Inbound on a shoestring

logoWILL CRITCHLOW

Fame done cheap

“We want the best. Better get the cheapest”

-- No-one, ever

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/30/business/la-fi-mo-richest-woman-20120830

Did you see this article?

I didn’t actually think it was a great promo video.

(Though I do love the kickofflabs product and team)

http://blog.kickofflabs.com/how-to-do-a-great-product-promo-video-for-less-than-200/

Most cheap marketing is one-shot

It’s not scalable or repeatable http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/174088066/

“Hyper-successful marketing activities you can do with no money that scale up, stay free and stay wildly successful”

“Good luck with that”--@willcritchlow

Let’s invent a perpetual motion machine

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Murphy's_law_application_for_antigravitatory_cats

Who can tell me who this is?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmaresca/8098982355/

Steve Blank: Entrepreneur, Lecturer

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmaresca/8098982355/

His hardest marketing challenge:

Selling Apple Mac graphics cards

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngreathouse/2012/10/15/steve-blanks-most-audacious-guerrilla-marketing-stunts/

Marketing team of 14 spent $4m / year

http://www.flickr.com/photos/msimdottv/4012752000/

15,000 customer registration cards

He personally called the first 300

They run 4 main applications. Read 3 main publications.Speed is what matters.Price is irrelevant.

An engineer would ask to speed up the card

Steve asked for one 10% slower and one 20% slower

Then hiked the price of the top end

If you can’t afford marketing, you probably aren’t charging enough

Gave magazine editors access to their benchmarking tool

“For 3 1/2 years, neither the magazines nor my competitors realized that our company was on Potrero Street and that the address of the Potrero Benchmark Organization was the identical address of SuperMac”

There are 2 kinds of “bootstrapped”

#1 Pay using something other than money

#2 Spend someone else’s money

A quick note on measurement

ROI is a terrible metric for bootstrapped marketing

This isn’t a useful divisor

If you don’t have money, you need at least one of…

Talent

http://www.flickr.com/photos/beleaveme/5840856849/

Relationships

http://www.flickr.com/photos/beleaveme/5840856849/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicoll/346259443/

Fame

Assets

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jedlangdon/7369276320/

…or even just balls

But the big one is TIME

Pixar spends 1,825 man-days...

...on each minute of movie

http://www.quora.com/Pixar-Animation-Studios/What-are-some-mind-blowing-facts-about-Pixar-Animation-Studios#ans1573197

Read Dr. Pete on “big content”

“Spend” your effort & skills

or spend someone else’s money

The democracy of the web works in your favor

You’ve heard of kickstarter

Lockitron – level up and DIY

https://lockitron.com/preorder

You won’t want to ship them yourself

Warning: not zero budget! [www.shipwire.com – check out the API]

Check out Printfection.com

Not only fulfillment – but also print on demand so no up-front cost

If you take credit card payments, invest early revenue in acquisition

You can make this cash flow-positive http://www.flickr.com/photos/doyoubleedlikeme/2520228943/

2006

40% offRumors that Thresher was

“going to go bust” after viral spread of their voucher

2008

They did it again

“Later it emerged that the scheme had been a huge

marketing success”

Appsumo-type deals exchange margin for marketing

And it can even spread further than the people they reach directly

Action:High gross margin? Use deep discounts

…or even giveaways. You can use the discount to drive your marketing

http://www.flickr.com/photos/68751915@N05/6710895025/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/panapp/3413589725/

I want to tell you the story of Dortmund concert milk

http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

A concert hall took their orchestra to dairy farms

http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

Farmers took care of packaging and logistics

http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

Invited bloggers to private concerts, served the milk at the concert hall

http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

And got their “advert” in all the local shops

http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

The concert hall had their most successful season of all time

http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

The farmers made a return within the first year as well

Find someone who has what you want

Got content? Find traffic. Got traffic? Find content.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/russelljsmith/12043344/

Ladbrokes wanted to put beermats in 100s of pubs with a free bet promotion

http://www.flickr.com/photos/russelljsmith/12043344/

It’s surprisingly expensive to print and ship beermats to 100s of pubs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ladbrokes.middlesbrough_007.1.jpg

A partnership with KP peanuts gave free distribution and point-of-sale promotion

Neither the app makers nor the film studio paid for this media

Do you have distributors?

Timberland have an e-commerce store and feature on others’ sites

Best recent example I’ve seen(from Rainforest Alliance)

Follow the frog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iIkOi3srLo

Green rooibos isn’t a huge brand

But they make it into this great video

They get featured because of the rainforest alliance logo [arrow theirs]

“Spend” your effort & skills

This infographic was about 10% of Oli’s guest post on SEOmoz

Check out unbounce.com – he’s earned it!

Real guest posting brings real business benefits

Not only links (or even traffic) but conversion rate improvements

It should be obvious that you really win if you get people creating this content for youWell done Rand

Get in other people’s emails

This is traffic to distilled.net from the moz Top Ten

Cold emailing totally works

But only if your product kicks ass

Without the nudge, we wouldn’t have even created this offers page

LinkedIn – use “people you may know”

This

Means this button connects directly with no awkward questions

The LinkedIn API doesn’t ask awkward questions if you know an email address

This is the rapportive plugin for gmail. Highly recommended

Most people have email in their profile

Don’t be a ****

No connections? Rapportive makes it easy to find email addresses

http://www.distilled.net/blog/miscellaneous/find-almost-anybodys-email-address/

Bonus – you can re-use content you already have

Make your next guest post pitch a guest email pitch

Wavelength helps you find similar email newsletters to your own

http://wavelength.mailchimpapp.com

I want to see more blog commenting

Not like this. But thank you Mr Fiorenza881.

Some blogs (like AVC) have more value in the comments than in the posts themselves – which often serve to spark the discussion. This is a compliment to Fred Wilson BTW for the community he has built.

Commit to trying a new community Commit to sticking with it for a month

That’s long enough to create a habit (if you like it)

Localize, personalize

Local hairdressers work because of economics

Local is a feature and it’s hard for the big guys to compete with

http://www.flickr.com/photos/unwomenasiapacific/7370927212/

Local events work for the same reasons

@SpaceTheShiba at our Seattle meet-up

We think of Pinterest as the archetypal “product-driven growth” startup

But you should read this AllThingsD article on how they really grew

Many local events feel big budget because they worked

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was just employees the first year

http://www.flickr.com/photos/musicwala/5209170537/

The Tour de France was a promo for a newspaper

It put their rival out of business

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjr-images/6949648280/

“Go to a race with a digital camera and a banner.Take thousands of photos.Use mechanical turk to identify the participants.Repeat at weekly meets.Get famous.???Profit” --Cycling website owner

Opportunity is like serendipity

Linford Christie wore Puma contact lenses to a press conference where endorsements were banned

Lego recreated the Red Bull freefall

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/video/2012/oct/15/felix-baumgartner-skydive-lego-video

So how do we do this online?

Mash things up

Embrace the trolls

Bodyform’s exceptional response to a Facebook troll

A guy named Thomas Cook asks Thomas Cook for a holiday

Thomas Cook says “no”

LowCostHolidays.com says “yes”

No-one here knows who Urs Meier is

do they?http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/British_tabloids_let_rip_on_Swiss_referee.html?cid=3967910

He was a referee at Euro 2004 (soccer!)

He disallowed a goal that screwed England

ASDA immediately started offering free eye tests for the Swiss

http://www.flickr.com/photos/derrickding/323218989/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/14174853@N04/3751824078/

You could do the Swiss thing online

(With some careful monitoring and without too much at stake)

Target the tech sector (and press)

What other groups could you target?

Country / city (sports?)

Windows / Mac

Mobile / Non-mobile

iPhone / Android

If you run a magazine site, why not detect the device and play up this research?

Remember this OKCupid data?

No time, talent, fame or friends?

Then you need balls

WePay dropped a 600lb block of ice full of money at a PayPal conference

I’m not saying WePay have no friends, BTW

WILL CRITCHLOWFounder, Distilled

will.critchlow@distilled.net

@willcritchlow

Celebrities work

Just a little message

I thought I’d get an endorsement from the other side Unfortunately Mr. Romney couldn’t be

reached for comment

Celebrities are expensive

WILL CRITCHLOWFounder, Distilled

will.critchlow@distilled.net

@willcritchlow