Archive for Twitter
No-Risk Leverage for All Your Marketing Activities
Posted by: | CommentsOne simple way to gain quick leverage in your marketing is to focus the right message to the right customer. Consistently.
I know that sounds very obvious, but look around you and at your own company: Is it done?
A useful tactic is to create a handful of customer profiles, or ‘sketches’ of different types of customers. You can then articulate the right messages to the right people in the right way at the right time.
How do you create customer profiles? Use the following three questions as your guide:
- What are the REASONS that people buy your type of product or service? What are their desired results? Make sure you understand the logical reasons as well as the emotional and psychological satisfactions people want.
- When people think about your products and services, what are some common CONCERNS they have? Assumptions they make? Misconceptions? Fears? Worries? Questions?
- The third question helps you add dimension to your answers to the first two.
Think of factors such as geography, age, past experience, price range, how they found you, marital status and so on. Which of these or similar factors may influence either the REASONS someone would want to buy from you and or the CONCERNS they are likely to have (beliefs, worldview) about buying your products and services?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you should be able to create four or five common customer profiles.
Now that you have the profiles:
- It’s likely that one or two of them represent more value for your company than the others. The old 80-20 rule. Separate those out for special attention.
- For each profile, but especially for the one or two that represent significant opportunity, ask: How can we optimize our marketing and sales processes to better appeal to the hearts and minds of customers within this profile?
Let me know your results.
Reply if you have any questions.
Finally, answer a short survey and get a free 15 minute consultation as a thank you: http://www.dovgordon.biz/more-customers.html
Dov Gordon
+972-2-992-0396
Video: Really Great mocumentary on a startup called Flutter, The New Twitter
Posted by: | CommentsI always love a great mocumentary, but especially for ones on startups. This is a great one about a startup called Flutter. Watch and enjoy!
Before you start your business, know what your business model is
Posted by: | Comments
Now here is a crazy thought! How about knowing how your going to make money before starting a business? Crazy right? I mean what does making money have to do with business?
And that is why the majority of start-ups become finish-downs.
I know, I know. Just build it for the sake of building it and see what happens. That’s great if you don’t need the money and have a lot of time on your hands, but if you are going to start a business you best know how you are going to make money.
Now before we go into some of the different ways to make money I think it is first important to see that you have multiple ways of making money. If you are going to be putting blood, sweat & tears into something make sure you have many avenues of success while still maintaining focus on your core business. Note: When you launch your company you don’t need to launch every revenue stream, just make sure you have a few as you grow.
The easiest example of this is a Restaurant. A retaurant can have the following revenue streams:
- The basic: People coming in and eating in
- Take Out
- In house catering/parties
- Catering in other locations
- Selling Packaged food through other locations
- Selling a specific product commercially (ie: Our Special Bar-B-Q Sauce)
- Party Planning Service
- Gift Baskets
- Frozen Pizzas
See what I mean? Now mostly I would like to focus on internet businesses since I think it is pretty obvious what your business model is when you are running a retail outlet of any kind, but online we have been brought up with the idea that it is a numbers game and as long as you have a lot of “eye balls” you can figure out the rest later. Now that is a great thought and if you became an internet sensation like Twitter, then that’s great, but for the 99.9999% of the rest of internet start-ups you really need to have a clear business model in order to raise funds and of course to succeed.
Now the problem I have with the “eye balls” theory is that the main business model that people are shooting for is an advertising model and that is a very dangerous place to be for many reasons; the fist being that if advertising revenue dollars were to suddenly drop, so will your revenue. I know of many companies that have gone under in the current recession specifically because the ad revenue dropped by more than 50%. If your going to build a business, build it on a need, something that people want and not something that you are going to annoy them with. That’s just my opinion.
A recent article on Mashable titled “5 Business Models for Social Media Startups” points out some of the main ways to earn money online and can even be used for non social media startups. Let me know what you think!
http://mashable.com/2009/07/14/social-media-business-models/
Starting before you start, is it ever too early?
Posted by: | CommentsOk, so you have started formulating your idea for a start-up, but you are not yet ready to announce it to the world. Is there anything you should start doing now so that when you do launch you are not starting from scratch?
The short answer is Yes.
Unless your domain name is going to give away massive secrets about what your start-up is you should already create a page for it so that it will start to get indexed in the search engines. Even better would be to start a blog and add a post every day. Should only take you about 10 minutes a day to write something, just make sure it is unique content and related to what your start-up is all about.
You may even want to talk about the process you are doing to start your company. I find it very interesting to read how someone takes an idea and works it through launching a company. Not only will it be fun for you to look back on, but it can also be very helpful for others starting businesses as well.
You should also start positioning yourself as an expert in your field. For Example: If your Israeli Start-up is about manufacturing a new and gourmet Hummus, then start writing articles about the art of creating a good Hummus. Send out recipes to different Israeli publications and blogs. Create a video of a delicious dish based around Hummus and always have your articles, videos, and posts link back to your website.
This way when you do launch you will already have some viewers and relationships with the press that you can utilize to have a successful launch.
You also should make sure you are using Social Networking to create a fan base or to spread your network. Make sure you have a LinkedIN account and that you are on Facebook and Twitter. Click on this link to see how to start using Facebook to get noticed.
It is never to early to start generating some buzz. You should be careful with releasing any information about your start-up before you are ready to let the world know about it, but as you feel comfrotable with releasing more information, you should let all your friends and fans know by using everything written above.
Whenever I hear about a new start-up, one of the first things I look for is what is the Revenue Model. The second thing I do is make sure that the revenue model is not based on Advertising. Often trying to find a sustainable revenue model puts a damper on the excitement of starting a new business, but remember that the key word here is "business" and without revenue you may have a nice hobby, but it aint no business!
Now while it is possible to earn significant revenue from advertising once you have hundreds of thousands or more of daily users, that should not be your sole revenue model but you should consider it as icing on the cake. Also, it is ok when you are a start-up to temporarily use advertising to bring in some cash, but it should not be your long term revenue goal.
So is it ok to start a web application or another web 2.0 project just for fun and worry about revenue later? Sure you could, and should! As long as you are not expecting it to pay any of your bills, you look at it as a hobby, and you don't expect anyone to invest in it. I don't want to put a damper on innovation and if you have an idea that you would love to bring to the world, I say go for it! But don't call it a business start-up. Perhaps an internet start-up would be more apprapo, but then again when people hear internet start-up they are also thinking it is a business.
Just call it "This Good idea I'm working on".
Sometimes a great idea really takes off even with no revenue model in site. For example; Twitter. (You can follow me on Twitter here).
Twitter is a great idea, but when it was started and still till today, they are not sure exactly how to monetize it. And even when they do, I'm sure it will be advertising based, but you never know.
But Twitter is the exception to the norm. The one in a million, the lucky few! You can't build a start-up hoping you are going to end up like Twitter.
The good thing about when you become so huge as Twitter is, you can find other smart people that are more than happy to help you out with a revenue model. See this post below and check out the links to read the whole article published by AlleyInsider.com where they suggest 11 different revenue models for Twitter. They actually ran a contest asking all of their thousands of readers to suggest a twitter revenue model and they bost the results here:
Deadline for entry into our Create Twitter's Revenue Model contest
is up and we thought we'd share some of the best entries. We haven't
decided on a winner yet, so check them out and let us know what you
think.
We'll consider your feedback before we choose a winner. When we do
pick one, we'll re-post that person's plan and resumé here. We'll allso
email both to Twitter CEO Ev Williams, whom we hear is busy building a
business staff at the startup.
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- Twitter Coupons
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- Twitter Suggested Ads To Re-Tweet
- Twitter SMS Advertising
- Twitter Premium Accounts, Contextual Ads, Search Ads, Virtual Goods, Affiliate Marketing
