Startup Revolution

Please Note: Waitlist Thanks to our friends at FedEx Curagami’s agency business, our incubation lab where we invest in customers and they invest in us, is currently CLOSED. With 4 active clients we have no room at the Inn. This doesn’t mean we can’t help. We have friends in every aspect of online marketing. Friends …

Never Ending Battle Truth, Justice & American Way
Tough "Dog Days" of summer for "Super Hero" marketing tactics. Here is a list of the dead and dying tactics:

SMB Marketing Tactics Costing More, Getting Less:

* Yellow Pages (near death). 
* Print ads (near death).

* Val-u-pak coupons (near death).

* Coupons of any kind (losing relevance with smartphone users)..

* Groupons (blows brands up almost beyond repair).
* Email marketing (sick due to social / mobile web). 
* Social Media Marketing (sick and getting sicker fast). 
* Content Marketing.(content shock sick).

* Ecommerce (too many stores, same offerings).
* PPC (paying more to get less). 
* Retargeting (cat out of bag, so sick efficacy declining).
* Video Marketing (steep learning curve, expensive). 
* Viral Marketing (everyone has that cold now & hit or miss). 
* Cause Marketing (not as unique as once was & live or die with partner).

* Celebrity Marketing (expensive and live or die with branded celeb).

* SEO (don't even get us started, all but gone, baby, gone). 

Many of these "SMB" tactics are in a startup's launch plan too. Good luck with that. Startups have to double down on asynchronous tactics since their money is tight and they have little or no brand awareness yet.

Favorite startup asynchronous tactics of ours include:

* OPN (tap Other People's Networks).
* OPM (tap Other People's Money via crowdfunding).
* Crowdfunding.
* Friends-of-Friends marketing.
* Community (start handing of the keys to your content early).
* Partnerships.
* OPC (Other People's Content via content curation with attribution(.
* Video Marketing (learning curve and expense scares most away).
* Events.
* Training.
* Contests & Games.

That last bullet can be especially powerful for startups. Remember to create tools needed to empower advocates, contributors and Sherpas. Make it easy to help you by providing graphical tools, listening and curating content into a social space (curation is a form of social reward).  

Marty Note
Adwords is crowded, fast and dangerous these days.

When I was an Ecommerce Director we made the decision to give our $1M in PPC spend to the robots. Robots, business rules and predicitve analytics was the only way we could make what little money we made from PPC.

Attribution is a BITCH.

I remember our CFO saying, "Cut spend on everything above this line, " pointing to every branded term we were buying. Cut the top of the funnel off and you lose the bottom of the funnel. Trying to explain that to a web doubter was impossible so I ignored the demand.

Instead we tested or ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). $6 to $1 ROAS looked great...at first. As time went on we realized tighten the valve that tight cut our email list growth and the LTV (Lifetime Value) it produced in dangerous ways.

Next we tested at $1 to $1 and bleed red ink. At the time I worked for Direct Marketers (DMers) who don't believe in losing money...ever. The complex attribution math meant we were probably making solid return IF attribution was fully valued and agreed upon.

It was not. Attribution was controversial and the more immediate, the more Stimulus to Response it was the more my bosses liked it. The idea that three generations ago we built a PPC campaign that grew our list 15% and thus made us $3 To $1 was a bridge too far.

That is why I wanted to bring Marin into the mix. Marin is the best self tuning / business rule based PPC DIY Algorithm we could find. No Sale since adding Marin's "costs" seemed to lower ROAS. Once again full attribution would show Marin was going to pay for itself in no time, but didn't make that sale either.

Today's PPC market is an order of magnitude more complex. If you are still buying PPC by hand good luck with that. Too much UNDER (costs) and not nearly enough OVER (benefit) for our risk / reward palette. Better to hire an agency OR, for about the same money, DIY with a predictive management tool like Marin.

We looked at several and liked Marin the best. Its UI was understandable, installation was easy and commitment was low. We just added Marin to our list of Cool Tools in our Ask For Help Haiku Deck: