Taking Advantage Of What Others Have Already Done

On the “pro” side of the argument are the following points:

• “If X doesn’t put their pricing on their web site, we shouldn’t either. They must have done that for a reason.”
• “Company X spent thousands designing their landing pages, and they make a lot of money. Therefore, we should make ours look just like theirs.”
• “A company similar to ours got 60% of their leads from TechTarget. We should be able to do the same.”

It’s a pretty convincing idea: Another company has done ___________ and they are successful, so if we do _________ we will be too. Perhaps the most seductive rationale for copying the competition is precedence. If you incorporate something you’ve copied from your competition and it fails, it’s easy to say “that doesn’t make sense…..it worked for X, so it should work for us.” That’s  pretty convenient copout.

The Problem With Competitive Mimicry

Now that’s a pretty good one, isn’t it? Competitive mimicry? Whatever you want to call it, there are a few problems with doing what the others have done:

• At best, you’ll only do as well as your competitors
• Unless you know your competitor personally, you don’t know how well they’re doing
• You miss out on a chance to do something new

The second bullet is important. Let’s use the example of a landing page. Simply ripping off the layout and design of a competitor’s landing page because you know them to be successful could be a very bad idea. Maybe they have terrible conversion rates on their PPC pages, but do a great job at cold calling. You might end up copying something that isn’t working for them at all.

The third bullet is something to think about. Looking at almost every B2B web site, you’ll find that a user has to fill in a form to get any information whatsoever. Want to read a whitepaper? Well, you’ll have to tell us your name, email and phone number for the privilege.

So, if you’re a “copy the competition” type, you’ll probably do the same and put up a wall between a visitor and a whitepaper. Everyone else does it. But maybe you’re missing an opportunity. Maybe visitors hate the mandatory forms with the intensity of a thousand suns. Maybe simply allowing visitors to get the information they want would make them like you more than your lame competitors. Maybe you could even build a campaign around the fact that your company believes visitors shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get information about a product.

Maybe. But that would take more effort than doing what the other guys have done.

Like those sites, startups.com encourages entrepreneurs to ask questions about anything related to starting, running, operating and marketing a startup. The home page:

Startups.com is a new service by Startups.com Network, Inc, the company behind KillerStartups.com, a site that reviews startups.

Some people are criticizing Startups.com for using the same software/approach as Answers.OnStartups.com, but I think they’re missing the real benefit here. Having a resource for entrepreneurs to discuss issues, share tips, and generally help each other is really a great thing, and I think there’s room for more than one site.

As someone working at a startup in marketing, I’m really enjoying the quality of the questions and discussions in the marketing category, and I’ve already started adding my 2 cents in discussions.

So, if you’re an entrepreneur I’d suggest adding startups.com to your list of resources.

Help me promote Aprigo NINJA.

The first 12 people that give me good ideas on how to promote NINJA will get an invite.

Here’s the deal: Aprigo NINJA is a free SaaS IT Management application that we released into private beta in late September. The app helps IT professionals in mid-size companies better manage their massive file growth. So I’m looking for fresh ideas on how to promote NINJA to exactly the right people it will help out. I mean, it’s free, so there’s not a lot of risk there.

Here’s what we’ve done so far:

• Sponsored a contest on StorageMonkeys
• Got coverage in a few industry blogs like PCMag.com
• Added NINJA to free download sites like Tucows.com
• Ran our own Sysadmin Appreciation Day contest

And of course, we’ve promoted on twitter, facebook, our blog, etc.

So aside from these, I’d love to hear your ideas on how to promote Aprigo NINJA to IT Pros in mid-size companies. Thanks!

Okay, I admit, that’s probably not fair. It’s not that they don’t like PR people, it’s that they don’t think that entrepreneurs should necessarily hire PR firms to get coverage from journalists. This created a little bit of controversy at a meeting where there were lots of PR folks in attendance, and there are several blog posts today defending PR for startups (A great wrapup of the event can be found on Mike Troiano’s blog here).

In This Corner: PR

It’s understandable that the PR pros in the room were upset that a panel of Boston’s most respected tech journalists told a room full of prospective clients that one of PRs biggest selling points (media coverage) is a sham. In fact, there were several times when a panelist would point out that PR people that promise coverage are simply liars.

Looking at the posts defending PR for startups, the general theme is this: PR is not just media relations. Bobbie Carlton posted her thoughts:

There was a lot of great information served up in the panel but if I was an entrepreneur, all I would have heard was, “Run away from PR people, they are useless to you.  In fact, probably worse than useless because top reporters look down on them as a breed.”

The reality is that PR = public relations and in today’s world the best PR people are skilled communicators who coach entrepreneurs as they think about how they communicate with their communities.  (All those words have “comm” as a root for a reason. )  The relevant skills found in a traditional PR tool kit include: excellent writing and communications skills, a broad understand of business and marketing,  an understanding of what makes a good story, and thus, what a community cares about.  Maybe you are calling it a Community Manager or Content Creator but it sounds like PR to me.

In This Corner: Journalists

I think it would really be easy to classify the debate here as Journalists hate PR and, like Bobbie said, you’re probably worse off hiring them, but that’s just lazy. Journalists don’t hate PR. They hate lame pitches. They don’t want to write about boring products that aren’t interesting to their readers.

And with the explosion of tech startups over the last, say, 10 years, just imagine how many coverage requests they get each day. When all those requests come from PR people using the machine gun coverage strategy of “pitch the story to anyone with an email address regardless of what they cover”, it’s pretty easy to start seeing all PR reps as evil monsters.

Let’s go to make believe land for a second. Pretend that there are thousands of 4 foot tall pink rabbits. They’re really fuzzy and cute looking, and you want to be friends with them. But every 80% of them run over to you and bite you. After a while, I think you’d probably shy away from 4 foot tall pink rabbits even though some of them just want to have a beer with you. In fact, you might even suggest to your friends that staying away from all pink rabbits is a good strategy.

The Takeaways

If you want journalists to cover your startup, there are some really idiot-simple things you should do:

1. Select the right journalists for what you’re pitching. Find out who covers what you’re trying to get coverage for, then talk with them. In the panel, Wade Roush noted that he covers 4 specific story topics, and if your story doesn’t fit, you should probably find someone else.
2. Connect with a hot trend. Journalists care about things like page views, so they’re much more likely to cover something that has a connection with a hot topic. Scott Kirsner’s blog gives the following advice: “My favorite columns capture something that is changing about the local innovation scene, for better or worse… useful lessons from the front lines for entrepreneurs…a trend that people are just starting to talk about, a new industry cluster emerging, an important new area of research…or an incredible story about success or failure.”
3. Stories about people are always the most interesting. Even if you have the hottest new technology, if it doesn’t have a story about the people involved, it’s probably not all that interesting. When I worked at matchmine, we got Boston Globe coverage because we were backed by the Kraft family…..not because we had a cool recommendation engine.
4. Make a personal connection with the journalist you are targeting. This was the one thing they all agreed on: the best way to get coverage is to get to know the journalist, have a compelling story that fits their coverage area, and be interesting.

In the end, it’s not that journalists flat-out despise PR, they just don’t want to be overwhelmed with lame pitches for boring products without an interesting story. It doesn’t matter if its a PR rep, the company’s CEO or a 4 foot rabbit…..if they’re pitching something the journalist doesn’t care about, they’re not going to waste their time.

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.

The details:

Wednesday, July 22nd
6:30-8:30 PM
460 Totten Pond Road Suite 660
Waltham, MA

Tonight we have two speakers:

Matthew Mamet, Director of Product Marketing for PermissionTV will be giving a presentation entitled “Using Video To Strengthen Online Marketing”

Phillip Zannini will share lessons learned from his first startup and what he’s doing differently in the second one. Who to work with, what you should source, what kind of agreements you should have and when to have them, finances and more.

Please be sure to RSVP so we can have a head count for pizza. See you tonight!

"So the people that are coming to our blog and reading our posts….are they a missed opportunity? Shouldn’t we wait until we have a product?"

Now that was an interesting question. I’d never really thought about it that way. My immediate, knee-jerk reaction was "we shouldn’t wait." Here’s why:

1. Blogging early and creating content builds trust- When you’re a startup without any exposure, people are skeptical of your claims. So many startups make bold, aggressive claims like "our search engine makes google look like a dinosaur." It’s easy to make claims like that when you have no proof. But when you start off by addressing the problems you’re trying to solve and give examples of how you’re going to solve them, people respond to that. My favorite example of this was the blog from Powerset, a search engine startup focused on natural language search. (They were later acquired by Microsoft)

   Rather than making claims that their search approach was the best, they gave examples of problems that exist in search as we know it. A favorite post is called "The Tyranny of the Common Name", in which the author addresses the problem of having a common name when it comes to search. These kinds of posts go a long way in demonstrating expertise and a fundamental understanding of the problems facing the market, thus establishing trust.

2. Blogging early and creating content builds incoming links- If you wait until the day you have a product to sell to create content, who would know how to find it? Let’s play make-believe for a second….Let’s say I’ve been secretly working on an online store for dart players. The store has darts, accessories, and anything a serious dart player would be looking for. Today I’m ready to launch, and I haven’t done any kind of promotion until today.

   I could go to twitter, but since I have no following and haven’t approached dart players on twitter, no one would see my tweets.
   I could go to facebook, but since I haven’t friended anyone or joined any groups for dart players, no one would notice.
   I could start posting blog posts every hour, but no one would know about them.

   What’s worse is that since I didn’t lay the groundwork earlier, even if people did notice the content, they’d probably label me as a spammer, carpet-bombing the internet with shameless plugs rather than taking the time to organically build interest.

3. Blogging early gives your company exposure- Early on, when you don’t have a product to sell, you’re in an ideal position to create content. In this phase of your company’s existance, you are doing something awesome: you’re creating content purely because it is interesting and useful to the people you’ll eventually want as customers. You don’t have to worry about plugging your product. You don’t have to craft your posts around a product offer, and you don’t have to constantly focus on the ROI of each post. This is the fun part where you are really just trying to figure out how you can be a resource to the population you wish to later serve.
4. Blogging early makes your company real- When you don’t have proof, people don’t think you’re real. A "stealth mode startup building x" doesn’t really exist in the eyes of the public. And since you can’t yet clearly demonstrate your product, blogging is a great way to share your philosophy and focus on solving a problem. Blogging gives you a chance to relate to your market, and a chance to interact with readers.
5. Blogging early gives your company a chance to receive feedback- We repeat this over and over here at Aprigo, but we mean it when we say we’re a market-driven company. Why bother building a product with features people won’t use? Conversely, we don’t want to leave out functionality that people would really value. Blogging gives us the opportunity to give our opinions, but also to hear what others have to say, and that is incredibly valuable when looking at our roadmap.
6. Blogging early builds anticipation- Combining all of the above points, when you’re able to share your philosophy, build trust and interact with people interested in what you have to say, it builds anticipation for what you have to offer. It makes people want to know when your product is ready for them to check out. It’s happened to me time and time again….I’ll hear about a product that isn’t publicly available yet, and I’ll follow their blog to hear updates and to see what will be coming soon.

In the end, I think the point is that you need to constantly produce interesting, relevant content that addresses issues facing those you wish to eventually have as customers. Customer acquisition online isn’t about a transaction, it’s about a relationship, and blogging is a great way to start your company’s relationship to the outside world.

The photo:

I apologize for the quality of the image. It was rainy, I was using my iPhone and I was in a moving car. Not the optimal conditions.

I saw the location as a web site, and the entrance you see here is their home page. The other entrance is right by the white car you can see underneath the sign. That’s a landing page.

Here’s what we see on the home page:

1. Vegetables Flowers and Plants- This is their page headline, and they’re using an <H1> tag around it.
2. Northshore Flower Exchange- This is their page title and the name of the site
3. Plants and Flowers- This is their subheadline. They believe that the majority of people searching for what they offer use the words “Vegetables flowers & plants”, but know that some people search for just “plants and flowers”, leaving out vegetables all together.

On the landing page they have the same sign as #1. It feels like a landing page, as you can’t actually get into the parking lot there. You have to follow the call to action and drive around to get in. I’m reasonably certain that if they had a third road-facing side, they would have another large sign that says “Plants and Flowers”. You know, for A/B testing purposes.

About one minute in, I noticed a few attendees feverishly taking notes. That’s when I realized I didn’t mention that I’d make the slides from the presentation available. Here they are (PDF Format).

This was the opening night of Aprigo’s worldwide multimedia production division (as in, we had a camcorder and a laptop with a webcam), so we tried something a little new. First, we were broadcasting the session live via stickam. Additionally, we took some digitial video footage and they’re available below.

It was a great event, and we really look forward to future Boston-Area Startup Marketing Meetups in the future. If you’re interested in checking them out, please join us on our Meetup Group page where you’ll meet over 100 other area startup marketers.

Boston Area Startup Marketing Meetup June 2009- The Intros from aprigo on Vimeo.

The June 2009 Boston Area Startup Marketing Presentation- Nathan Burke from aprigo on Vimeo.