| OK Now I'm at home and can write you a substantive answer. It starts here: - Marketing is Highly Situational - Different Markets Should Be Approached Differently - Tactics are constantly changing and evolving, so mix, match, and measure until you find something that works. It sounds like you're looking for the essence of web marketing strategies for early stage startups. The best person blogging about this topic right now is a guy named Sean Ellis (http://www.startup-marketing.com) who's the CEO of Catchfree and ran marketing at some really amazing companies (Dropbox, Eventbrite, Xobni, etc.). His framework, as detailed in these interviews here - http://venturehacks.com/articles/sean-ellis-interview - the Sean Ellis framework seems to be the following: - Value Proposition Clarification based on user interviews/analytics/qualitative customer data. - Conversion Optimization - not only conventional LPO or form optimization, but actually optimizing for high quality users, attracted by the value proposition found in part 1. - Channel experimentation/optimization - At some level, web companies are not highly scalable until they can "buy" customers profitably - until there's a known, strong relationship between CPA (cost per acquisition) and CLTV (customer lifetime value), and of course, you can get CPA below CLTV at scale. So this step is where experimenting with different channels and different tactics fits in.
Here's where you'd try different channels like paid and nonpaid social media and search engine activities, other advertising channels, affiliates, etc. So that's what I'd do - clarify the value, optimize the conversion flow, and then relentlessly test channels until I could find something where I could acquire customers at a profit. (In an slightly related side note, I'd suggest you read Noah Kagan's blog OKdork.com, where he writes on cool startup marketing topics.) (Note: this assumes your product is not a social network.) |