A major challenge for many SaaS businesses is to provide continuous value, so that the users are compelled to continue using the service. There’s a risk of opportunism if the user can achieve his goals with one-time use; he then either uses the free trial version, or only subscribes for one month. For example, some SEO tools enable data download,…
It’s almost impossible to beat Facebook’s or Google’s algorithms in ad optimization, because they have access to individual-level data whereas the advertiser only gets aggregates, and even their supply is limited. But, there are two opportunities I see which Google and Facebook don’t handle: 1. Use of CRM data Especially purchase history (=lifetime value), product margins (=profitability), and other customer…
Grassblade model of startup acquisition = an incumbent is waiting until an upstart rival exceeds a KPI threshold x (e.g., 1 million users). Observations: ‘x’ needs to be defined so that it is big enough to prove the momentum, yet small enough to give a decent valuation — let the startup grow long enough, it can a serious competitor the…
Here’s a great example of a business development program of an ad platform: Google provides similar service through its AdWords Partner program. Facebook and Google are offering the free 1-on-1 help for one simple reason: It improves the quality of ads. Because of this, two positive effects take place: a) the users are happier. As two-sided markets, FB and Google need…
Introduction It *is* indeed the question – most often focus of B2B digital marketing is on lead generation and marketing automation. Much less has been written about targeting. Yet, B2B targeting is far from having been solved. The typical conversation between decision makers and agencies goes something like this. Client: “All this online advertising is great – but I don’t…
Speed is one of the most important ranking factors in technical search-engine optimization (SEO). Besides search rankings, pagespeed directly or indirectly influences Quality Score in AdWords (and thus to click prices), and, perhaps most importantly, to the usability of website. Better usability, more conversions. PageSpeed Insights is a free service by Google to score the speed of a website. 100/100…
Introduction. In this post, I’m exploring the usefulness of personas in digital analytics. At Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), we have developed a system for automatic persona generation (APG) – see the demo. Under the leadership of Professor Jim Jansen, we’re constantly working to position this system toward the intersection of customer profiles, personas, and analytics. Imagine three levels of…
I was reading through old emails while backing up my Gmail inbox with Gmvault, an open source command-line tool. Among other interesting trips to memory lane, one message was about the first startup user study I was involved with. It was for a life-coaching startup that eventually failed. In retrospect, it’s interesting to reflect on what went wrong and how…
Remora’s curse takes place when startup attaches itself to a large platform in the attempt to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of getting users. The large platform then exercises its greater power to void the investments made by the startup into the platform, essentially causing more or less deadly delays and needs for re-design. The idea originates from Don Dodge who…
Introduction One important thing in machine learning is feature engineering (selection & extraction). This means choosing the right variables that improve the model’s performance, while discarding those reducing it. The more impact your variables have on the performance metric, the better. Because the real world is complex, you may start with dozens or even hundreds of variables (=features), but in…
