ Oct 1-3 New York
17 Pubcon http://www.pubcon.com/ Oct 2013 Las Vegas
18 DMA 2013 http://www.dma13.org/ Oct 12-17 Chicago
19 Future M http://futurem.org/about.aspx Oct 2013 Boston
20 Marketing Profs http://events.marketingprofs.com/b2bsite/speakers-321CF-18808U.html Oct 2013 Boston
21 Distilled SEO http://www.distilled.net/events/searchlove-boston/ Nov 2013 Boston
22 Ad Tech http://www.ad-tech.com/ Nov 2013 Delhi
23 WOMMA http://womma.org/summit/agenda/ Nov 24-26 Las Vegas
24 SES http://sesconference.com/delhi/ Dec 2012 New Delhi

Book review: The curious digital marketer

Last week Kapil from AFAQS campus gave me a copy of his book “The curious digital marketer” at Shangri La in Delhi at an event.

Curious Digital Marketer

Curious Digital Marketer

I had a chance to read it on my flight back from Delhi to Bangalore for about 1-2 hours. Breezy in style and fairly simple, the book tries to provide curated answers to multiple questions about digital marketing. From what is CPM? to Why should you select CPC as a method to buy ads vs. CPA? etc.

The book itself has about 100+ frequently asked questions in 4 sections of facebook, digital, mobile and search advertising.

I liked Jack Welch’s approach to converting frequently asked questions into a book, “Winning”, so I am a fan of the Q&A book style.

While this one has its good parts, I was not sure it would help educate a newbie into digital marketing. It feels like its more aimed at marketing (traditional) arms of large companies which have fear of “all things digital”. For the marketer who still likes radio, print and Television, this is a great starting point.

For first-time entrepreneurs (which is the reason Kapil gave me the book to review) it seems a little advanced, but if you are responsible for marketing as part of being a cofounder, and you have been doing some reading up and still have questions, this book is worth a read.

The part that would make it great for the first-time entrepreneur is some overview of the basic terms before the Q&A. Rather than just the Q&A (which is curated from over 15+ contributors), if there was a synopsis to each chapter, I felt it would be a good guide to digital marketing 101.

While nothing in the book is a new concept, the value of not having to google multiple terms and read multiple pages is certainly worth the INR 250 it sells for online.

I left the book on my flight, the way back, so I am unfortunately not able to give it to you like I do after reviewing books.

My discipline will beat your intellect

I meet 4-5 new entrepreneurs every week as part of my office hours on Go-to-market help for young startups. Most are based in Bangalore, but surprisingly some are from other parts of the world (Chennai, Singapore and Estonia, even, via Skype).

I have an observation about work ethic that I wanted to highlight among startup entrepreneurs from various parts of the world.

Most every entrepreneur will tell you they work extremely long hours. That’s par for the course. Some “older” entrepreneurs (usually over 35 years of age) will share their ability to “strike a balance” between work and life. Practically speaking (I hate to break this to them) that does not exist in a startup. If you have that balance, you are not serious enough about your startup.

I understand they have families and kids, but I have come to the realization that both smart work and hard work are necessary (but not sufficient) to run a successful startup.

For purposes of this post lets define success as a company that’s growing significantly and rapidly, but does not have an exit yet.

The difference between a rapidly growing startup and one that’s growing “well” is productive (smart) hard work, not just long hours.

If you mistake activity (# of lines of code, # of code check-ins, # of customer discussions) with progress (shipping product, usable and must-have features, or # of active users) then you are just doing long hours.

If you mistake milestones (funding secured, new employee hired) for achievement (# of paying customers, churn rate of existing customers) then you are just doing smart hours.

What then makes smart and hard work such a potent combination? And what really is “smart work”? And how many hours make up “hard work”?

I define “smart work” as a combination of 3 things – asking the “right questions“, having a plan and maximizing the number of experiments in unit time.

I define “hard work” as the most amount of productive work time, with limited to no distractions and ability to do it consistently, for years (not bursts of weeks, not months and certainly not just for a few hours).

Lets look at both smart and hard in detail. Smart, first.

The smartest people I know have learned the art and science of asking the right questions. They usually start with asking a lot of questions, and having literally, no or very few answers. Each answer leads them to more questions. Asking the “right questions” is what they derive from experience.They have assumptions that need validation, hypothesis that need testing and results that need to be measured.

They are also willing to conduct a maximum of 2-3 experiments and have a DIY (Do it yourself) approach towards conducting those experiments to see if their assumptions and hypothesis were valid.

Finally they have a plan to approach their experiments. Not just a “lets try this and if not lets try that”. They rarely “wing it”.

Its very easy to spot smart teams. They have a sense and measurement of what “Continuous Visible Productivity” is. They come to me with a list of 2-3 questions that they want to address in a meeting. They dont just come to the meeting and pick up the whiteboard and start to “brainstorm”.

Now lets look at teams that work hard.

Hard working teams dont ever mention “how many hours they did put in last week or yesterday or that they hardly got “any sleep”. They realize and are aware of their physical limitations and are usually well within those limitations. Rarely do I hear from them “We work the hardest of all the teams” or “We have not slept for 2 days”. They keep looking for time they can cut away from unproductive work to do more questioning, experimenting and planning. In other words they dont brag about their long hours. They assume its a given.

Hardworking teams also tend to compartmentalize very well. Some people call this “bucketing” or “chunking”. Just because they work hard, does not mean they dont give their brains a rest and goof off for a while. Rather, they “compartmentalize” their goofing off or exercising to derive the benefits of a relaxed mind and body.

Finally hardworking teams are consistent. They show up day after day, week after week and go through questioning, experimenting and planning with rigor and consistency.

I realize a that being smart at work and working hard as I have laid out is extremely difficult. In fact its rare. That’s why successful startups are rare.

The combination is what I call startup discipline. Which is why I firmly believe one startups discipline will beat another’s pure intellect (given that hard work is assumed) any day.

Startups and mentors: How to look for a great marketing mentor? & A list of top marketing mentors in India

After the first post on technology mentors in India, the next person who can help the most as a mentor to startups < 2 years old is someone that can help with product & customer knowledge (or understanding user / customer behavior if its a consumer startup).

There are 3 primary categories of “marketing” mentors I’d recommend you think about. You dont need them all, just be clear who you need for what kind of mentorship.

Product mentors are people who can distill what customers would need and say into what you need to build in your product. There’s a big difference between a product manager and a business analyst. The latter, typically found in many Indian services companies, tries to give the customer exactly what they want, and end up building largely a custom piece of work for that client. Product experts on the other hand, observe customers, ask them tough questions and direct the technology team to build what the customer really wants.

Sales mentors are people carrying a quota (target). They are pounding the street or directing teams that are selling every day. They understand targets, compensation, lead nurturing, managing deals and sales opportunities. There are many types of sales people but largely they are either “farmers” or “hunters”. Farmers end up expanding your current opportunity and Hunters get new business from new clients. They both have their place. Mostly, I have found sales people dont make very good mentors because they are largely unavailable, but there are a few good guys around. Ideally they would help you understand and grow your sales team from “CEO is the sales guy” to building a repeatable, growth-oriented team.

Marketing mentors would help you with positioning, building awareness, lead generation and digital marketing. They can typically help you at the stage when you need to launch (largely after product-market-fit). Most marketing people tend to talk lots and do little, so if you get someone that can give you practical tips on how to build your funnel and grow your customer base by spending as little money as possible, then you have the right person.

The question usually is why do you need so many mentors. The answer is you dont. It all depends on the team you have and if they need advice, help and mentorship. I have seen startups with 5 mentors and many with none. Most have 2-3 mentors to complement the team. You can get as much value from mentors as much time you put into the relationship. I typically recommend most entrepreneurs to setup 1 hour every other week during the initial days (<6 months) and then 1 hour every month and finally 1-2 hours every other month.

Some recommended Product mentors:

1. Amit Somani (Make my trip)

2.  Varun Shoor (Kayako)

3. Vijay Anand (The Startup Center)

4. Girish Mathrubootham (Fresh Desk)

5. Sridhar Ranganathan (InMobi)

6. Amit Gupta (InMobi)

8. Preetham VV (InMobi)

9. Dhimant Parekh (Hoopos)

Some recommended Sales mentors:

1. Madhu Lakshmanan (ex Photon)

2. Abhay Singhal (Inmobi)

Some recommended Marketing / Online customer acquisition mentors:

1. Pankaj Jain (Startup Weekend)

2. Ravi Vora (Flipkart)

3. Karthik Srinivasan (Flipkart)

4. Sanjeev Gadre (Consultant)