bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Thursday evening I threw my 12 hour startup idea at a wall to see if it would stick.

It was at the monthly Auckland, Web Meetup (great event to meet people btw)

We did a 20×20 format.  20 slides, 20 seconds each.  So I thought i’d jump up and give it a shot.

12 Hour Startup is a way of bridging the gap between aiding traditional companies to becoming more dynamic.

Building upon my last post really is how to sell key stakeholders on trying this model.

How can you sell this to your management, It’s a marketing decision:

• to staff it says we value your input let’s give it a go
• to customers it says we are seeking new ways to help you
• to management it’s driving strategic direction from sales (ideas that work)

Furthermore:

• Validation of ideas
• Stimulate Innovation & Creativity
• Out of the box thinking
• Flow on effects – employees maintaining this mindset over time

Need I continue?

Again I am seeking case studies, thanks to those that have given some feedback really appreciated

(have uploaded a copy of my presentation with basic notes, the objective was to get everyone focused on me instead of the slides, which worked)

Marketing after the fact should be consistent.

Case in point.

I recently canceled my storage unit at a local storage firm.

As we held a bond and prepaid a month my account was in debit.

Awesome.  At this point in time I was happy with the service, helpfulness of the company.  On my recommend list.

6 weeks later my account has still not been settled even after numerous emails.  They then post a cheque to my old address (even though i explicitly stated when i finished up my address has been changed).

Now they offer to deposit it into my account.  That’s fine.

But

From my perspective.  You have wrecked what was otherwise a positive customer experience.  Do you think I would recommend them again? Doubt it.

Marketing continues after the exchange, it is in the sizzle consumers receive, do not burn a customer because they have switched brands or ended the relationship.  That way they never come back.  Or recommend you.

What do you do? what do you offer?

Is this clear? It should be.

You should be taking a stance. This is who we are. This is what we are about.

People love to talk about firms that take a stance. We are all about flowers. We are all about Art.

Take a stance NOW.

[Thanks to Jim Russell of Shag Gallery, New Zealand for inspiration for this. He does awesome art work. Check it out if you are driving past.]

Here in New Zealand we have a (controversial) rule limiting how politicians finance their campaigns.

The idea was to limit wealthy supporters buying elections.

The part I want to focus on is what a private individual can do without having to register.

The Act makes it illegal for anyone to spend more than NZ$12,000 criticising or supporting a political party or taking a position on any political matter, or more than NZ$1,000 criticising or supporting an individual member of parliament, without first registering with a state agency, the Electoral Commission. [Wikipedia]

looks like private individuals have to register if they want to spend more than $12k.  So what do they do now? They get creative…..

So what could $11,999 nzd buy you if you wanted to support your political party (or any other cause):

• At $0.075 cpm on Facebook you could buy 159,986,666 ad impressions targeted at a kiwi audience. (Would blanket every Kiwi user on Facebook multiple times).  Simply send them to your Facebook page where they could become a fan / spread the word / make a donation to the party / share their views….endless.
• At $0.05/click you could buy 240,000 visitors to your favourite political parties website.  Even at $0.50 you could buy 24,000!
• Smear campaign? Buy advertising on Google when people search for a party show your advertisement for the opposition…
• You could create a social network on Ning.com and spend $11,999 on search engine advertising sending visitors there to create a thriving community.
• You could spend $11,999 on search engine optimisation to have your party show up in search engines no matter which party users searched for.
• Spend $11,999 on paid blog reviews from local bloggers
• Hire a student for $11,999 of time (@ $15/hour say 800 hours or about 20 weeks) just talking and partaking in political conversations online.
• Or a mix of the above, get some volunteers to create a social network on Ning.com, spend money advertising it on facebook/google, pay someone to develop an internet marketing strategy and use volunteers within the network to execute this campaign.  Leverage the power of loyal fans to deliver a campaign which may have cost millions on the open market.

I think you get the idea, being creative and utilising the internet as a platform to spread your story the possibilities are virtually unlimited (even on a tight budget).

Oh and if you were a political party receiving this kind of support, do what Barack did and setup a way of providing micro donations on your website, then your supporters can help push donations through.

(also handy if you provided free graphics, videos, documents for your fans to share online)

Monetising your web service has been a topic I am forever intrigued with and been bouncing around as a blog post for a few weeks now.

Given recent discussions on Twitter I thought I’d grab this out of drafts and post it.

In terms of monetising your service, what options are there?

Freemium
Idea is provide a free service with a premium model where loyal fans pay for extras.  The inherent problem is creating enough value in the premium option to swing users to pay (creating status is key).

Ads based
Make money off advertising, default is to use adsense.  Problem here is this is based on large volumes to cover your services.  No good if your starting out.

Glue ons
Features to your site that are actually of value to your users.  I call them glue ons.  You glue on a new feature (if your users like it, it sticks, if not it falls off).

Examples include: Job Boards (where people pay to list), Toolbars (which generate revenue help user), Consulting Time/Services, Ebooks/Book…

Long tail of monetisation
There are lots more: donations, blog sponsorship / paid blogging, selling links, cross selling, special one off content, limited edition merchandise

However….

Looking at all of the options think anything that helps your users is likely to help you.

A job board that helps your visitors whom will need a job at one time or another, a paid fan club that gives me extra benefits (and status) that no one else gets, access to special reports that other have to wait 3 months for.   Think about what you can glue on.

When I say I work in Marketing people assume I work in Advertising.

Marketing is the communication of stories.  The best ones spread.

Marketing is more than advertising.

Advertising is no longer required to deliver your story.

There are far too many communication channels to simply select one of them.

How do you think Contractors, Small Businesses have marketing themselves over time.  Most of them cannot afford advertising.

Think:

• That training hairdressers and getting them to talk about smear tests whilst they cut their clients hair has been the most effective method of getting women along.
• EB Games never advertises.  They just provide a great service to a core audience who then attract others to their shops.
• Facebook or Myspace ever see an advertisement for them? (i dare you to make one)

The answer is in talking to lots of small groups of people and let them decide if your story is worth spreading.  If it is they will spread it.

This is just one answer there are many more.

So let advertising rest in peace and get creative.

(Advertising firms? Position yourself as an ideas agency, provide these services)

Here is a freebie strategy I use all the time.   Seems obvious but quite often gets overlooked.

This is the most simple way you can increase sales online whilst decreasing costs (over the medium to long term).  It’s the Adwords Long Tail Strategy.  Simple, quick and effective.

What to do after running your Adwords campaign for a period of time (say 3 months):

• Do long tail analysis of impressions.  (How? get keywords, total impressions over time period, graph)
• Find the head of the graph
• Target those keywords via seo
• Cover the rest with adwords

Results:

1. Decrease acquisition costs by gaining visitors you already know convert
2. Increase traffic.

I have increased traffic at organisations whilst decreasing their acquisition cost by up to 75% with this simple strategy.

Take a look at this graph.

• The curve x+y represents the theoretical sum of attention / time / work.
• We all shift up/down the curve.
• If you follow from left to right suggest you are more strategic in your approach.
• Follow right to left you have a more emergent strategy.
• The curve shifts up/down due to external pressures (ie stress, day job)

Trouble for entrepreneurs is quite often they spend too much time at the left. (suffering from lack of action)

They need to find their sweet spot.

What is the right mix of thought and action? to get the desired results.

Here’s an idea.  A free one.  Take it and run with it.

Microfunding.  Microspends.  Micropayments. Whatever you want to call it.

Take the concept of the long tail and apply it to spending online.  Imagine the long tail of ‘small purchases’.

You could blow this wide open.  Here’s $0.05 for that interesting pdf on your website.  $0.10 for the youtube video i loved.  $0.25 for that podcast that entertained me for an hour.

Doesn’t sound much does it.  But imagine that 1 in 100 of your fans is a loyal fan whom will contribute $0.10/view.  Now 10,000 regular visitors translates to: $10/day.  Soon adds up.

Current ad rates ~$1cpm.  Equates to: $0.001/visitor.  If you could convince on average every visitor to contribute $0.01.  Increased revenue 10 fold!

Ok.

Now imagine you are the company that facilitates all these micropayments.

How much time do you command?

For example since launching this blog

I have garnered:

59,746 seconds of attention or 991 minutes or 16 and a half hours of focused attention.  Wow!

What would you pay for 16 hours of focused attention from the influencers in your industry.

I’ve paid:
1.5 hrs / week
a morning setting up this blog
a few hours preparation.
Maybe 20 hours all up.
Now imagine over the long run as my audience increases.  My investment remains relatively flat.

Look at that return on investment vs that fax flyer campaign you just paid for.

Oh, something else, Interaction! I have received 13 comments, 20 or so emails.  Compounds things a little.

What is that worth to you?

Him get it. (Band)

417,000 friends on Myspace

214 videos on Youtube, millions of views

Fan Club that fans actually want to join (and pay for)

Extended dvd’s and limited artwork for die hard fans

Limited dvd releases that are actually limited

I can see why Him are so successful. Can’t you?

Marketing is more than advertising.

In fact advertising takes up the smallest component of my marketing strategies…

What is a 12 hour startup?

From idea to prototype within 12 hours.

Simple.

Why?

Relates to simple ideas that can be executed quickly.

Downside/risk virtually zero.

Potential upside > 0. Profitable.

Commit to a 3 month trial.

Close if crap.  Expand if good.

Underlying theme? give it a go, 1000 12 hour ideas are probably going to yield at least 10 (1 in 100) good ideas that will last.

I’m happy to give up 12 hours every week for something like this.  Even 12 hours/month cool.

Idea: Take this concept and apply it to your business.  Can your team come up with some new product ideas / extensions and go from idea to concept within 12 hours.

Background: the 12 hours business I have been throwing around for some time, and it’s been thrown around enough to be blog proof.  Have some case studies in the works.

Update: Follow up post on the 12 hour startup here.

Well, I do…

At least 2 – 4 times / month

However

I also learn 2 – 4 things / month that don’t work

I only recently realised that

I have become so accustomed to failure that I bounce back virtually instantaneously

Weird

but awesome! this means I am willing to give anything a go.

Chances are the cost of doing it outweigh the cost of not doing it…

plus every now and again i come up with something brilliant!

this blog being one of them 😉

so go ahead

try some crazy ideas, fail lots and win sometimes.

(believe me, you’ll soon forget the failures, learn the lessons and win overall!)

(and you’ll get better at minimising risk and limiting the downside)

(oh and once your no longer afraid of failure the world is your oyster)

Looking for an idea? or to crack open a whole new industry.

Look at behaviour.

Behaviour is changing constantly.

Identify new repetitive behaviour and innovate.

Better yet.  Create a new repetitive behaviour.

Have you thought about giving users what they want?

Have you asked them what they want? Why not.  Give it a try.

During the weekend I attended Barcamp Auckland.  Barcamp is essentially a conference that evolves to what it’s attendee’s want.  Sessions are put forward by attendee’s on the day.  You go to the sessions you want.

I put forward three ideas, hoping to present one.  I presented three!

1) Tech Productivity

I was first up.  No planning.  Had to go off the cuff (which went well).  I talked over various methods of being productive but mainly focused on getting a discussion going (giving the users what they want).  I quickly got to the core of their problems and let them help each other.  (a metaphor for marketing that I constantly use, help me help you)

2) Creating a compelling experience online

No planning here either.  I simply outlaid the framework discussed here.  Then applied it and got a discussion going.  The 45 minutes flew by!

3) SEO Strategy

This was a much smaller session but was of good quality.  I talked through about SEO Strategy and gave away a few trade secrets (to some attendees annoyance).

Overall great day, great end result.  Everyone appeared happy.  As above give people what they want.  If they don’t know what they want show them some options, they will pick.

For photo’s visit the Flickr group.  Twitter Discussion (via summize).

Great to meet those that read my blog.  I will also be attending ‘Demystifying Angel Investment‘ run by the IceHouse on the 23rd July, Auckland.  You can read more here.

Great chance to get free food / beer.  Find out more about angel investment, the angel network and networking. (I know you were sold on free food / beer).