Found+READ: Comments by Jeff Curie

Jeff Curie — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 03:38:29 GMT

A must have! This is a huge gotcha for most companies. Success requires first being a market-driven company, then having the skills to best reach and influence the target market using the precious little cash that startups have to spend.

I’m always shocked by how many startups have a build-it-and-they-will-come mentality or believe that marketing is simply marcomm.

Jeff Curie — Wed, 02 May 2007 06:32:11 GMT

The key to a market strategy is to balance how you will acquire users against how many resources you have at your disposal (money and time). In the case of a community site, you have two communities to attract – the users and the customers. Your market strategy towards each is distinct.

The strategy answers how you will accumulate enough users in order that your customers will pay you money (assuming you want to make money at this). Without lots of users you can’t gather customers – put the majority of your effort on users.

To develop your strategy you have to put yourself in the shoe’s of the user. How do they like to find the information you offer? How do they get it today? Do they Google for it? Read magazines? Go to local wedding planners and related stores? Look in the newspaper? The answer to these questions will tell you where to find the users.

Once you know which of these routes will put you in front of the most users, then you can lay out a plan for attacking it. Be laser focused. Spend your limited resources on the target with the best return. Try it, learn, adjust. Don’t expect to nail it on the first try.

This applies to your product marketing strategy too. What features do the users most desire and use? Expect to be adjusting as your learn.

How much you should spend on branding, PR, SEO/SEM will fall from your plan for user accumulation. Go for the biggest bang for your buck. You do not need to address elements that don’t bring you users. Attempt to guesstimate the cost of gathering each user with these different elements – the cost per user is likely very wide. Some methods are also measurable and some are pay-n-pray. Measurable is always more desirable.

Branding becomes more important when you get larger and and want to build a value into your name. At an early stage, having a simple company name that’s easy to remember and a matching URL are probably the top items you need. A logo and set of colors are needed for your website, collateral and such.

Another dimension to think about is partnering. What other companies have access to these people? Could you work together? Good partners can accelerate your market growth and create barriers to competitors.

Viral can be great if there is a natural communication network within your users. Is there something that bonds these people together – do they communicate already? Does it transcend the one wedding event? Any natural communication among your users is a good place to look to leverage a viral model. If they are all islands today, or only use the site for one wedding, this can be hard to pull off.

Jeff Curie — Tue, 01 May 2007 19:00:20 GMT

This can be a religious issue. People that make a lot of money in name and brand development make good cases on the importance. But consider del.icio.us! I’ve been successful with companies with lousy names and seen clever names in the dead pool. Personally, I think you can make a go with a reasonable name that you can 1) remember and 2) correctly guess the domain name and it’s unique if you enter it into Google, and 3) can be trademarked. Since your a startup, chances are you’ll get acquired before you create the next ‘Coke’.

Here are some interesting related posts:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2003/06/naming_a_…

http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-name-types/

Jeff Curie — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:27:07 GMT

I used to be a reader and a subscriber but not in several years. I think it’s not because of content – it’s a paper problem. The business model for print pubs is under extreme pressure, and in this case, the very audience of this magazine is the same one pushing the world on-line. Ironic that that a print pub catering to the on-line crowd would fail to make the very transition it promotes?

Maybe the Web2.0 community can reincarnate Business 3.0.

Jeff Curie — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:31:57 GMT

This is the classic struggle of the hyper-imaginative entrepreneur. The reality is you must select one (unless you have some disciples to run with your other ideas). Cultivating an idea into a successful company is simply too time consuming to attempt to execute multiples businesses at once.

So what to do with your other ideas? There are 3 options. Evaluate them and decide if you should change horses (a serious topic on its own!), donate your ideas to the community and hope someone else might pick it up and run with it, or protect the idea legally and try to use it later. This latter might end with slapping some other poor entrepreneur with a patent violation suit – a rather unsavory business model.

Jeff Curie — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:49:42 GMT

Great post and right on the money.

Another interesting question to add to your line up is – “In your words, how would you describe our product?”.

It’s often very insightful to hear how your customers sum up your product in their own terms.

Jeff Curie — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:31:36 GMT

I like the analogies! Good wisdom. I often think about “arms and legs”. I have to much on my plate and I need “arms and legs” that I can trust to execute some of these task intelligently and free up my time.

Jeff Curie — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 06:58:27 GMT

Nice write up and a good process. I’ll add another mental exercise that can be helpful to come up with new ideas that can be 2-20 years out. Simply take two trends and plot out the intersection. What happens when they come together?

Examples:

Wii virtual controller and the ubiquitous cell phone. What new services might be enabled if every phone was a virtual controller?

Social Networking and Business Cards. Why do these worlds not intersect? They will – what will happen?

Jeff Curie — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:38:56 GMT

The advice here is good. But I have to point out that making a business around CPM ads is probably not enough. Do the math – you need A LOT of loyal users to get enough CPM ad sales to be rich. Strong branded sites will target $150 CPM but in reality they don’t get list price, nor do they sell out.

I think you will have a very hard time getting savvy investors to pony up on a CPM-based business unless you can prove amazing traffic levels.

As a marketer, I believe less and less advertisers are spending on CPM banners. It’s OK for branding but for most marketing initiatives it has a soft ROI. CPC, CPA and lead generation have much higher revenue potential. Figure out how one of those models applies to your business.

However, first and foremost, users are the key driver. First you must prove you can win them, second you need a plan to monetize them. See my post on developing a marketing strategy in FoundRead.

Good luck.

Jeff Curie — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:49:13 GMT

Great subject. Marc Andreesson just posted a very good and related article on Hiring, managing, promoting and firing executives.

http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/08/the-pmarca-guid.html