You don’t have to hire an expensive firm to have a Public Relations (PR) strategy as a startup. The beauty of today’s internet is that anybody has the power to reach tens of thousands, even millions, with a properly timed tweet, hacker news mention, or mention on an influential blog. You don’t have to make it onto a cover story in Inc. or Entrepreneur in order to achieve your PR goals, in fact...
The first step in developing a marketing plan is to become obsessed with knowing your audience. That’s right, obsessed. It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on Google Adwords, or how many conference booths you rent out if you are off-course with knowing who your audience is.
Last week I wrote about the importance of knowing your audience, and tools for getting to know more about your target demographic. This week I’ll be diving into ways to get to know their biggest pain points. We’ll go through the tools available to seek out some potentially unsolved pains that they have, as well as pitfalls to avoid, like why asking them to identify their pain points is a...
Product validation is the crucial foundation for building a successful startup, a process that cannot be taken lightly. Many applications have been built and have consumed many hours and dollars only to discover that potential customers don’t really see enough value to whip out their credit cards.
In the past few weeks I’ve been writing about getting to know your audience and finding their pain points to form the foundation of your marketing efforts. This week I’ll describe assembling that data into an avatar, or creating a character with a story, with needs and desires.
Product positioning is a technique used in marketing that seeks to bring a specific idea to mind when presented to an audience. For example, when I think of Apple laptops, I think “high-end laptop geared towards creatives.” When I think of HP laptops, I think of “affordable laptops geared towards the masses.” These are product positions, and they are re-iterated by the marketing, the pricing, and...
Startups spend a great deal of time and money getting people to visit their marketing site (aka, their website). A startup’s marketing site typically exists to establish brand awareness, promote a sense of reliability, generate leads, and sell products or services.
Analytics helps your business determine what is working well, and what needs to be improved. We can always go off of a hunch, but the real power comes when we know the hard data behind our marketing efforts, and can make informed decisions that improve our business over and over.
Honing your skills as a writer is of course essential for blogging. However, when it comes to our marketing websites, doesn’t the product speak for itself? Isn’t copywriting just fussing over the details? Why spend all that time and energy to eek out a tiny percentage increase in signups?
It’s finally here. After months of planning, writing, and interviewing folks, I’ve released SaaS Marketing Essentials. Early response has been wonderful, with people commenting how much value they are finding in the product. Others have been asking me just what my process was in creating the book. For those, I write this article.
HI, I'M RYAN. I believe the best way to learn and remember is by writing things down and sharing them with others. This blog exists to help me synthesize and process my journey towards self-improvement.