Marketing hacks to boost your startup

http://www.slideshare.net/benmaxime/10-marketing-hacks-to-boost-your-startup-15573937/#

by benjlang • 14 years ago

105 56 14 years ago

Peroni2• 14 years ago

Point 4: 'Hacker News'

    Get to #1 spot on HN & you'll get tons of page views.

Reminiscent of 'How to draw an Owl' - http://i.imgur.com/Z1oTC.jpg

In all seriousness, Point 7: Share Buttons - are these actually effective? It's a genuine question as I've seen such a mixed response to them. We've chosen not to include any obvious share buttons on hackerjobs.co.uk as I figured no-one would want to share a job on their facebook account so lets not ruin the minimalism of the page. Thoughts?

benjlang8• 14 years ago

Point 4 - well in person I went over how Hacker News works etc (these are people that have never heard of Hacker News)

Share buttons - yes they're effective, I've measured the conversion rate on different sites and it's proved worthy to have them. Here's a good article about share buttons - http://socialmouths.com/blog/2012/05/08/social-media-buttons...

jacques_chester6• 14 years ago

> these are people that have never heard of Hacker News

Then I feel that you are contributing to the dilution of the value of the site.

Peroni2• 14 years ago

Point 4 now makes a bit more sense!

Cheers for the insight.

greendestiny• 14 years ago

My experience is that share buttons are pretty useless. I included share buttons in a free app I released about 6 months ago: http://scottvallanceapps.com/app/what-animal-are-you/

I've had about 30 clicks on the links included in the twitter posts, from about 2 or 3 twitter posts. Not a bad number of clicks per posting, but the app itself still gets over a hundred downloads a week from App Store searches.

JonLim2• 14 years ago

Might be a personal bias here, but I would never use those buttons to share your website/product/blog with my friends. I'd just copy and paste the URL into Facebook/Twitter/whatever and go from there.

Judging by its usage rate in previous projects I've been a part of, many other people operate the same way or simply ignore any sort of sharing aspect.

pestaa• 14 years ago

I'm glad to hear that I'm not alone. Can you reveal more about the usage rates you've seen?

paraschopra• 14 years ago

We actually have an article on our blog 'Debunking the social proof myth' that presents a case study about these sharing buttons: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/social-...

benjlang8• 14 years ago

Very interesting, definitely going to do more research about these buttons.

jacques_chester6• 14 years ago

Tip number one: tips are no longer popular. Call them "hacks" instead.

gerhardi• 14 years ago

"How I Hacked My Way Through Harvard With Top Grades:

Hack 1: Choose major that interests you

Hack 2: Read and memorize all the course literature ..."

davidw• 14 years ago

Bonus points if they are "curated".

ssharp• 14 years ago

It may be semantics but I definitely wouldn't call these "hacks". "Tips" or "Advice" seems much more appropriate, although with less curb-appeal to this crowd.

hknozcan• 14 years ago

carbocation• 14 years ago

I agree with you. It is particularly crass that we see this trend occurring on Hacker News. I would encourage PG to add a temporary rule discouraging the misuse of the term hacker, and the mods to rewrite titles that likewise misuse the term.

jacques_chester6• 14 years ago

It's marketing.

Hear about a horse.

Flog horse to death.

Continue flogging.

jasonkolb• 14 years ago

I think it's because "hack" connotates cheating in some way, and people are always interested in finding ways to beat the system.

Can you think of another word that has the same effect?

talmand4• 14 years ago

Finding another word to suggest such a thing is difficult because the word "hack" or "hacker" did not originally suggest cheating or beating the system, but has had the meaning altered by people who didn't know the subject matter they were discussing.

It is people like this that have taken this word, changed its meaning to be something devious sounding, and then using it inappropriately (even with the new devious meaning) that is the source of the contention. It is for me at least.

The funny part to me is that in using the word "hack" in this way that suggests "beating the system" also suggests that his whole thought process is to offer suggestions that are inherently wrong. Hacking is cheating, so do these things to cheat. What a wonderful suggestion for long-term business growth.

If someone like this needs another word for what is being attempted then I think "cheating", "gaming", or even "spamming" fits quite nicely.

Finally, I cannot possibly take anyone that uses the term "growth hacking" seriously in a business context. It's like those job posts that use "ninja" or "rockstar"; just an attempt to appear hip or cool in a strange way.

knes2• 14 years ago

I couldn't agree more.

Linkbaiting is starting to piss me off soooo much.

miriamyoung• 14 years ago

Really really great. Thanks for posting!

benjlang8• 14 years ago

Appreciate it.

pc86• 14 years ago

You know what @jacques_chester said further up the page?

This is what he was talking about.

patrickk2• 14 years ago

Any video of the presentation available?

benjlang8• 14 years ago

Not yet very soon.

patrickk2• 14 years ago

Thanks. Look forward to it.

alanweinkrantz• 14 years ago

great, practical advise.

benjlang8• 14 years ago

Thanks Alan.

igalp• 14 years ago

Great work Ben!

benologist2• 14 years ago

I hate the way HN is emphasized every time I see something about growth hacking. If the only way you can get your startup on HN's front page is by writing about something else then this obviously is not your market and you are doing a terrible job even if you "win".

talGX• 14 years ago

Great presentation Ben, thanks for sharing

Charlesmigli• 14 years ago

Very interesting and actionable. One thing I disagree is point #5 because your previous users could feel screwed.

Here are the 10 hacks

1. Guest post (send editor email with post and short intro)

2. Offer premium giveaways

3. Use Rapportive to find and connect with anyone

4. Use Hacker News (~10k to 50k visitors for #1)

5. Drop the app to free after a regular pricing

6. Create one day viral projects to promote your brand

7. Use share buttons

8. Distribute on AppSumo (+730k subscribers)

9. Reach out bloggers (provide value before asking for something)

10. Use Dropbox style to incentive and gamify signups

Accessible on this link http://tldr.io/tldrs/50c74e31babbb5f813000b32

zefhous• 14 years ago

How about focusing on making the internet a better place? These tips generally do the opposite.

Funny that notification control's goal is to prevent web services from spamming you, but all of this advise is about how to spam other people on the internet.

The focus of all these things seem to be entirely self-serving, without any focus on really providing value to people. Instead, figure out how to help others so they actually want to share your content. If you can't do that, the work you are doing is not worth doing — and indeed harmful.

talmand4• 14 years ago

I fail to see how much of this is that useful to most startups. It seemed more about how to create and push mass amounts of spam in the hopes of hitting it big. I didn't see much in the way of actually increasing your interaction with potential customers. It's just a numbers game about how many eyes can I get in front of hoping something works.

I'm sorry, but I just cannot possibly take someone who uses the term "growth hacking" serious. Much like job postings using "ninja" or "rockstar"; it's just a blatant attempt to appear cool or hip in a strange way.

reuvenlivn• 14 years ago

very good tips!!!

interg12• 14 years ago

Can we stop calling everything that worked for someone a "hack" ?

Ellahn3• 14 years ago

Yes, please.

knes2• 14 years ago

Pointless slides with no real tips or hacks. These are here just to promote Ben "Branding".

for example Guest blogging: The tip is "Guest blogging is great, write stuff and send a small email to important people so they publish it on their blog". Social proof inside, " Look how i wrote an article for TC" ... Woopidioh!

Everybody know it is important to do guest posts. That is not rocket science. What would have been great is actually tips on how to write awesome guest blog post? The process, the research, etc .

Leo Widrich of Buffer wrote a great "Guest Post" on Guest blogging ( I know, so meta ^^ ) somewhere but I can't find it anymore.

The only thing I agree with the slide is the last comment.

"In the end none of this matters if you have a crappy product."

benjlang8• 14 years ago

Thanks for the kind words.

Guess what, this is a presentation not a blog post. Maybe in your presentation you write blog posts but I don't. When I talked about guest posts I went over mostly how to write a good guest post and how to get it to the editor of the blog.

Same for every other slide....

octaveguin• 14 years ago

The parent's complaint is valid. You may have given a talk with more detail but the slides are what you submitted.

Honestly, I'm a little tired of these marketing posts that have no new information and only serve to market the author's product.

How are they getting upvoted?

Marketing hacks to boost your startup

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