Startup Marketing: The Land of Carnies and Rubes

As a marketer at a startup, I am always looking for ways to get our product in front of potential customers in a way that is repeatable, not annoying, scalable, and affordable. Along the way I’ve tried just about every kind of advertising, lead generation program, lead guarantee whitepaper syndication, webinar…..the list goes on. Because of that, I’ve found several insanely outdated, arcane practices that are just accepted by marketers. I hate that.

So this list includes things that need to die in startup marketing:

1. Lead Guarantee Programs That Refuse To Screen Leads Based On Qualifying Questions – Allow me to explain. I’ve done several lead guarantee programs with large technology vendors, and they typically will syndicate a whitepaper across their network, require a registration form, and will then give me the info from the registration forms. Many of them will allow us to add a qualifying question (in our case: “Do You Use Google Apps at Your Company?”). But rather than just paying for those leads that answer in the affirmative (which makes them qualified), some vendors make you pay regardless of the answer. They’re basically making you pay for leads that – by definition – are not what you want.This doesn’t apply to all lead generation vendors, as I’ve worked with a few that will only count those leads that pass qualification criteria. Just recently a large vendor pitched me on a program to get our whitepaper in front of our target market and the price was decent. I said “I only pay for the leads that answer yes to my qualification question.” There was a long pause on the line and I was told this is impossible. Okay. That’s fine. We can’t work together.
2. Overused Buzzwords and Meaningless Terms – “The leading provider of”, “a one-stop-shop for”, “disruptive PAAS as a service”, the list goes on. You’re not being paid by the word, and no one has ever bought a startup’s product based on the verbosity of its website.
3. Ridiculous Costs At trade shows – The cost of renting a chair at a major tradeshow? $150. The cost of buying that same chair? $100. It’s amazing how we just expect to be extorted at trade shows when we’ve already paid $10K to buy a booth. When renting a piece of equipment for 2 days costs more than buying, we have to ask why. This system is broken.
4. Unacceptable Minimums – This might come off as a whine, but as a startup, you have to account for every marketing dollar spent. Because of that, it’s nearly impossible to justify a gigantic spend the first time working with a vendor. Back to the lead guarantee example: jumping into a $30,000 program to deliver qualified leads just isn’t doable. And when I ask to do a $1,000 test spend, I’m told it isn’t worth the vendor’s time. To me, that’s a good way for a vendor to say they don’t stand behind their product. If you won’t do a small program where the program’s success would result in a large spend, you have no confidence that you can deliver what you’re selling.
5. The Kick-Back Threshold - My hand is shaking trying to write this. A while back I worked with a company that wanted to host our whitepapers, and deliver us 100 leads that sign up and read our whitepaper. Fine. As part of the contract, we specified that leads have to answer affirmatively on a qualifying question, and they had to be from companies with 500 or more employees. Sounds like a plan.When they started sending me a weekly spreadsheet with those that have signed up and read our stuff, I noticed something: 99% of the leads were garbage. A simple Google search showed that these leads were from either very small companies, companies that didn’t exist, or “ABC123″. Every week I’d send the garbage back, and the vendor was getting angry at me! They told me “Normally we have a 10% kick back threshold but we value your business so we will take these out.”

   A kickback threshold is the vendors way of saying “We know that at least 10% of the leads we send you are garbage. That’s not in your contract. In fact, we told you we’d only charge you for qualified leads. But because you aren’t blindly accepting these obviously worthless leads, I wanted to let you know that everyone else automatically assumes that 10% will be garbage. We’re really annoyed that you’re calling us on our bullshit, and just want you to know that you’re being a real pain in the ass by asking for what you paid for and not wanting to pay for junk.”

   To say I was steaming mad would be an understatement. It’s amazing to me that there are so many built-in processes to rip people off, and they’re not even questioned!

Okay, rant over. Feel free to add your own.

Yesterday I received an email that looked like a mistake. Which said:

I wanted to share a great opportunity just released.
Here is a GREAT way to get 250 leads ASAP!
Let me know if you are interested!

The problem? Judy sent this to a list of 125 people, and instead of bcc, she used cc, thus exposing the entire email list to everyone on it.

This kind of thing happens all the time (see TechCrunch’s recent self-effacing article TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon BCC Fail. We Apologize #TCLeakers). But this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone take advantage of the exposed list to plug a product/service directly. This morning, I received this email:

Good morning.

Sometimes it’s good to take advantage when a sales person yesterday doesn’t BCC her respondents, so here goes:

I’m Paul Mosenson, founder of NuSpark Marketing, a lead generation firm outside Philly.  I help clients manage all aspects of traditional and digital strategies.  As a former Media Director, I can contribute to traditional media, digital media, search marketing (pay per click and SEO) and social media, and track all of it with analytics.

Our system helps you find customers and customers find you.

Among our core competencies:

• Generating leads via a cost-efficient traditional and digital media strategy, all measured with analytics
• Social media management; how to utilize social media for lead generation
• Review of your website and landing pages; are they optimized for conversions or purchase
• Content marketing; from branding and messaging to white papers, blogs, and articles
• Lead nurturing, lead scoring, and marketing automation; tactics to transform leads into sales with drip campaigns

I’m assuming that those on this list or B2C buyers, so I’ve attached one of my eBooks; How to measure online and offline media with analytics.

All I ask for, is if you’re interested in exploring some or all of my services, that we have a phone conversation.  By building a relationship, we can create a win-win partnership.

Below my signature is my bio.

Thank you.

Paul

Paul Mosenson
President
NuSpark Marketing, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Custom Marketing Solutions

So, I’m wondering: Do you see this as clever opportunism or spam? On the one hand, he’s capitalizing on someone else’s mistake. On the other, it’s still an unsolicited commercial message.

BTW: I decided to leave Paul’s information intact, as it seems that he has no problem sharing his contact information with those on the list.  As for Judy, she works at a vendor that I’ve talked with before, and therefore I could have unsubscribed from their list.

On Wednesday July 22nd the second meeting of the Boston-area Startup Marketing Meetup Group was held at Aprigo in Waltham. We had two presentations:

Matthew Mamet from PermissionTV gave a presentation on Using Video in Online Marketing (slides | blog post).

Phillip Zannini gave a presentation entitled “Starting Up Is Hard To Do”, as he shared his tips and suggestions for those just starting out in the startup world.

The presentations are below.

I saw the news today that ImindI, after giving away 1000 invites to their beta on TechCrunch, accidentally deleted all user accounts. Whoops. ImindI’s CEO Adam Lindemann sent out an apology email:

Dear Friends of Imindi,

Yesterday, we were featured on Techcrunch and many of you were kind enough to sign up to the service. Unfortunately, we had not prepared sufficiently for the demand on our servers and then with some human error we accidently deleted all the user accounts. Darn.

We would ask that you forgive us and sign up one more time as members of Imindi. We will set you up with a clean account which we hope you will enjoy using to collect your thoughts and share them with like-minded people.

We are extremely embarrassed by this mistake and we have purchased more capacity and instituted safer backup processes to handle the increased demand to prevent a recurrence of this incident. It’s a private beta, and it will be a while before this service is ready to be launched in public but we hope that you will be kind to Imindi as she grows.

When I see an invite-only beta and sign up, I assume that there are going to be problems. There will be bugs. There will be weirdness. I don’t assume that all the user accounts will be deleted, but I do expect that things won’t be perfect.

That’s just the nature of betas. If a company were to wait until everything worked perfectly, they’d never ship a product. And shipping something buggy but solid is a great way to get user feedback, feature requests, etc.

I think the ImindI situation is a different animal altogether, as it wasn’t the product that was buggy. It was a lapse in preparation for scale along with some human error. But again, it’s a beta, so you can’t be too upset. Instead, I think the interesting question is: Do you only have one chance to get the launch right? Will people invest the time to start over?

I know that there were only 1000 accounts, so the scope of the problem is super-small. But looking at TechCrunch readers, these are the early adopters, the evangelists, the influencers. Whatever title you wish to apply, these are the people that either make something popular or they’re the people that tell their friends not to bother.

With only 1000 accounts and probably triple that number on the waiting list for an account, I’m guessing this won’t be a problem for ImindI at all. But I want to ask you:

• How much leeway to you give to betas?
• If your account was deleted, would you start over again?
• Or….does it really depend on how much time you spent on the app in the first place?

Folks, you’ve heard of inbound marketing as an idea. It’s the marketing equivalent of fishing vs. hunting. You put out the content, you try to lure people to your site, basically you do all you can to get the customers to come to you. When inbound marketing is done correctly, the business is getting lots of calls and emails requesting information on what they have to offer. Think of it as the opposite of cold calling prospects.

Every company, regardless of industry, says they want more leads. More business is always a good thing, right?

In my experience it’s the idea of an avalance of leads that is appealing to most companies while the reality is something different entirely. Companies are more than willing to do the effort to get prospects into the top end of the funnel, but seem to lose focus and ignore the details when they get past the first stage in the sales cycle (this seems to be true in companies that sell a product/subscription as well as ad-supported companies who see registration as the final stage of conversion).

Let me give you three real-world examples, all of which happened to me on the same day last Sunday. My girlfriend and I are starting to quickly outgrow our 1 bedroom basement apartment. When I lived there by myself it was fine, but with two people and two pets it’s a little crowded. Because of that we’ve been looking around for a new spot. All of these places advertise heavily.

1. Forbes Lofts- While you can’t see anything useful in this photo, forbes lofts is a huge new complex on the water in Chelsea, MA. They have a gigantic banner advertising the website and phone number on their buildings, and I see it every day while driving. The idea of a loft really appealed to us, so we went to the website. The site advertises an open house each Sunday from 11-3. Here’s what they say:

These tours will highlight the recent progress on site, including the windmill, new entrance road, salt marsh tidal canal, and development of the new harbor side pavilion! R.S.V.P. is not required, but appreciated.

Well, we decided to RSVP just in case. On Sunday we showed up at the site and no one was there. Not a single person was to be found, and we were standing in the exact spot listed on the site. I looked up the phone number and called while we were staying there, but it went directly to voicemail. I said “Hi, this is Nathan Burke. We RSVP’d for the open house today, and no one seems to be here. We’ll hang around for a few more minutes, so if anyone is around, please come by. Otherwise, please give me a call at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Thanks.”

It’s been 5 full days, and I still have not heard back from them.

2. The Atlantica- The Atlantica is a relatively new condo complex on the beach, and we literally drive by it every day. They always advertise their Saturday and Sunday open house, so we decided to swing by after being let down at the Forbes lofts. I looked at their web site as well, which gave 12-3 as the weekend open house hours. When we opened the other door there was a sign giving the number for the sales office, so I punched it in.

Direct to voicemail. We hung up and left.

3. Surfside Lofts- Yet another new complex within spitting distance of where we currently live. Since we were 0 for 2 in the day, we thought we’d try one more time, and it looked like we’d actually be able to see something. At the door we found a buzzer with the number to the sales office. After calling, a woman told us to come in, and that she’d be right down.

We walked in and saw a sign pointing to the model unit. We went in (door was open), and took a look around. After 15 minutes or so, we decided to buzz the sales office again, as we thought we might have misheard her. After the second buzz, we heard “I’m on the 4th floor, give me a minute!”

Right. We left immediately.

Now, these are just three real-world examples that show the problem I’m seeing…..the huge gap in effort between no-touch mass marketing and actually closing a sale. It’s really easy to put out content on the web and ignore it. It’s much more difficult to follow-up with those looking for more information on what you’re selling.

While it may not be a perfectly fair comparison to online inbound marketing (where it’s not always necessary to individually communicate with a potential customer, since the sale can happen immediately) I think the concept is sound. Getting the prospect to the site is just the first step. Failing to give enough information on what to do next will not only blow the sale, it’ll waste your potential customer’s time. It’s worse than nothing.

Okay, so I think this is a question of philosophy. It’s really a question of “does it hurt to have it?” Let me back up and actually tell you what I’m talking about.

The “Share this with others” buttons that have become so ubiquitous are actually starting to bother me in certain circumstances. For instance, I just got an email from a company asking me to fill out their survey. In the bottom of the email message I see this:

Why would I share that with others? To me, this would be the equivalent of taking a credit card offer out of my mailbox, driving it down to the local TV news station, and persuading the anchor to read the offer on the evening newscast. To me, that’s a little bit past absurd.

Well, why not?

I get it. The small chance that someone actually goes through the trouble of digging, stumbling, redditing, bookmarking, etc. your article justifies having the option. But do people really do that? It seems to me that people will come to a blog post after reading a headline on a social news site, but they wouldn’t submit a blog post to a social news site. Other than contributing content that others will like, what’s the motivation for doing so? If you’re just a casual blog reader, are you sufficiently motivated to submit an article to social sites?

But there’s something desperate about adding a “share this” to EVERYTHING online. Here’s a good example. Widemile is an SEO firm, and they have a “share this” widget on their privacy policy. Seriously.

Netconcepts is another SEO firm that actually has a share this widget on their customer inquiry form. Yep, I’m sure people would get a lot of value from that page on digg, reddit, stumbleupon, etc.

So, am I just being an angry old man, or do you feel the same? Doesn’t it just feel lazy? It reminds me of something Mitch Hedberg said: “When someone hands you a flyer, it’s like he’s saying, ‘Here, you throw this away.”

When I see a “Share This” in a ridiculous page, it’s like the folks behind the site are saying “Here, you promote this for us even if there’s no value here.”

Note: I realize that many sites are built on a template-based framework, and adding a share this embed code makes it show up on all pages. So yeah, I guess if your enitre site is built that way I can understand. But that seems cop-out-ish.

I just read a great article on kottke.org entitled “Does the broken windows theory hold online?” In the post, Jason Kottke examines the theory of broken windows and how it applies to online interactions:

Here’s the 1982 Atlantic article in which the theory was first discussed in a popular forum. (Great article, BTW.)

“At the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.”

Reading these articles, I wondered: how does the broken windows theory apply to online spaces? Perhaps like so:

Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what extent people are encouraged to “own” their words. When forums, message boards, and blog comment threads with more than a handful of participants are unmoderated, bad behavior follows. The appearance of one troll encourages others. Undeleted hateful or ad hominem comments are an indication that that sort of thing is allowable behavior and encourages more of the same. Those commenters who are normally respectable participants are emboldened by the uptick in bad behavior and misbehave themselves. More likely, they’re discouraged from helping with the community moderation process of keeping their peers in line with social pressure. Or they stop visiting the site altogether.

In addition to the presence of malicious users (spammers, etc.), there’s a flipside of the broken windows theory of websites that also comes to mind: the absence of loyal and active users. Think of how many times you’ve been to a forum and had to register to ask a question. If the forum is filled with spam and off-topic posts, how likely is it that you’ll come back? And as a user, what is the chance that you’ll try to outweigh the negative effects of the bad guys?

Since there are so many options available to users, it’s simply easier for a participant to go somewhere else to find what they’re looking for.

Last night I got an email from a old co-worker inviting me to check out SocialMinder, which said:

SocialMinder is an online assistant that helps you maintain relationships with your LinkedIn network.

I thought that you might appreciate a free invitation to the “closed” alpha test of SocialMinder.

SociaMinder:
* Scans your email headers and maps them to your LinkedIn network
* Identifies relationships that need strengthening
* Helps identify recent business news to discuss with each contact, no matter how out of touch you are
* You get weekly updates identifying top opportunities to build a better network

I have arranged for you to get a priority account;
1) Go to http://www.SocialMinder.com , and
2) Click on the green button (‘sign me up’)

You are on the priority list, but your space is only held for 3 days.

And the price is FREE…

Hope that it works for you!

Since this came from someone I knew (and someone that has sent me beta invites in the past), I decided to go check it out. You enter your gmail username and password, and SocialMinder tells you how long it’s been since you’ve contacted everyone in your gmail address book.

I then was brought to this screen:

If you can’t read what’s in the yellow box, it says:

Click here to upgrade to full version for free – just answer a few questions in our Alpha phase questionnaire. The full version helps you manage all of your contacts, and checks for contact updates regularly.

Oh, cool. I can get an upgrade to the full version just by answering a few questions in the Alpha phase questionnaire, right? I can answer a few questions. No biggie.

So I click. And here’s what I see:

No problem. This one’s easy. For some reason I see the following at the top:

Free Trial Upgrade- Step One of Two

But that’s okay.

So I answer the questions and click OK. Here’s what I get:

Yup, you read that right. Here’s the line:

To get your free full trial upgrade, you must select 15 friends to be sent a pre-approved invitation to try SocialMinder.

So the third step- which wasn’t mentioned at the beginning- is spamming 15 of your friends.

My Point:

I have no problem with services trying to get users to spread the word. It not only makes sense, it’s essential. But in user acquisition as with everything else, you have to manage expectations. And as someone who just ran through this process, I’m left feeling cheated. I feel like I wasted my time, and I’ll never go back to the service again.

Harsh? Probably. But I’m just pointing out how easy it is to make someone feel cheated and angry when promising one thing and giving them another.