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Viral Marketing And Word-of-Mouth Require Investment

Startup Professionals Musings

Think of a brand evangelist team online as people blogging about your product, or posting links to it in every forum. This means spending more money on search marketing (SEM) to make it look like the buzz is working. In a business plan these are only one of the many marketing campaigns which continue to rise in cost.

Marketing 107
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The Most Misunderstood Facts About Building a Business on YouTube

Both Sides of the Table

Any reader of this blog for a period of time will know that I’ve been long YouTube for years. We have made 5 online video investments in total – some we will talk about later this year. Content is a “hits driven business” and therefore you can only invest in platforms not media.

SEM 150
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Why The Haters are Wrong About Growth Hacking

Both Sides of the Table

In essence Muhammad thinks the “growth hacking” is a charlatan term for online marketing that consists of a bunch of everyday tasks that all online businesses should be doing: SEO, SEM, Content Marketing, Social Media, Referral Marketing, etc. “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Success begets success.

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Guerilla Marketing, Brad Feld Style

InfoChachkie

Rejecting the paint-by-numbers approach to corporate communications deployed by most marketing executives, Brad has embraced unconventional guerilla marketing tactics to help establish his venture capital firm, Foundry Group, as a thought leader in early-stage tech investing. companies should… focus on building amazing products.

Marketing 233
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Search Engine Marketing - No Panacea for Startups

Startup Professionals Musings

Probably every one of you who has a business and a website have been approached through email or personal contact, and asked to spend money on Search Engine Marketing (SEM). SEM is sometimes called “buying your way into search results.” For most, it sounds like a magical process or a scam, with the experts spewing so many acronyms.

SEM 90
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Understanding the Underbelly of Online Marketing & Why You’ll Lose if You Don’t

Both Sides of the Table

SEO / SEM are promotional techniques for marketing through the Google distribution channel, which have yielded huge benefits to many companies – Yelp being a prime example. When I first started blogging Digg was still at its peak. Rebelling is simply a form of snobbery. So What is This Underbelly of Which You Speak?

Marketing 379
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The Case for In-Stream Advertising

Both Sides of the Table

I myself recently covered the topic when I spoke about why GRP Partners invested in Ad.ly. I know that advertising is important to inform consumers of offers – the same reason many tech companies use SEM. GRP Partners invested in GoTo.com which rebranded as Overture. I don’t think so. I assure you Ad.ly