Hiten Shah - Killer (Content) Marketing - MicroConf 2013

The MicroConf Hub Page with links to all the notes for all the talks can be found here.

Watch the video (sorry, but I’m not allowed to embed it here)

Slides:

Learn things by doing them
Two strategies:
- Hire as few people and try to make as much money per employee as possible (CrazyEgg)
- Try to grow as much as possible (KISSmetrics)

Story of a Product from Idea to Acquisition (KISSinsights)

Do customer development
Find the core problem (of your customer)
Learn how to ask the right questions
Always begin with a hypothesis
- Problem hypothesis: Our hypothesis is that [certain type of person] have a problem doing [certain type of task]
- As specific as possible (e.g. localize the people to people in your city)
- Example: Our hypothesis that product managers have a problem doing effective customer research
How we learned
- 20 phone interviews
- 3 paper user tests
- 2 landing pages
- 1 hacky MVP
What we learned
- People are NOT doing customer research
- They want private feedback and targeting
- It requries developer involvement
- It is a constant pain
“How you get to the customer is as important, if not more, than what you get to the customer” – Patrick Vlaskovits
Channels get crowded fast.
Dropbox used Adwords –> Cost Per Acquisition: $233 – $388. For a $99 product –> FAIL
Solution: Make your own channel (double incentivized referral program)
Customer Development
- Who are your customers? (product managers)
- Where do they hang out? (other people’s websites)
- How should you engage them?
Your marketing has to align with your customers

Build, Grow, Convert
“The more I help you, the more you will trust me” – Nathan Barry
- Build: Free Content
- Grow: Paid Content
- Convert: SaaS Subscription
“Write with the intention of appealing to a specific audience.” – Brennan Dunn
- Build: Email newsletter
- Grow: Paid Content
- Convert: SaaS Subscription
“Who has time to learn every new piece of software they run into? Not me. I’m pretty sure you don’t either” – Ruben Gamez
- Build: Free Guide and Newsletter
- Grow: Sample Proposal (mini-demo of his SaaS product)
- Convert: SaaS Subscription
Teach people how to solve their problems
Learn from your audience and customers
Questions you can ask your customers:
- How did you first find about us?
- What persuaded you to purchase from us?
- How would you describe [PRODUCT] to your friends?
- What prompted you to start looking for this type of service?
- If you could change one thing about this website, what would it be?
- What other products or services should we offer?
- Which other options did you consider before choosing our products?
- Why did you decide to use [PRODUCT]?
- Why do you use [PRODUCT] instead of an alternative?
- What would persuade you to use [PRODUCT] more often?
- How would you persuade people like you to use [PRODUCT] ?