Tag: digital marketing

Assessing the scalability of AdWords campaigns

Introduction Startups, and why not bigger companies, too, often test marketing channels by allocating a small budget to each channel, and then analyzing the results (e.g. CPA, cost per action) per channel. This is done to determine a) business potential and b) channel potential. The former refers to how lucrative it is to acquire customers […]

Startup syndromes: “The Iznogoud Syndrome”

1. Definition The Iznogoud Syndrome can be defined as follows: A startup strives to disrupt existing market structures instead of adapting to them. In most industries, existing relationships are strong, cemented and will not change due to one startup. Therefore, a better strategy is to find ways of providing utility in the existing ecosystem. 2. Origins […]

Bugs and problems in Facebook Ads [UPDATED 10/08/2016]

Introduction I’ve been doing a lot of Facebook advertising. Compared to Google AdWords, Facebook Ads is missing a lot of features, and has annoying bugs. I’m listing these problems here, in case anyone working at Facebook would like to have an advertiser’s opinion, and that people working with programmatic ad platforms see how difficult it […]

Notes on Customer Development

I keep forgetting this stuff, so noting it down for myself (and others). 1. Don’t ask “would you” questions, ask “did you” questions. People are unable to predict their behavior. 2. Don’t ask about your product, ask about their problem. Wrong question: “We have this product A – would you use it?”. Right question: “Do […]

Crowdfunding pitch to media – an example

Here’s an example on how to do PR for a crowdfunding campaign. It should be sent at least a couple of weeks prior to launch. — Hi [name], this is [yourname] from [yourcompany]. We are preparing to release a new product in [yourplatform], and I wanted to give you heads-up since you wrote about [a […]