Dropbox CEO: Why search advertising failed us

http://venturebeat.com/2010/10/27/dropbox-drew-houston-adwords/

by mgenzel • 16 years ago

7 5 16 years ago

mgenzel• 16 years ago

Who am I to question the Dropbox CEO, but... Even if the solution is new, if you're solving a real problem that people have (and if you're not, what's wrong?), can't you use the search terms around that? E.g., "how to recover lost files", or "increase disk space", or "share files", or whatnot... Just get people at the point at which they're experiencing the pain you're addressing... No?

alexbosworth• 16 years ago

Search ads are a double edged sword. They are good because you can advertise and deliver people exactly what they are looking for, but offer them something different and the conversion rate will plummet and Google will penalize you

byoung2• 16 years ago

can't you use the search terms around that? E.g., "how to recover lost files", or "increase disk space", or "share files", or whatnot... Just get people at the point at which they're experiencing the pain you're addressing

I think the problem is that those searchers are likely just looking for free online tutorials, not a paid solution. They got plenty of clicks, but few sales. I ran into the same problem with my outsourcing company. Small businesses with 5-10 employees aren't searching for outsourcing on Google, big multinational companies are. But I don't have a 1000 seat call center, just a dozen guys who can do web design, data entry, etc. It turns out my target market was best reached through word of mouth among small business owners, not through Adwords.

chesspro• 16 years ago

Similar story -

Kevin, one of the founders of Wufoo, does a great job of explaining how he grew the product by word of mouth. He built it from the trust of his users, most of which was from http://particletree.com/. It's fascinating how much emphasis he puts on interacting personally with the paid users and how they scaled that. Definitely a lot of hard work, but it paid off when they had some server trouble when Wufoo first launched - their old users trusted them and backed them up when some of the initial comments were negative.

Long story short, he didn't do any search advertising either.

Interview here: http://mixergy.com/wufoo-kevin-hale/

gamble• 16 years ago

I don't think it's a coincidence that Dropbox took off just as smartphones became popular. People use a service like Dropbox because they're juggling more than one device. Dropbox has the advantage of being available on every platform and integrated into a ton of apps. Even if they weren't awesome on their own, Dropbox is the only service that makes sense now because none of their competitors has anywhere near the same network effects. Apps are their best marketing now.

Dropbox CEO: Why search advertising failed us

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