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I spend a lot of time with startups and thus hear many companies talk about their approach to sales and their interactions with customers. From these meetings you can really tell the leaders that care deeply about their customers and those the look down on them. The press don’t get your financials.
As organizations we have become more open and I believe this is great for businesses and their customers. We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features.
They don’t show up in a calculation that says I spent $7,000 and I got X-thousands inches of press. Fund Raising – No self respecting VC would admit (even to themselves) that they are influenced by what they read about you in the press. Press matters. Just like negative press hurts. They are silent.
Social proof is defined as “looking for others to guide our decisions&# and is also one of the most important techniques in acquiring customers in your company. We would take every day users from our customer base and make them heroes. If you didn’t read that yet it might be worth having a quick skim as a primer.
He is very hands-on and helpful – especially for any company looking into customer acquisition. o Huge on PR, “Be Everywhere” is his motto – fly to NY, proactively everywhere he could get press. Good listener, take in information, • Have pulse on what the market wants (hard to train that) cannot take this from customers only.
Entrepreneurs get so used to friends and family congratulating them on their press coverage that they forget sometimes that this isn’t real. Press doesn’t mean anything other than free advertising. Press coverage really matters – The good news – your press coverage really does matter.
And we rightly celebrate each such pairing, often with a mutual press release. Call it a “press release partnership.” In spite of the best efforts of senior management in creating such a partnership, the success always lies in the hands of those closest to the end customer. And sometimes that’s all we end up doing.
Los Angeles-based LiveXLive, which owns PodcastOne, Slacker Radio, React Presents, and Custom Personalization Solutions, says it has teamed up with The Associated Press to provide news programming on Slacker Radio. Financial details of the deal were not announced.
But for some strange reason they make you file your progress on fund raising, which is the widely picked up by the press. I like to speak about this topic with first-time wantrapreneurs because if you read the tech press every day you’d get the impression that it all glamor. But it’s hard to know that from the press.
And we rightly celebrate each such pairing, often with a mutual press release. Call it a “press release partnership.” In spite of the best efforts of senior management in creating such a partnership, the success always lies in the hands of those closest to the end customer. And sometimes that’s all we end up doing.
Ever notice how some companies tend to be in the press all the time and your big new product launch struggled for inches? Here’s what’s going through his/her head: Is this story “newsworthy” or am I being asked to publish a press release? ” Can you imagine that ever getting inches in the press?
But succinctly this press places a marker in the ground for your company. The funding rounds will also build customer confidence and they’ll help journalists feel air cover in writing your more important pieces when you brag about customers, traction, revenue or whatever. Should I Bundle it With More Juicy News?
We hadn’t even thought about having a customer support line or who would staff it. Our customers were generally happy but they were pushing us hard for promised features. We kept reading about their customer wins, their product releases and their biz dev deals. We were unprepared. Our software wasn’t fully baked.
So they create a task list of all the marketing activities an organization can do: press releases, web site updates, customer case studies, blog posts, daily Tweets, Facebook fan page, attending conferences, etc. You have a marketing department with three people. They’re tasked with doing … marketing.
I mostly like to have coverage in the tech press where most of my customers (entrepreneurs) and business partners (other VCs) are. But I also need to address the other side of my customer base – the people who fund VCs (they are called LPs). It’s the same thing for me as a writer.
So the only thing that can be driving this all is that Uber has become un-liked for a period of time amongst the press. Clearly the press don’t want to have rich, powerful companies researching their private lives. It’s easy to see why companies like Uber can get mad at the part of the press that can be lazy.
A day might include a discussion with a finance partner, an investor, a customer or a fusion partner. Some days I respond to questions asked by folks like yourself, the press, or an entity doing a case study, i.e. Citrix, RIM, USC. Our new customer acquisition has grown and our costs have plummeted. Great posts.
We were the only such facility on the West coast to provide and control the entire process from studio, through finished vinyl record pressings in the same building, therefore able to promise quality control others could only dream about. Start by sitting in with customer service. The benefits are immense.
Are you cynical about their chances in the market just because they seem to be hot in the press and that bugs you? I’m a news junkie and love to watch the Sunday morning talk shows like Meet the Press, This Week with Christiane Amanpour or Shields & Brooks on The News Hour on Fridays. I hear views like this all the time.
You need to press the flesh. It’s how you gain customer insights. The interesting thing about pressing the flesh is that once you’ve broken bread with people and spent personal time getting to know them it is then much easier to build long-term relationships through email, phone, Twitter, Skype and the like. Press flesh.
.&# Marketing futures can be really good for enterprise software companies where the information is passed between sales rep and potential customer in terms of near-term roadmap. But don’t let this information get out into the general press and don’t market more than a few months out. They come and go. You don’t.
As long as you don’t care about getting any press. Or simplifying the purchasing process for customers. A way to tell the press and customers what you stand for. But when I think about “stunts” and free press I think about people like Marc Benioff (salesforce.com) or Dennis Crowley (foursquare).
Ventura-based outdoor clothing brand Patagonia launched a new effort on Wednesday, called Patagonia ActionWorks , in an attempt to connect its customers with environmental groups Patagonia supports. READ MORE>>.
Announcing EIGHT new mini-books and eBooks by Master Entrepreneur, Dave Berkus , just released by The Berkus Press. Individual books from The Berkus Press by clicking HERE. Direct from The Berkus Press: $14.95 (click here). Direct from The Berkus Press: $14.95 (click here). Kindle eBook: $2.99 (press here).
For much of 2013 I watched the press write articles about how the YouTube “MCNs” (multi-channel networks) were doomed and tried to square that with the data I was watching at the one I invested in, Maker Studios, who has had one hell of a year. Selling at smaller retailers will net you fewer customers and higher margins.
I pointed out the fact that they only ever talked to the press when the had an announcement and that it was a continual process. You need somebody who REALLY understands your company, its customers and its competitors. Whether we like to admit it or not, PR drives behavior with customers, investors, employees and competition.
Not so long ago, training to meet the press and television reporters was a realm reserved for top business executives only. It could be a product quality problem, or a major customer complaint on Twitter. Brad Phillips entrepreneur media training meet the press startup' Prepare, prepare, prepare for every media event.
We listened way too much to what the press said. We instructed customers about how eCommerce was going to change their future. It kind of reminds me a bit of how “social media experts&# are talking to customers today). Make sure you focus on what matters – your customers. We felt invincible.
I’m sure you’ve all heard saying derived from Voltaire, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good” which in a way is encapsulated in the lean startup movement and the ideology of shipping a “minimum viable product” (MVP) and then learning from your customer base. Life doesn’t work like that.
Yesterday I wrote a post about The Silent Benefits of PR in which I pointed out that most young companies I encounter don’t fully grasp the benefits of PR because they are less measurable than product milestones or customer acquisition analyses (like CAC/LTV). Make sure you’re not spewing out meaningless reams of press releases.
But the broader issue that hasn’t garnished much press attention is how the restaurant industry itself is being transformed and what tools a modern restaurant will need to compete. Customers were happy and restaurants focused on their in-store business. What is the Shopify of the restaurant industry? Covid-19 has changed all of that.
Maybe they’ve hit a few set backs: They’ve struggled to raise money, they haven’t gotten press coverage or they haven’t gotten accepted to present at prestigious conferences. It ends up being a turn off to potential employees, investors, business partners and the press. It’s your job to persist.
Even if you don’t have “direct&# sales I would tell you that “everything is a sale&# including fund raising, hiring, getting press and doing business development. Spending time selling to customers is the best way to find out what their problems are and how good your solution currently is at mapping to their needs.
Email readers, continue here…] These and other efforts to be first over the years have led me to ask my current crop of CEOs as I serve on various boards, “Do you have the resources to evangelize the market, educate your potential customers, AND sell your product?” Changing the rules to fit the market.
The Lean Startup approach dictates that successful customer development is an iterative process. This was exactly the approach Steve took when he self-published Four Steps via Café Press, at the behest of his then star pupil, Eric Ries , Co-Founder of IMVU and the author of The Lean Startup. One of the best students I ever had.
Best possible press: too early to market. These and other efforts to be first over the years have led me to ask my current crop of CEOs as I serve on various boards, “Do you have the resources to evangelize the market, educate your potential customers, AND sell your product?” Cover story for industry magazine.
Not so long ago, training to meet the press and television reporters was a realm reserved for top business executives only. It could be a product quality problem, or a major customer complaint on Twitter. Most entrepreneurs I know admit to a poor first media interaction, and many are still waiting for the instant replay.
We were the only such facility on the West coast to provide and control the entire process from studio, through finished vinyl record pressings in the same building, therefore able to promise quality control others could only dream about. Over fifty years ago, I was CEO of a record manufacturing company in Hollywood.
And the best way to do this is with the placement of a case study, a story told about and by a satisfied customer with something to say about how your product solved their problem or pain. But it must be told about and by the customer, with your product as the tool of solution, not the focus of the story.
And that person has almost certainly chosen specifically to be a startup lawyer over serving other types of customers because he or she enjoys working with entrepreneurs. She was lamenting that some startups simply see their PR company as merely somebody who corrals the press when you want to get some inches. And I agree entirely.
You’ll be able to give them an update on key hires, pilot customers, key tech innovations – whatever. Note that “performance&# on my chart is a loose term for my definition of perceived progress that can take the form of product, customer adoption, employees, investors, press or whatever.
I have experienced many first-time entrepreneurs with too much hubris if fund-raising came easily and press was fawning and employees joined in droves and customer adoption has been rapid. In London when founders failed they were ostracized in the press and culturally I believe it became harder to raise capital.
We just knew that we were onto an idea that no one had thought of and we had better be in the press first because, of course, there is a first-mover advantage. Winning customers is sales. Getting press is sales. Go see customers yourself. Focus On Customers – Nothing Else Matters. Flip Burgers. Number one is sales.
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