Thursday, June 12, 2008
Guest Speaker Series: Adam Hanft
On May 30th, the LaunchBox08 companies took in the astute guidance of marketing guru Adam Hanft, founder of Hanft Unlimited. His presentation centered on marketing wisdom for startup companies and was filled with recent examples for entrepreneurs to study.
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." - Archilochus. This quote, from an ancient Greek poet, embodies the attitude of a focused entrepreneur. By being better at less, startup companies can compete with big market leaders. An example of this principle at work is the Ning landing page, which reads: "create your own social network for anything," and displays two blank fields to get started. Adam favors pages with very simple aesthetics, a clear message, and a quick onboard process for users to get involved.
"SEO is the democratization of geography." On the Internet, location is in your hands. If you carefully and creatively develop an effective SEO strategy, you will reap great rewards in traffic. A great example of this is PlentyOfFish.com, a dating website optimized for SEO that drives an enormous amount of traffic and monetizes it.
Business models can't wait. Google is an outlier. A business model is just another way to say "my idea is important enough that someone is willing to pay for it." In this regard, entrepreneurs should pay attention to Chris Anderson, who argues that the future of business revolves around giving away products for free and surrounding them with value that comes from other offerings.
Find the pressure point. Every competitor has an Achilles heel, and every market has a "secret keyhole." A prime example of an aggressive marketing strategy that publicized this principle was Chemistry.com's "rejected by eHarmony" ad campaign, which exploited the company's history and value-driven filters. In addition, Yelp exploited the weaknesses of CitySearch by creating a site that focused on community and user-generated content.
Engage a passionate audience. In a best case scenario, you can let your users market for you. As a startup solving a problem of consumer need, you should be willing to sacrifice for your customers. For example, when Digg users posted stories with the code to crack Blu-Ray discs, the site decided to keep the stories up and posted a note to its users stating that they would rather serve them and take whatever consequences may come.
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." - Archilochus. This quote, from an ancient Greek poet, embodies the attitude of a focused entrepreneur. By being better at less, startup companies can compete with big market leaders. An example of this principle at work is the Ning landing page, which reads: "create your own social network for anything," and displays two blank fields to get started. Adam favors pages with very simple aesthetics, a clear message, and a quick onboard process for users to get involved.
"SEO is the democratization of geography." On the Internet, location is in your hands. If you carefully and creatively develop an effective SEO strategy, you will reap great rewards in traffic. A great example of this is PlentyOfFish.com, a dating website optimized for SEO that drives an enormous amount of traffic and monetizes it.
Business models can't wait. Google is an outlier. A business model is just another way to say "my idea is important enough that someone is willing to pay for it." In this regard, entrepreneurs should pay attention to Chris Anderson, who argues that the future of business revolves around giving away products for free and surrounding them with value that comes from other offerings.
Find the pressure point. Every competitor has an Achilles heel, and every market has a "secret keyhole." A prime example of an aggressive marketing strategy that publicized this principle was Chemistry.com's "rejected by eHarmony" ad campaign, which exploited the company's history and value-driven filters. In addition, Yelp exploited the weaknesses of CitySearch by creating a site that focused on community and user-generated content.
Engage a passionate audience. In a best case scenario, you can let your users market for you. As a startup solving a problem of consumer need, you should be willing to sacrifice for your customers. For example, when Digg users posted stories with the code to crack Blu-Ray discs, the site decided to keep the stories up and posted a note to its users stating that they would rather serve them and take whatever consequences may come.
1 Comments:
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Frank said...
Post a Commentwww.metroseeq.com has a pretty innovative approach towards local search. They pull together Yelp reviews, location (via google api) and discount/promotion info from many reputable vendors. It's also a user contributed site like gasbuddy.com.
June 13, 2008 9:27 AM