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Ask HN: We've launched and I've got $5-10k for marketing, advice?
We launched a start up which we've bootstrapped so far. I'm willing to fork out $5-10k for some sort of marketing/pr etc. The site is PubliciTweet (reviewed here before) and we're targeting anyone who could benefit by running marketing campaigns on Twitter.
Would love to hear ideas, referals and what has/hasn't worked for you guys. Actual #s are always welcome.
We've considered AdWords, ads in Twitter clients, etc. but haven't pulled the trigger just yet.
Site is at http://publicitweet.com
- jmathai 17y agoClickable link for the lazy :) http://publicitweet.com http://publicitweet.com
- zaidf 17y agoIf you haven't, read up on Lean Startup/Eric Reis(http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/ http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/) and also Sean Ellis(http://startup-marketing.com/ http://startup-marketing.com/). I particularly like the free survey tool provided by Sean Ellis at http://survey.io http://survey.io. Basically it gives you an idea whether you have a service that you can charge for. Bottomline: (1) don't assume your product will sell(be open to changing almost every aspect of it) (2) test, modify, test more whether your product can sell (3) don't scale marketing until you know from a smaller data sample that there is demand for your product. Simply put, don't scale till for every dollar of marketing spend, you can make more than a dollar. Ignoring that last piece will lead you to having no money in the bank in little time(cough last bubble).
- jmathai 17y agoI've followed a bit of Eric Reis' stuff and had been adhering to it already :). Will check out Sean Ellis. Thanks.
- crucini 17y agoGood marketing has a long ramp-up time. Ideally you would have started your marketing program several months ago. I think the most effective marketing communications is PR. You can find a solo PR agent to handle your account for about $1k/month. This is the low end of the PR profession, and you don't get world-class creativity. However, if done right it will earn you a trickle of mentions on tech websites. PR is like boiling water. You have to apply heat for a long time. See PG's essay on The Submarine. No matter which marcom route you emphasize, you will be much stronger if you can clarify your market. Saying "anyone who could benefit from $product" is blurry.
- jmathai 17y agoThanks for the feedback. So far we have identified and began reaching musicians and reporters. Really targetting them though is something we could use help with. I think part of my posting is that anxiousness of seeing slow/steady growth and the fear that it will die down on it's own. I want to see it ramp up a little :).
- aaroneous 17y agoI'd strongly suggest not spending your money on a PR firm in the bootstrap stage. Better options are handling it yourself (great for establishing relationships with writers, bloggers, etc), or find an ambitious college student who's studying PR/Communications and wants to get into the field. In my experience, bringing on a PR intern was exponentially better than hiring a firm. The interns are thrilled to have the opportunity to work on a real project, and they'll spend hours digging, searching, reaching out and just trying different things. Your PR firm is going to do the bare minimum to keep you on as a client for the next month. Of course, if you have tens of thousands/mo to retain a top-tier PR firm, things will obviously change, but a 5-10k is not going to cover that.
- charliepark 17y agoFor marketing, I've found HARO (http://www.helpareporter.com/ http://www.helpareporter.com/) to be a really useful resource. Essentially, you have reporters who are looking for leads / sources, about a wide range of topics. Obviously, you're going to have a lot of "Jon & Kate + 8" and "fashion week" requests, but you occasionally get topics that deal with your area of expertise. You can then step in, and you get free exposure, in some fairly high-profile media outlets, and are quoted as an expert. Even the interviews that aren't in super-high-profile papers still give you a good chance to refine your pitch and to practice speaking to a non-technical reporter, so you've got a more polished presentation when it comes time to chat with the WSJ/NYT/etc. So there's that. BUT. You might want to consider holding off on doing any publicity until, as zaidf mentions, you've ensured that you have a good product/market fit. In addition to Eric Ries and Sean Ellis, check out Steve Blank's stuff. If he were your advisor, and he heard you were looking to spend runway money on PR, he'd be apoplectic. He'd probably say that the best return on that money is going to come from doing user testing (that is, interviewing people to see if you have a product that they'd spend money on; if not, using the money to tweak the product, and then do another round of interviews; repeat), or from using it to extend your runway so you have longer to figure everything out before you run out of money.
- jmathai 17y agoThanks. I'm completely open to holding off on doing any publicity related tasks. I wanted to make sure I didn't stay head down in engineer mode since I feel that the main features are complete. I wanted to turn some focus onto growing the userbase. We've started to do some A/B testing on small features. Most users have positive remarks and we're using Get Satisfaction to acquire more input from them (though it's not got much traction yet).