Startups What have you guys done to get press for your startup? |
- What have you guys done to get press for your startup?
- You're losing 96% of your site visitors. Here's how to bring them back -- and get them to buy.
- Gearing up to launch in a space I have no experience in. Marketing help please!
- About "Agree to terms and Conditions" and my website's Registration Page
- 50/50 co-founder wants to exit LLC, I want to continue, looking for advice
- Is using Wix to create a basic(but great looking) website for a biotech ok?
- I'm having trouble coming up with a product.
- Things You Should Give Up If You Want To Be Successful
- Do you disclose to your current or future employer that you have a side-business or keep it under wraps?
- Went big and lost. Went small and won. I didn’t see that coming.
- How would you recommend marketing a local app for lgbt college students?
- How to boost your app downloads?
- Selling Bitcoin online - bad idea?
- Never choose a NAME for your BRAND or BUSINESS without first ANSWERING these 5 crucial QUESTIONS
| What have you guys done to get press for your startup? Posted: 28 Feb 2018 11:11 AM PST What have you guys done to get press for your startup? We are two to three months out from launching. Worried about generating exposure and earning press. I'm wondering if I can bother the community for some advice? Are there any softwares or services that people are using to help find journalists / publications to hit up? Any specific strategy that works well these days in generating buzz? I am almost ready to start building some general awareness around our product and funnel in some users. Please help! Any advice would be awesome :) [link] [comments]  |
| You're losing 96% of your site visitors. Here's how to bring them back -- and get them to buy. Posted: 28 Feb 2018 05:05 AM PST On average, only about 3 to 4% of site visitors actually convert or buy before leaving. (source) In other words, a full 96% of your visitors are basically worthless. Instead of continuing to throw those people away, use retargeting (aka remarketing) to get them to convert. In this post, I'm going to briefly show you why retargeting is important, and then I'll go over some of the most common and dangerous mistakes I see people make when they try to run retargeting ads. First, let me address a couple quick things you might be thinking:
For the full blog post that shows exactly how to set everything up, with screenshots and way more detail, check out the full step-by-step article with screenshots and examples here (no email or anything else required). All right, let's do this. Part 1: What retargeting is and why you should use itHere's retargeting in a nutshell: You set up ads that follow people around after they leave your site or app, in order to get them to come back and become your customers or active users. Simple. Though actually, it's a lot more flexible than that. You can also follow the people who interact with your app, your YouTube videos, or your Facebook page (or IG, or LinkedIn). You can even use any email addresses or physical addresses you've collected to target them. And when you do it right, the results can be incredible.
But when it's done wrong, this shit is super annoying. And ineffective. Think of all those times you've continued to see banner ads for a product for weeks... after you ALREADY BOUGHT IT. Or if you've gotten the same annoying video ad on YouTube ten times a day. To get good results, you have to be smarter than that. First, before talking more specifically about remarketing, one thing you need to understand about marketing in general is a basic but critical concept called "effective frequency". It's usually thought about in terms of paid advertising, but the truth is that it applies to all forms of marketing: from a physical storefront sign to an Instagram account. Effective frequency is the number of times someone has to see your ad or marketing message before they'll act on it. Two points to think about real quick... ...and then I'll show you how it ties back to remarketing. A) If your prospects see your marketing message fewer times than the effective frequency, then they won't do anything and you will have wasted your money/effort on making people almost buy. B) If they see it more times than the effective frequency, then you'll also be wasting your money/effort by over-marketing to them beyond what was necessary... and often annoying them in the process. As you might expect, effective frequency varies based on the product, target audience, etc. For example, a $100,000 car is going to have a MUCH higher effective frequency than a $1 pack of gum. But aside from super cheap products that rely on impulse buys, you're almost always going to need to get in front of your prospective customers multiple times. The beauty of remarketing is that it's a very easy way to do exactly that. It's actually too easy, to the point that it can be dangerous. Because a lot of businesses just set it up with all the default options, and promptly forget about it. And that's where it goes off the rails. Part 2: Avoid these brand-damaging retargeting mistakes (and a couple of things to try)So most businesses end up making mistake B that I mentioned above: over-advertising to the people who have already converted (or who have already made up their minds not to). These businesses waste their money and piss people off in the process, damaging their brand. But what drives me crazy about that is that it doesn't take much effort AT ALL to avoid that problem. Because you can set exactly how many times you'd like your retargeting ads to be shown to each person. "Frequency capping" is how many times you want to show your ads to each person, and "membership duration" is how long you want to keep advertising to them. That means you can use a simple conservative approach, like 1x a day for 14 days... ... or with some other techniques, a more advanced schedule like 8x banner ads per day for 3 days, then 2x video ads per day for a week, then disappear for a month, then start showing 1x ad per day again for 6 months after that. (Not all platforms allow this level of control, but Google AdWords does for example.) Tip: If you don't already know how long it takes your customers to convert, check out the "Time Lag" and "Path Length" reports in Google Analytics, under Multi-Channel Funnels. Those are a great way to see how often you should be showing your ads to people and for how long. Here are 3 other important things you should do, which most advertisers get wrong when they're running retargeting campaigns: 1. For the love of God, SEGMENT YOUR AUDIENCES. Treating everyone the same way is easily one of the most common mistakes businesses make. Instead, set up different remarketing lists/audiences for different groups of people based on who they are or what they do. For example, based on the pages they visited on your site; whether they made a purchase; whether they started the conversion process but didn't finish (i.e. shopping cart abandoners); how long ago they visited; where they're located geographically; the device they used; how long they stayed on your site; whether they viewed multiple pages or just bounced. Different groups of people will respond better or worse to your marketing -- and some will never buy no matter what -- so segmenting everyone will allow you to better control your bidding and exclude some of them. (For example, the people who already bought or the people who bounced.) 2. Personalize your messaging to your audience segments. It's amazing how often people tag their site, set up a few different remarketing audiences, set up a campaign and then just throw in some general branding banners and call it a day. Don't do that. Your best results will come if you customize the hell out of your ads based on what you know about the audience lists they're going to be served to.
3. Pay attention to what sites and apps your ads are showing up on ("placements"). Google AdWords and Facebook both give you some ability for controlling these, though Google's options are much more robust. There's a huge amount of variance in performance between different sites and apps -- some will be well worth it and some will be nothing but a black hole for money. Plus, studies show that having your ads shown on low quality or highly irrelevant sites can actually make people LESS likely to buy. Concluding thoughts... If you're already using remarketing, I hope you learned some ways to improve your results. And if you're not using it yet, I hope this will inspire you to give it a shot! If you're already running ads on Facebook or Google, it's a no-brainer... and even if you aren't, it's still something you should try. Of course, because of reddit's space constraints, this post was only scratching the surface.For a full step-by-step walkthrough that will show you exactly what to do, plus custom audience segments you can use directly, 21 more advanced tricks, and a TON of other things there isn't space to cover in a reddit post (like retargeting ladders, 3rd-party platforms, mobile app retargeting and more), check out the full step-by-step blog article with screenshots and examples here. (It's 19,812 words, literally 15x longer than this reddit post and WAY more comprehensive. But it's still just a blog post so you don't need to give me your email address or anything.) [link] [comments]  |
| Gearing up to launch in a space I have no experience in. Marketing help please! Posted: 01 Mar 2018 12:18 AM PST So I normally would NEVER do this, but I'm launching two web apps in tandem. In two COMPLETELY different markets. I'm only doing this because the secondary one stems from a platform I had built that I abandoned for my primary (travel space) project. Rather than just considering it a waste, I was convinced by my makeup artist (I work in TV and film for my "day" job) to simply repurpose it for a new industry. The beauty and style space. Which is massive and as I test the platform I've had huge amounts of positive feedback from the potential customer base (makeup artists, hair stylists, nail techs, etc etc). So I'm doing a "fuck it, let's see what happens" launch. Allocating some funds for a test run of social ads (Instagram and Facebook) to hopefully get those service providers to sign up. Both for free and ideally premium paid memeberships. Aside from simply buying social ads, what are some additional avenues? I defiantly want to reach Instagram influencers, but can't seem to lock in a valid source. Too many fishy looking sites. Any advice? Oh, and if anyone knows a big name in the beauty/style space with a large social following that may be interested in partnering up for equity as the "face" of the brand, let me know (there would defiantly be some commission equity in that) Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| About "Agree to terms and Conditions" and my website's Registration Page Posted: 28 Feb 2018 11:47 PM PST We are small startup company in India currently doing recruitment services and expending into other educational sectors too. I handle all the IT stuff here like website development and other coding stuff. [link] [comments]  |
| 50/50 co-founder wants to exit LLC, I want to continue, looking for advice Posted: 28 Feb 2018 02:33 PM PST Just the facts: I started a SaaS LLC with a cofounder for 50/50 equity a year and a half ago. We're both managers/members. We both put $1,000 in a checking account as equity. We both have a credit of about $10,000 for unreimbursed expenses. Business finally picked up for us last fall and as of now, we have around 10 paying customers at $250-$750 a month, gaining 2-3 new clients a month on minimal marketing. Costs (outside of my unpaid, but now minimal time) are cheap at less than $500 a month. We have $2,000 in our checking account. No outside debt, no other share/stakeholders, no upcoming expenses. Our documentation is limited: A Wyoming LLC membership certificate with 50/50 stakes, a generic operating agreement, both members/managers, & no terms on our unreimbursed expenses. The plan was to pay a lawyer to firm things up once we were getting funded (we have an application out with an in-industry incubator and I know non-industry but interested, angels).
Docs: https://www.docdroid.net/bY1sWj1/llc-membership-cert.pdf https://www.docdroid.net/JOncSFo/operating-agreement.pdf
Background (skip for tl;dr): I started a SaaS company with a co-founder for 50/50 equity a year and a half ago. I'm the technical co-founder, but an industry outsider, he's the BD/sales guy. He's been running a consulting company in our industry for the last decade. His sole-proprietorship picked up a major client and he no longer has time for our venture. I've worked nearly full time on this project, he put in part-time. I built the technology, materials, finances, fundraising, processes, etc. while he was supposed to bring in the big deals through his decades of contacts. He tried, occasionally hustled, but his efforts brought few, usually discounted, deals. Most of our clients came from the rookie internet ads I set up. Eventually, he pushed off most of his work (demos, follow-ups) to his own entry-level employees without much discussion or my control. I've learned some hard lessons about BD people, cofounders, equity splits, etc. He and I are on good terms. He recognizes, but also has a blind spot about the extra risk/work I put in and over-values the work his employees did. He doesn't seem optimistic about the company, maybe to protect his ego, but left the door open to retaining equity or a very limited role. It's a weird time for him to jump ship as we finally have some traction and take in more than we spend, also the incubator told us we've made it to round two. He doesn't have the skills to run this company without me, I don't believe he's trying to screw me. Last week he asked me to come up with terms for making this 'stepping back' work, declined to give any expectations (he honestly doesn't know and avoids research). I think he wants his money back and secondarily wants to retain some equity. I let him know yesterday that I'm researching the exit, but also looking for jobs. I'm excited to lose the dead weight and focus on growth. I'd use the equity for BD/marketing help and/or fundraising. At a minimum, since I'm not a BD guy, I could keep this as a side business after putting some more time into automation and getting AdWords help.
I'm looking for advice/ideas on how to fairly exit my co-founder: Buying his equity for a 90/10 split and removing his manager role seems like a good option, but I only have a couple thousand more I can invest in this company to buy him out. The other issue is how to structure reimbursing him for expenses (credit) as I don't want to cripple growth by paying out all the profit. I could convince him to convert the credit to OE, but then buying his shares would be even more expensive. He's in the industry and I worry that if I 100% buy him out he'll be more greedy on terms and then feel burned if I get funding and grow as I believe I can. Having him on my side, giving me referrals would also help. If we can't agree on terms I could rebuild the software under a new company, but more likely I'd take my loss/lessons and get a job until I'm ready to try this again.
Any advice, ideas, or paradigm shifts would be very much appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Is using Wix to create a basic(but great looking) website for a biotech ok? Posted: 28 Feb 2018 08:46 PM PST Hello everyone! I am in the process of starting a biotech(about to incorporate and have a bit of investor interest already due to some of my personal history) and am wanting to start a website. Based on my prior experience with Wix(minimal but great) and things I've heard from friends, it looks like a great and relatively cheap resource to use compared to say paying a few thousand for a developer. given all sales of my biotech are organizational(IE hospitals buying from my company) and the price point arguably will be negotiation dependent. It seems unnecessary to have anything more than a website exploring what the company is, our mission statement etc. Am I wrong in my analysis, or is using Wix bad, or what? [link] [comments]  |
| I'm having trouble coming up with a product. Posted: 28 Feb 2018 06:51 PM PST I want to start an online store selling a physical product, but I don't have a product. I have capital to start, and I feel like after maintaining activity in threads like this and r/entrepreneur for many months I have sufficient knowledge of the business side, like marketing and support, but I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with a product idea. Is this something that will just come to me one day? What should I look out for? Is it something that I need to sit down for a few hours a day and really think on to try to come up with something great? Any and all advice is welcome and greatly appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Things You Should Give Up If You Want To Be Successful Posted: 28 Feb 2018 05:10 AM PST Successful people don't make excuses. They get work done and don't let petty circumstances come in the way of achieving their goals. When most people think of success, their mind wanders to the healthy habits and characteristics they need to incorporate into their life. There are certain things that are universal, which will make you successful if you give up on them, even though each one of us could have a different definition of success. Becoming a great giver upper is essential to succeeding at the things that are important to you. Give up the stuff that is holding you back from becoming a great designer. 1. Stop saying YES to everything: Successful people know that in order to accomplish their goals, they will have to say NO to certain tasks, activities, and demands from their friends, family, and colleagues. In the short-term, you might sacrifice a bit of instant gratification, but when your goals come to fruition, it will all be worth it. 2. Stop Blaming others for your mistakes:
This is likely the most important lesson that you need to learn. You are going to make many mistakes if you attempt anything remarkable. You are going to hurt people, create disappointment and cause confusion and chaos. The best way to make these right is to apologize. The best way to apologize is simply to say, "I'm sorry." No excuses. No drawn-out reasons. Just powerful words and an attitude of sincerity. And when you do, the results are mind-blowing. You solve problems faster, win the confidence of your clients better and make yourself more accessible to everyone around you. 3. Stop Expecting life to be fair:
Stop pretending like you're the only one who has bad, unexpected circumstances happen to them. A lot of things that we like to call "unfair" are real outcomes of the decisions that we have made in the past. We make risky decisions and then cry "unfair" when our gamble doesn't turn out with us hitting the jackpot. That's unfortunate because there is a valuable lesson that could be learned if we stopped pouting and started listening. 4. Taking Rather Than Giving: From a scarcity perspective, helping other people hurts you because you no longer have the advantage. From an abundance perspective, there is not only one pie, but an infinite number of pies. If you want more, you make more. Thus, helping others actually helps you because it makes the system as a whole better. It also builds relationships and trust and confidence. 5. Give Up The Fixed Mindset: Do not let yourself believe that your intelligence and talent are fixed virtues and that your success in life will be based solely on your traits. Successful people know this. They invest an immense amount of time on a daily basis to develop a growth mindset, acquire new knowledge, learn new skills and change their perception so that it can benefit their lives. Remember, who you are today, it's not who you have to be tomorrow.
6. Don't multitask: Contrary to what people believe, your brain cannot focus on too many activities at once. Multitasking splits your focus and you end up doing yourself a disservice as you can't commit your full energy and commitment to even a single activity.
7. Following the crowd:
Idiots do stupid things. Sometimes a lot of idiots do the same thing together. The thing you are missing out on are the results of idiot behaviour. Many times your industry is heading is a good direction and it feels safe to follow the leader. But instead of achieving greatness you get the "success leftovers" of everyone else in your industry who gets to the finish line first. Take the time to go your own way. Have an idea of your own. Dedicate yourself to pursuing your own brand of greatness. 8. Give Up Fixing Your Weaknesses: We live in a society that emphasizes the need to be well-rounded. Successful people hardly ever tick that box – instead, they know, embrace and manage around their weaknesses. Fixing weaknesses is just another strategy to play safe – playing not to lose instead of playing to win. Change your focus from fixing weaknesses to capitalizing on your strengths – because you will grow the most in your areas of talents.
9. Stop Waiting To Start:
If you don't purposefully carve time out every day to progress and improve — without question, your time will get lost in the vacuum of our increasingly crowded lives. Before you know it, you'll be old and withered — wondering where all that time went. There is no degree of "Live your dreams.". Life is short. Don't wait for tomorrow for something you could do today. Your future self-will either thank you or shamefully defend you. 10. Ignoring Your Vision For Future: No matter where you are right now, you can have any future you want. But one thing is for certain, what you plant you must harvest. So, please plant with intention. Mental creation always precedes physical creation. The blueprint you design in your head becomes the life you build. Don't let society tell you how your house should look. You are an artist and a creator. Your life can be exactly how you want it, whether or not it's considered a "mansion" by others. Home is where your heart is. Hold the vision, trust the process.
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| Posted: 28 Feb 2018 10:52 AM PST |
| Went big and lost. Went small and won. I didn’t see that coming. Posted: 28 Feb 2018 02:13 PM PST I live in a pretty small town in the USA. I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of paint nights/ painters and such. I put together this big business to start a community art lounge that had all the art supplies you needed. I went to a couple investors and they basically told me that because I had no track record that they wanted nothing to do with me, and to go ask my parents for money (25m btw) This sucked. I had already ordered some canvas, and some paint in bulk for the operation ($500) and I was pretty down for two days. Then I said screw it I'll just adjust. I already had $500 in product so I might as well sell it. I went through the social media networks I had been setting up for the business and on my first day of posting I sold $100 worth of paint. WHAT! Honestly I'm not even 100% sure I am supposed to be selling this paint the way I am. I am just putting some paint into a 2oz container and putting a sticker on it. People seem to be okay with it. Is this going to get me in trouble? I had started a beta website that isn't published. Should I publish it and keep going? Is the website worth it or just go through social media. I am not 100% even how to take people's money because I don't have anything set up yet. (I'm just taking cash right now) Anyway... help/advice would be nice. Thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| How would you recommend marketing a local app for lgbt college students? Posted: 28 Feb 2018 05:44 PM PST Hi Y'all, I'm building an app at the moment thats target market is lgbt college students, but on a local level. Think Grindr but more wholesome, less about meaningless sex and more about community, and for all sexualities (including straight) but I'm targeting lgbt people. Since it is local, I was planning on having it closed for all schools, except for the 3 main universities around me with about 80k student population total for those 3 universities combined. My thinking behind closing off other schools is because I want to control growth and it requires users for the app to actually be useful.. like how on tinder if no one is in your area you'll probably delete the app.. i want to prevent this and focus on 3 locations to ensure there are users. Is this a bad idea? For marketing I was thinking about: 1) Talking to my "socially popular" gay friends/acquaintances and asking if they'd spread the word/use it 2) I have the email address of EVERY student at my university (30k).. that might be useful, but also really spammy 3) Run snapchat ads that is super local (i.e background of the universities famous monument while talking about the app and only targeting those that go to the school with that monument in the background) That's all I have at the moment.. I'd love your feedback/thoughts. I'm still 6-8 weeks away from launching but I feel like I should have this figured out way before then. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| How to boost your app downloads? Posted: 28 Feb 2018 08:29 AM PST Hey guys, I'm working for a startup that provides productivity app and now struggling with generating leads. I know that even if my app is great but it still makes no sense if no one test it. The problem is, our app is not that great and we need users to test and give feedback so we can improve the app. I've done everything I could to boost the app download: Join in social discussion, Quora, Reddit, do guest post, nurture social channel presence, run contest... But they all seem to be short-term method. Anyone here have the solution for my problem please comment down here. I'm really having no clue now. Thank you in advance. Please helppp!! [link] [comments]  |
| Selling Bitcoin online - bad idea? Posted: 28 Feb 2018 01:03 PM PST Hi, I've been in crypto space for quite some time, I have technical background so I am thinking in starting business in the space. There is a ton of ideas but I still feel like we are in early stage so I want to focus on basic - Selling Bitcoin online. I am curious why it could be bad idea? I worry I am missing some obvious problems. Thanks for all of pessimism! :) Some of the problems I can think of: 1. Low margin (especially if you want to let people pay by card), so you need a lot of business 2. Higher expenses on legal. ( I am outside US but still need to be careful) 3. Fraud prevention / credit card chargebacks 4. Need to implement KYC process 5. Price volatility 6. A lot of competition. I feel like it can be hard to differentiate. [link] [comments]  |
| Never choose a NAME for your BRAND or BUSINESS without first ANSWERING these 5 crucial QUESTIONS Posted: 28 Feb 2018 06:01 AM PST |
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