Tom Rutka
Entrepreneur
SocialVideoPromotion.com

Do you know the amount of psychology involved in buying of products and services? When you critically analyze the factors that have ever induced you to purchase something, you will see that there is a function of marketing and sales psychology, which made you buy the item without realizing the subconscious influence. You may argue that your buying decision was a result of necessity or desire, well you are right, but what made you choose a specific brand of product in a competitive market?

Some external factors influenced and reinforced your choice, which are a derivative of social proof such as visual customer feedback or recommendations by a human being (commercials).  The human figure can be so persuasive compared to a product alone because it is the closest thing we can relate to.  Nowadays video appears in 70% of the top 100 search results According to a study at Advance Auto Parts, visitors who watch demonstration videos with people, stay on the site twice as long and visit twice as many pages than those without videos. (KissMetrics: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/product-videos-conversion/).

Purchases are rendered because of your existing knowledge that a product has worked for someone else, and that person happens to have shared a positive testimonial about it.  Do you agree so far? Then it goes to show when customers provide a positive experience about the benefits of a product and how it has exceeded their expectations, it adds to the reason why you should buy something, be it a specific brand or a specific seller.

Many customers feel safe buying a new product because they see it will work for them through others who already bought it. When you tap into the psychology of using social proof to increase sales across the board, you will be able to convert visitors to buyers much more effectively. The most difficult task for any business is getting customers.  Yet many businesses fail to realize the easiest way to gain those customers is through social proof. The results from social proof are long-term because the outcome will be repeat patronage from each customer with additional sales and add-ons.

To prove that this actually works, Robert B. Cialdini writes, in his book Influence, of multiple examples on efficacy of social proof.  For example, canned laughter is so effective for poor jokes on TV shows because it provokes an automatic response in audiences that cues are powerful stimuli. (Media Studies http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/influence_ch4.htm).

We are most vulnerable to the need for social proof during uncertain times of shopping where product value is unclear.  Online research company Knowledge Networks conducted a study showing 17.8 million consumers are “strongly influenced” in their purchase decisions by opinions in social media (up 19% from 2010). (AGBeat http://agbeat.com/real-estate-technology-new-media/purchase-decisions-influenced-by-social-media-up-14-in-last-six-months/).

To save time and frustration from low conversion rates, try my service at SocialVideoPromotion.com. I will ensure a good match with the right prospect for your product or service and give you a recorded video of their positive feedback.

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Tom Rutka is founder of travel site RateTourGuides.com and marketing service SocialVideoPromotion.com as well as blogger at RunAStartup.com.

You’re reading What Social Videos Can Do For Your Startup from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Andrea Shillington

By Andrea Shillington
Founder & Owner 
Brands for the people

The first question every leader should start with is this: why does your business exists other than to make money?

It may come as a surprise to you that the first questions in a branding process is not about what the product or service is, or even how it’s delivered differently. Those questions will come, but the one that matters most to customers – and thus should to leaders as well – is why. It’s a matter of creating a partnership with your customers, one in which you both contribute to making the world a better place. This is not any easy question to answer, it requires business leaders to dig deep and get personal. The emotional connection you create by answering this will become the driving force behind your brand’s momentum.

For my new startup, Brands for the people, the journey began with a desire to help startup businesses with a vision to make a profit and make a difference. After 8 years of working with agencies branding large corporations and governments in the Middle East, Europe and North America, I had had enough of the singular goal of making rich people richer. I was seeking a higher sense of fulfillment from my work. I found my ‘why’ when I moved to Vancouver and I began meeting visionary entrepreneurs who wanted to have a positive effect on the world. I have always been passionate about helping startups achieve their dreams, but realized that most of these businesses could not afford the $30,000 price tag for a strategic branding process. I’d have to find a new way. Now that I had discovered my passionate purpose, I’d need to start thinking about how to create a new business model.

I wasn’t satisfied with the cheaper alternatives available for startups: finding a freelance designer or posting a brief on a logo competition site.  It can be a disaster if the designer isn’t competent or doesn’t match the business type. Similarly, a competition site sells the idea that a perfect logo is the magic pill for getting a brand developed. I had met many entrepreneurs who had participated in one of the above mentioned processes and possessed a logo design, but were still seeking a brand that stood out from the competition.  To provide a client, specifically a startup, with a successful product both alternatives are missing the essential and almost magical part of the branding process, where the strategic part gives way to business clarity. The step–by–step process that would help guide business owners and help them decide what they are and, just as importantly, what they are not. The part of the branding process that helps businesses create an ownable space in the market, which in turn directs how the brand gets designed.

The inadequacies of these cheaper alternative are what drove me to create a new business model and a unique technology platform. If you knew me you’d say, “she’s the last person I’d expect to develop a technology platform for her new business.” However, I realized technology solved one of my most important challenges in helping small businesses obtain the expertise they actually needed at a price they could afford. Hence, Brands for the people was born as a hybrid between the creative agency and freelance designer using the crowdsourcing model. I choose to deliver most of the strategic branding process using the ‘freemium’ model. Free brand tools are available to download from my site, brandsforthepeople.com, which helps guide leaders through creative exercises to develop a brand brief. Additionally, I wrote an E-Book, 5 Secrets to Branding your Business from the Heart, which is also free to download. It’s written as a branding how-to guide that helps business leaders think deeper about the difference they will make in the world.

The process for a startup wanting to working with Brands for the people is a streamlined, easy and collaborative process.  Once you submit your brand brief and have spoken to one of our consultants, we will connect you with designers from our hand-picked community – connecting you with designers that meet your startup budget, industry type, design style, personal characteristics and skill sets required for the project. In our community we have have designers in a range of industries and from a wide array of backgrounds, including senior designers who have worked as Creative Directors for global brand consultancies typically being charged out in the hundreds of thousands for a brand identity design. We offer the strategic process and the design online at a fraction of the cost. This business model is a win–win for both startups and designers.

I founded Brands for the people with a passionate purpose. We exists to improve the world through helping startups connect with their customers. I called my new business Brands for the people because I believe change starts with the people: the business people, the creative people and the people who buy stuff. I’m dreaming of the day when I will have helped thousands of startups to become world famous brands to do Good in the world.

Here are a few questions to get you thinking about purpose:

What moment in your life did you feel a strong calling?

What action could you take?

How will you product or service make people happier?

How will your product or service help the planet?

Why is the world a better place because of your product or service?

–END–

Andrea Shillington founded Brands for the people to help altruistic entrepreneurs create world famous brands. Before creating Brands for the people, Andrea was a brand consultant for several years in the Middle East, Europe and North America. She worked on a wide variety of projects ranging from rebranding the UAE’s federal governments to re-branding hospitality groups. After returning home to Vancouver, became passionate about helping the startup community and wanted to find a way to make strategic branding affordable. Going much deeper than logo design, Brands for the people was born to help startup businesses with a vision to change the world.

You’re reading Why branding a startup begins with a question, and not the one you’d expect. from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Why Startups Fail: And How Yours can Succeed

By David Feinleib
VC, Entrepreneur, and Author of Why Startups Fail: And How Yours Can Succeed

Startups fail for many different reasons. Turn failure into success by avoiding some of the most common causes of startup failure:

• Failing to drive demand
• Building a product people don’t want
• A lack of passion
• Running out of money
• Scaling too fast
• Small markets
• Failing to focus

Drive Demand!
As I wrote in Seven Ways To Market Your Startup, getting the word out about your product is key. All too often, entrepreneurs focus on what they’re going to build but not on their go-to-market strategy. Imagine that your product is already built. It’s done, and it’s ready to go. Now what? What is the tagline for the product? How are you going to market it? What’s going to drive massive adoption?

Figuring out how to drive demand for your product is just as important as figuring out what product to build. Inefficient, unleveraged distribution can kill a startup. There may be millions of small businesses you can sell your product to, for example, but you need an efficient, repeatable, and scalable way to reach them.

In fact, the best products today build marketing that drives adoption in from the beginning. Consider file sharing service Dropbox, which gives free space to existing users when they sign up others. The company now has some 50 million users.

Or think about social game maker Zynga, which builds games that require the participation of friends. Zynga leveraged the Facebook social graph to reach hundreds of millions of players. Marketing is no longer separate from product—it’s built right in.

Build Something People Want
Users of Apple products don’t just use the products—they evangelize them. This is the sign of having built and marketed a product people want.

So many entrepreneurs spend months or years building a product only to find out that few people want it. How does this happen? They keep waiting for the perfect product before being willing to get their product in the hands of early adopters.

Of course, the art of being an entrepreneur is finding the balance between products that are too early, which leads to unhappy users and negative publicity, and waiting too long to get real customer feedback.

There is nothing like real-world feedback. In the case of consumer products, build a product for yourself. When it comes to products for businesses, build for yourself if you can—and if you can’t, find a few early adopter customers who will work closely with you to be real world test cases.

It’s not that the best entrepreneurs get their products right out of the gate; rather, it’s that they fail fast and iterate their way to the right product quickly—and you can too.

Pitch With Passion
You might be surprised to see this one on the list. After all, what entrepreneur lacks passion? Yet I’ve sat through countless pitches where this was exactly the case. And if the entrepreneur lacks passion about the opportunity, how can potential investors be expected to get excited about it?

Investors in very early stage ventures aren’t investing in today’s numbers—they’re investing in the opportunity and the team. They’re making a logical decision based on pattern matching and potentially, early traction. But they’re also making an emotional decision.

They see something in the team and the opportunity that gets them excited. They feel heat on the deal, the scarcity of an investment opportunity that’s going away. They make an emotional connection and go for it.

Connect with potential investors, employees, and customers on an emotional level. Sure, it helps to be naturally outgoing and passionate, but there are other ways to connect as well—through delivering great products that people love and through measurable traction and growth. If you have trouble communicating passion, consider a coach, mentor, or advisor who can help you channel your inner Steve Jobs.

Manage Your Capital
Whether you’re funding the business yourself, have raised angel money, or have raised venture, capital is frequently hard to come by. And even when it’s available, it can be very expensive.

Managing your capital is all about knowing the numbers. Even if you’d rather be building product or out marketing and selling, knowing your numbers is key.

The first step is to know how much money you have and your burn rate. Put these numbers together and you get the runway until your “cash out” date.

The “cash out date” is not the date at which you get to take hundreds of millions of dollars of cash out and put it in your bank account. It’s the date at which, if things continue to proceed as they are and you’re not profitable, you’ll run out of money. Know the date. It can be terrifying staring down a rapidly emptying bank account—I know because I’ve been there—but there is nothing that lights a fire under you quite like the impending reality of running out of cash.

The second key part is to understand how much it costs to acquire a user or customer—your Cost Per Acquisition, or CPA—and what that user or customer is worth to you—the customer Lifetime Value, or LTV.

In the early, discovery stage of a business, your CPA and LTV numbers may be all over the map. You’re still figuring out the business and the business model. You’re trying lots of different approaches to acquire users and seeing how much various customers are worth. Once you see consistency in CPA, LTV, and your growth rate, it’s time to scale.

Scale When Ready
Nothing brings a rocket ship of a startup down to earth faster than scaling too fast. It can seem like a Catch-22. How do you acquire users and customers if you don’t spend enough money to acquire them? The trick is to know when to pour gas on the fire.

Scaling too fast can come in several forms. It can mean spending a lot of money on online marketing before having a site that’s optimized to convert the visitors who arrive. It can mean hiring people, especially sales people, too soon, before you’ve got the right product and the sales approach refined to a point where it’s repeatable.

The Sales Learning Curve (SLC) can help. The SLC was created by Mark Leslie, Former CEO of VERITAS Software, and Charles Holloway, professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Simply put, the SLC says that most products take longer and cost more to launch than entrepreneurs expect. You’ve walked your way up the learning curve when you have the right product, a repeatable approach to marketing and selling that product, and you know your CPA and LTV numbers. That’s when it’s time to pour on the gas.

Tackle A Big Market
It’s just as much work to go after a small market as it is to go after a big one—so why not go after a big one?

Of course, the decision about what kind of business to build is a very personal one. While I was in business school, I built an online lead generation business. It was highly profitable but relatively small. I loved building the business, but I missed working on something big and impactful. My Dad ran his own consulting business for decades and enjoyed every minute of it.

Yet when it comes to technology companies, many great teams have been beaten by small markets—there just aren’t that many customers and there’s limited revenue to go after. No matter how great a job you do on execution, ultimately it remains hard to be successful. So if you’re building a technology company and you have the aspiration to go big, start with a big market.

Focus
In a world where the barriers to entry to building products—at least software products—are rapidly decreasing, it’s easy to want to go after many different ideas. As my first venture investor told me when he wrote me a check, focus wins. The advice is as good today as it was 10 years ago.

It’s easy to get distracted. Distraction leads to lots of different features in a product. But winning is about finding one big feature that matters, a core feature so compelling that all of your users or customers want it, a feature that differentiates you from everyone else. Winning is not about having a thousand features. It’s about doing a few things really, really well.

Conclusion
Startups fail for lots of reasons. Fortunately, many of these reasons are avoidable. By driving demand for a product people want, focusing on what separates your product from the competition, and managing your cash along the way, you can turn your startup into a huge success.

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David Feinleib is a former General Partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures and a four-time entrepreneur. To find out more about making your startup successful, get Why Startups Fail: And How Yours Can Succeed and check out David’s blog at www.vcdave.com.

You’re reading Seven Secrets of Startup Success from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Jarie Bolander
Founder, EnduranceLeader.com

Thomas Edison was famous for saying:

Invention is 1% Inspiration and 99% Perspiration.

What he should have said was:

Invention comes through practice.

Just like the endurance athlete, innovators need to practice.

Practice takes many forms. From the thought experiment, to the mockup all the way to beta, it’s all practice for the big event – shipping a product.

Innovative Deep Practice

I’m a big fan of The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. If you have not read it yet, you should. In The Talent Code, Mr. Coyle explains how we improve our skills through deep practice. Deep practice is a state where we break down new skills into manageable chucks and throughly master each component. It’s a place where we struggle, do it wrong, adjust and in the end master it.

The best innovators use deep practice to break down problems into manageable pieces, grind away on solving them, make mistakes and then move on.

Practicing More Deeply

Too often, innovators of all kinds want the “Home Run.” They want their idea, invention or process to work right away. This seldom, if ever, happens.

Instead, the consistent innovator uses deep practice to always make progress – even when experiments go wrong.

Listed below are some of the techniques that innovators can use to practice more deeply and innovate consistently:

• Explore outside your comfort zone: Push yourself a little to see what might inspire you.
• Thin innovation slices: Always look at big problems in thin slices. That way, you can achieve small, incremental wins.
• Enlist others: Nothing beats collaborating with other smart people. Find some and get going.
• Create mockups: Models and mockups are great ways to touch and feel something – even in software. The guy that designed the first PDA build one out of wood to see how it felt in his hand.
• Make prototypes: The next level from mockup is prototype where the gadget actually does something. Like a mockup, prototypes give you a lot of insights into what works and what does not.
• Ship a Beta: Building something and shipping it feels great. It also gives you a tremendous amount of feedback so that you can innovate even more.
• Admire Art: Art provides great inspiration. Admiring art can inspire all sorts of innovative threads that might lead to other ideas.
• Build pieces: Take those innovation slices above and build the pieces. This will allow you to make incremental progress towards the bigger goals.

Practice, Stumble, Fail & Practice Some More

Innovation is a game of doing. You can’t just think your way to invention or innovation – you have to get in the lab, write code, build a prototype or ship that beta.

Part of practicing innovation is failing. Well, not exactly failing. Let’s just say that most of the time, your grand idea doesn’t make it past the bit bucket and you need to be fine with that. Here’s why.

Innovation is about pushing the envelope of understanding. Way out there on the frontier, there is no one to guide you. You are alone in the vast wilderness that is the cutting edge.

That can be a little scary since all that time you spend wandering may not produce anything of “real” value that others can see, touch or taste.

Navigating The Innovation Wilderness

Besides practice, the innovator needs some basic tools and techniques to make the innovation journey a little more predicable and comfortable. Some of my favorites include:

• Keep an idea journal: An idea journal is an invaluable tool to find trends and cluster ideas. Just reading through a journal can give you all sorts of inspiration.
• Have a hobby: Hobbies are great to spark creativity and innovation. I once had a friend who created an entire remote control toy business because he was sick and tired of not having enough frequencies to use.
• Be well read: Reading a wide variety of topics and styles creates opportunities for cross over innovation. Great ideas will come from looking at a problem from a different perspective.
• Take long walks: Wander, stroll, skip or run. Anything to get you out of a building and thinking. Many of my best ideas come when I’m working out.
• Volunteer: Volunteering is not only tremendously rewarding but a great place for inspiration. You would be amazed at how much you can help an organization and yourself by just giving a few hours a week.
• Help others innovate: Get out there and help someone else create. This is just like the recruiting others above and it’s for the same reason – the more brains, the better the idea flow.

Now, Get Out There And Innovate

The best kept secret about innovation is to practice and start doing something. Anything that can get your mind working and creating will benefit you. It might take time to build the next Twitter or Foursquare but you will never get there without practicing innovation everyday. Even if you stumble and fail, you are still making progress, and progress is how innovation comes to life.

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Jarie Bolander is an engineering by training, entrepreneur by nature and leader by endurance. His new site, EnduranceLeader.com combines two of this passions – leadership and endurance athletics. Jarie is also a moderator at Answers.OnStartups.

You’re reading The Innovator’s Secret Weapon from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

[After last week's post on A prelaunch page for your startup, Josh Ledgard of KickoffLabs reached out to point out his alternative. Here's more info from Josh.]

by Josh Ledgard
Co-founder, KickoffLabs

You need to start marketing your next great idea today.  Technology is easy, but marketing is hard. You need a head start and hard work because…

1. You aren’t famous

Yup, if you were the co-founder of Facebook buzz will build itself. (See Quora) But you didn’t invent Facebook and no one cares what your building.

2. Your idea sucks

No one has the heart to tell you that in person. You have to prove otherwise.  If you put up a landing page and can’t get anyone but your mom to ‘pay’ you with their email address… you need to go back to the drawing board. If you can quickly test and build an audience you may be onto something. Prove it.

3. You don’t know how to sell your idea
You don’t know what that pitch is yet.  The pitch needs to be ready for the tech launch. You use code to test your software and a landing page helps you test your pitch. Improving signup conversion rates will improve paid customer conversion rates at launch.

4. Your idea has already been ‘stolen’

A lot of people worry that sharing their idea early will lead to theft.  Sorry. It’s already been stolen.  Good ideas are not unique. Secrecy is irrelevant. Pitch, execution, and customer experience are the things you can claim uniqueness on. Transparency helps refine those things.

5. You can’t do it yourself

Creating a signup landing page before you launch isn’t just about getting customers. It’s about finding partners.  Engage signups to find testers, partners, & complimentary ideas you never would have received if you held onto everything.

6. You aren’t rich… yet

Do you have $20k to blow on generated traffic? Probably not. You need a head start. You need customers to find other customers for you.  You need your idea to get passed around for free… relatively speaking.

7. Your SEO won’t build itself

Slimy consultants have tarnished the term.  But it’s proven true that if you bring your URL up with the product launch you are starting with 0 SEO. It takes 2-3 months for search engines to start really sending you traffic.  Get a placeholder up so you don’t start at zero.  You don’t want to generate all the traffic yourself. You can’t. See #1.

8. You have no motivation

If your idea doesn’t suck and actual people start signing up and talking about what your building…it’s extremely motivating.  Way more motivating than sitting in that dimly lit cubicle.  A little social pressure can go a long way towards making your dream a reality.

9. You don’t know anything about your customers

They aren’t who you think they are.  When they start signing up on your landing page you can start learning, quizzing, asking, and engaging with them. What you end up building will be different than you envisioned… but it will sell better.

10. Buzz doesn’t happen… you build it.

You can’t just expect customers to start talking about your idea and signing up. You have to encourage them. Customers respond better to direct requests if you want them to share something cool. You can make a gimmick that’s not sleazy.

If you liked this post check out KickoffLabs. We’ll help you find customers with a viral landing page in less than 60 seconds! Are you more of a do it yourself person? Build your own site and use our viral API.  Our simple goal is to help every business find at least 5 more paying customers every month.

Like any good idea there are alternatives to the KickoffLabs service. Some are even cheaper. We differentiate ourselves by being simpler, supporting you better, and creating a customer referral platform that goes well beyond the landing page to include analytics, auto-responders, newsletters, and an API you can use well after you launch.

You’re reading Your startup needs a pre-launch signup landing page from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Mark L. Smith, Co-Founder
www.DigMyData.com

Momentum is the life blood of a startup. Nothing gums up the works and kills momentum like scheduling difficulties — timezones, multiple availability schedules, holidays. It’s a wonder sometimes that anything gets scheduled at all.

We absolutely love our product vision at DigMyData and we love using our own tool to tell our business stories. As a result, we schedule a lot of meetings with people all over the world to both pitch our product and to help them with the initial setup of DigMyData. We use Tungle to manage this scheduling and keep up the “big mo’.”

What is Tungle?

Tungle is a cross-company scheduling tool that solves timezone and availability issues. It allows the meeting initiator to “paint” in the time they can meet and send e-mail invitation to one or more meeting attendees. The other meeting attendees paint in their availability and the last attendee gets to pick from a list of times that work for everyone else. Tungle can integrate directly with Google Calendar and Outlook to automatically manage the painting process.

What we use it for:

We use Tungle for prospecting. When we want to talk with people about our product, we paint in our availability and send a Tungle invite to our prospect. How many of your prospects go cold because they’re used to frictionless scheduling with people inside of their company? You often don’t know because you never get a response. Tungle keeps that stuff from happening.

We also use Tungle for support. Tungle lets us plug our Google Calendar availability into a special tungle.me site. Our customers can visit our tungle.me site and book a meeting directly — we get an e-mail notification and it automatically shows up on our Google Calendar. Customers are most likely to do a support session with us if it is easy for them to do — which makes it more likely they will stay customers.

What we love about Tungle:

• Solves timezone issues.
• Keeps the mechanics of scheduling from getting in the way of great conversations.
• Great if you use Google Calendar — easy connection (shows busy times, puts it right on your calendar, etc…).
• Great for setting up meetings with more than 2 people.
• Free!

What’s bad:

• People who get it, get it. People who don’t, don’t. In our experience, the people who are most likely to give our Tungle invites the “sideways puppy dog look of confusion” are Outlook/Exchange users in large companies.
• Tungle was recently acquired by RIM – makers of BlackBerry. I’m an ex-BlackBerry user. I’m concerned that RIM will ruin Tungle.

Our tips to get the most out of Tungle.

• Setup your Tungle.me page and include your profile info. Send that link to people when you reach out to ask for a meeting. The links look like this: https://tungle.me/smithmarkl.
• When asking someone to Tungle a meeting with you, go ahead and tell them what call-in information to use (you call me, I call you, we use this #, etc…).
• We use join.me for on-demand screen sharing instead of worrying about scheduling a WebEx or GotoMeeting session. When we are on the phone it is very easy to to tell someone to A) go to join.me B) type in a phone # length code.
• Check your Tungle settings! I like making schedulers give me at least 2 hours advance notice for meetings — that way, I have time to notice it in my calendar.
• Be realistic on setting your availability — bankers hours are fine

Conclusion

A typical DigMyData call goes like this: We talk with a customer or potential customer over Skype using Join.me with a Tungle scheduled meeting. It’s all free and just works. Reduce friction; keep up the momentum!

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This guest-post was written by Mark L. Smith, Co-Founder of DigMyData, a storytelling tool for web businesses. Follow @DigMyData on Twitter.

You’re reading Taking Charge of your Startup’s Scheduling from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Iain Dooley,
Founder of Working Software and creator of Decal CMS

Over the past year, I’ve done a bit of work producing videos and in this post I discussed the importance video has played thus far in marketing, support and training people how to use Decal CMS.

With the launch of our flagship public beta product Decal Mockups recently, I produced quite a lot of video for both marketing and training purposes and felt as though I’d really had the chance to hone my craft, especially when reflecting on my first attempt last year.

I’m by no means an expert, but I feel as though I’ve got a few simple strategies for producing video very inexpensively for your products that doesn’t totally suck.

I’m also very keen to share my experiences, thoughts and methods in the hopes that someone out there will give me some ideas on how my methods could be improved.

My tools of choice are:

• Macbook Pro 13″ (I just use the in-built microphone for recording audio – I’ll discuss how I’ve been able to make this sound better)
• ScreenFlow
• Wistia video hosting for business (gotta love the stats!)

The two primary purposes of product video

In my experience there are two primary purposes for product videos: marketing and training. My production strategies for each are slightly different.

Marketing videos

When I talk about marketing videos I’m talking about the video that people see when they land on your home page – the one that’s supposed to get them interested enough in your proposition that they follow some call to action (eg. signing up to use your product).

These are the ones that take me the longest to make and they require the most planning, ironically because they have to be the shortest.

I wouldn’t personally create a product marketing video longer than 1 minute and the shorter you can get it the better (Wistia’s home page intro video is only 30 seconds long).

If your video includes a piece to camera or interview I’d say that you can go (a bit) longer in some cases, however looking good on camera is really hard and screencasts are immeasurably easier and cheaper to produce.

Step 1: The message

When you are releasing a product, your natural inclination is to make a product video that demonstrates the features of the product.

This is because you’re very proud of the features – you have spent a while working on them and you think they’re totally ground breaking.

But features are totally boring to watch and your features are not your message (disclaimer: to a certain extent, this depends on your audience – but I’d say the cases where a feature heavy marketing video makes sense are the exception).

If you take a look at the very first video I made last year for Decal you can see what I mean about “feature focus” – it has absolutely no message whatsoever and is completely and utterly uninspiring:

I recently watched (and blogged about) a TED talk by Simon Sinek entitled “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” which says that “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”, but also states that people will buy your product for themselves, not for you.

So it’s not enough to ask why you’re making this video – you have to ask why your audience is watching it, why they’ll keep watching it and why they’re going to do what you want them to do at the end (ie. sign up to use your product).

At the beginning of this year I had just begun to get an idea about marketing message and produced 5 separate videos for the Decal CMS home page which were designed to appeal to different audiences.

I’d started to scratch the surface of what it meant to be talking to my audience, taking the focus off features and trying to deliver a message which would appeal to people’s emotions and you can see one of those videos below – however it’s still far too long and had too much of a feature focus:

I think it’s interesting to look at the progression to my latest offering for our Decal Mockups launch:

Apart from some technical improvements (which I’ll cover later) the single biggest difference is that I’ve taken the focus completely off the product features and come out with a strong message that makes a very bold statement about how this product will benefit my audience.

Jamie Zawinski puts it beautifully when he asks “How will this software get my users laid“? 37 Signals have also written a similar post about “when opening your wallet becomes a no brainer“.

Your message should focus on this: how is your product going to save people time or money, or help them get laid.

Now here’s a little secret: it’s really hard to do!

I guarantee if you’re not a seasoned sales and marketing veteran, this will feel wrong at first – because it is.

The first 2 videos I made above were pussy footing around the issue. The very first one simply presented my product and let people reach their own conclusions. The second focuses more on benefits to the viewer but the benefits are convoluted and probably only relevant to someone who’s had a specific experience with another provider.

The third video says in plain English that Decal Mockups saves you money and makes your job easier – and it felt like a lie. Not an out and out lie, but a bit of a lie.

However you’re trying to fit your message into a space that is so compacted, that if you don’t make a bold statement people will instantly tune out and stop paying attention.

So even though what you want to say is “This product will make your life easier once you’ve learned how to use it, and if you use it in a particular way then you could even save money by using it!”, what you have to say is “This product will make your life easier and save you money” without all the qualifying excuses.

Now I’m going to let you in on another little secret: no-one cares.

I was really nervous when I put that video out there – I emailed everyone I knew (only about 300 people) and I was an absolute wreck. I felt grimy and dirty as if I had told the world’s biggest lie and everyone would soon turn up at my door with pitchforks.

You know what actually happened? People signed up to use the product.

Here is a quick breakdown of the stats:

• 81% of people who landed on the page watched the video
• Those that clicked play watched on average 63% of the video
• Of those that clicked play, 23% signed up to use the product
• 19% of all people who came to the page signed up to use the product

Even for a free product, that is a phenomenal conversion rate. You know how many people I got complaining that I was taking liberties in saying the product would save time, money and make their life easier? Zero.

There are, of course, laws governing false advertising and I’m not advocating completely falsifying information but if the choice is between your waffly line of conditional, qualified excuses leading up to a statement of what benefits someone might be able to achieve in certain use cases, or just stating up front the benefits of the product in the first 10 seconds of the video, then you should definitely choose the latter.

Step 2: The Script

Now that you’ve decided on your message, it’s time to write your script. Start by writing your message in such a way that you can deliver it in 10 – 15 seconds.

It’s a good idea to state what your product actually is before you start talking about the benefits, otherwise the experience for the viewer is disorientating – but the combination of what your product does and how it “gets people laid” shouldn’t take more than 15 seconds to say.

From that starting point, you then need to reinforce your message, focusing on key points of difference and justifying your bold statement with a couple of facts about your product.

The most important thing is: don’t agonise over the script too much before you’ve recorded it and listened to it.

Don’t think of a “script iteration” as writing, or even writing then speaking – think of a complete script iteration as writing, recording and then listening back. Don’t worry about the sound quality of your recording just yet, either.

Once you’re at least 75% happy with the script (not 100% happy, remember that folks: don’t get hung up on your “perfect script” yet), move onto the story boards.

Step 3: The Storyboard

I prefer to use index cards for my story boarding rather than a whiteboard because it’s easier to re-order the “shots” and sections of your script.

I have the shot list on one side and sections of the script on the other, and I can re-order and reposition chunks of text next to “shots”.

The image to the left is the “story board” I used for the 2nd in the series of videos shown above.

When deciding what “shots” to use, try using your product whilst listening to the recording of your initial script draft and see what fits well.

You can then add a visual or textual reminder for that shot to an index card and stick it next to that piece of the script.

When considering what shots you’ll have, you want to have a good balance of things that move and things that don’t.

If there’s one thing that can really ruin your message and be totally distracting, it’s having constant talking in conjunction with constant movement.

Go back and look at the Decal Mockups video above and see how little movement there is on the screen – especially where the spoken information is at it’s most dense.

The most movement occurs when I’m talking about the “real browsable website” and the only movement occurring is web browsing which reinforces the voice over.

Also don’t underestimate the value of just printing words to the screen that are key words in the sentences of the voice over.

Once you’re 75% happy with your story board, (that’s right folks, don’t wait until you’re 100% happy), it’s time to do some actual screen capturing

Step 4: Screen capture and editing

Fire up ScreenFlow and capture each of your shots. Move the mouse slowly and deliberately. It’s very easy to edit out pauses and speed video up, but very tedious to edit out unnecessary mouse movements so the smoother and more accurate your mouse movements are in your initial recordings the more time you’ll save during editing.

Once you’ve got each of your shots, it’s time to edit them to fit in with your script. If you haven’t already, get a good reading of your script recorded.

The timing should be reasonably good – speak slowly and clearly (in fact you should speak so slowly that it feels a little bit weird). Edit out any obvious mistakes but don’t worry about sound quality, or editing out breathing or other noises – this is not your final recording.

Now edit your video down to fit in with your script. This is truly the most mind numbingly tedious part of the process. Try as much as possible to edit out unnecessary mouse movements in the screen casts and avoid using any transitions other than cross dissolve – you’ll be tempted to use one of the many other featured effects in ScreenFlow but they all suck.

I’d love to give you some ScreenFlow tips that will teach you to be a ninja at it but I’m a total hack. I just use images and text boxes to create my “graphics” – zooming to give them a bit of movement. The rest is simply screencasts.

There are a bunch of really awesome ScreenFlow tutorials around on the interwebz though so it’s probably worth boning up a bit on your techniques. I didn’t do this, and it took me 18 hours to produce the 60 seconds of video for the Decal Mockups – and about 70% of that time was spent editing or producing graphics.

I’m sure if you put some time into learning about some more advanced tips and techniques for using ScreenFlow you’ll live a longer and more prosperous life than I.

Remember: you don’t want to have things moving on the screen when you’re expecting people to be listening carefully to your words. This is really important – having too much happening at once is suprisingly confusing and they’ll either not listen to the words because they’re trying to see your product or they’ll miss your product shots altogether.

Don’t move onto the next step until you’re 100% happy – if necessary go back and modify your story boards and/or script and re-record it.

Step 5: The Final Voice Over and Edit

I’ve got a problem that you can hear in the 2nd video in the series above: my office is very big and echoey. I also live right next to a main road where lots of loud trucks, motorcycles and people with sports exhausts torment me.

This is particularly troublesome because I’m only using the in-built microphone on my laptop and I don’t have any sound mastering software or skills.

However, the voiceover in the Decal Mockups video doesn’t suffer from any of these problems. The secret? I record it whilst sitting in a closet. It’s a very small closet and it has lots of coats in it. The result is much clearer, don’t you think?

So, go and sit in your closet and record your script. You should record this speaking ever so slightly faster than the voice over you were editing your video to initially – but still slower than you would normally talk if you were having a conversation with someone (one always has a propensity to speak too quickly when recording voice over).

Do as many takes as you need to get each bit right and just leave ScreenFlow running whilst you do it. Try to do your takes in “chunks” and leave a gap when you stuff up – it can be hard to edit a good take out from 2 mistakes either side if your words or sounds are “rolling into each other”.

Once you’ve got this done, go back to your desk, stretch your legs and edit the final voice over to suit the video. Make sure you get rid of any “lip smacking” or breathing noises. You’ll find that, since you read just a little bit faster, you have some “space” now and during this final edit you may be able to cut the overall length of the video.

It’s important to leave some gaps in talking though – this gives the viewer a chance to focus on what’s on the screen, and also gives their brain some time to process what you’re saying and what they’re seeing.

Step 6: The sound track

This is kind of the fun part. You should produce a few different variations and test them on people you know. For the Decal Mockups video, I started off with this, which is me playing the Mbira:

I wanted to give an air of “magical wonder and simplicity” – reminiscent of a Hayao Miyazaki forest creature. However when I played it to a few people they found they were so distracted trying to figure out what that sound was, that they found it really hard to concentrate on the video.

I knew I had to go with something more familiar so guitar seemed like the obvious choice, but I still wanted something a bit different so I found this Gypsy Jazz version of All of Me played by Adrian Holovaty (co-incidentally, the author of the Django web framework!) on YouTube:

This was a dramatic improvement, however a few people I played it to said they found the melody line a bit distracting – also we obviously didn’t have the right to actually use it!

Luckily for me, Campbell McGuiness (one of the Working Software team) is a musician so he recorded a version of one of his songs minus any melody lines and I re-edited it to fit in with the video and that’s the final cut that we ended up publishing.

That about does it for marketing videos!

Training Videos

Training videos are kind of easier. Firstly, the constraints aren’t quite so strong – if someone is watching your training video, chances are they’re already using and therefore at least a little bit invested in your product.

You can see examples of the training videos I’ve made for Decal here:

http://www.decalcms.com/page/Support/#instructionalVideos

When I want to do a training video I write a few index cards of what I want to teach, then I record each of those in turn and edit them together, getting rid of unnecessary mouse movements, loading times and using cross fades for transitions between points.

I then simply watch the video, and type a “narration” of what I’m seeing on the screen. I do a rough recording of this “script” and edit it down to the video.

I iterate like that as required until I’m happy then I go and sit in the closet to do my voice over and come back and edit the real V.O down to the video.

The other big difference in a training video is that obviously you’re basically just showing the product the whole time so there probably won’t be any “graphics”. I also find it’s more acceptable to have a bit more movement on the screen whilst you’re talking (not too much) so long as what the viewer is seeing is being reinforced directly by what they’re hearing.

There are 2 guidelines I use to make the videos more watchable:

1. Use zooming and panning sparingly – it can make people nauseous but is also a really effective tool for focusing people’s attention on one part of the screen (sort of like a “pointer”) – especially if you want to show a lot of detail in a smaller video resolution
2. State the length of the video and it’s purpose at the very beginning of the video and put the key words on the screen as you say them. This orientates the viewer and prepares them mentally for what they’re about to see

That’s about it for training videos. They’re far less involved, in my experience thus far, than marketing videos.

Remember: video converts!

Creating video is hard and tedious. It takes a really really long time, but hopefully some of these tips can help you make a better product video in less time than the year it’s taken me to get to something I find acceptable.

However just remember: video converts! It’s really worthwhile taking the time to do videos and improve your skills because you’ll get more customers.

So stay motivated – I know it’s really hard (and I’m totally guilty of cutting corners here and there) but keep slogging it out.

The other piece of parting advice I’ll give you to is to avoid being a perfectionist. You can look at all my marketing and instruction videos I bet and find not only obvious flaws but flaws I’ve advised against specifically in this article.

There are only so many hours in the day and in the final analysis you’re going to be far more aware of the flaws in your video than anyone else ever will be, so try not to get trapped in some vortex of perfection.

Happy casting!
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(Thanks Iain for a great guest post! If you have something to share, ping me at bob.walsh@47hats.com.

Iain Dooley is the founder of Working Software, creators of Decal CMS. He enjoys chatting with people on all manner of subjects and would love to hear from you on iain@workingsoftware.com.au – also if you’ve read this far, you should definitely Subscribe to the Decal CMS blog via email or RSS by clicking here, follow Working Software on Twitter and become a fan of Working Software on Facebook

You’re reading What I’ve learned about creating product videos from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Martin Shen,
UX Guy and Cofounder of UpOut

UpOut helps you discover hip hop karaoke, flying trapeze classes, underground restaurants and other awesome things to do. It has extensive filters, customizable profiles and much more, but it started as just a side project between college and our web design firm. However, it’s that busy schedule which forced us to launch quick/often and enabled us to bootstrap our startup. This is a quick story of our experience.

After our first startup failed, my roommate and I started a small web design firm. Around the time we got the idea for UpOut, the web design firm was finally taking off and schoolwork was piling on. We decided that in February, we’d take a week off of client work and school and build a prototype for UpOut to demo at a student entrepreneurship conference in NYC.

Fueled on energy drinks and seaweed snacks, we pulled a few 72-hour sprints to push a minimum viable product. We focused on building a simple user interface consulting our friends every step of the way.

People loved the prototype. From the few hundred people who saw the glimpse of UpOut, we took their feedback and planned the real product. This time, we pushed back some client work to give us a more relaxed 12-day window in early April to work on the next version. We ended up spending a little over two weeks but redesigned the entire site to post up on HackerNews.

We got a several thousand hits alone from HackerNews encouraging us to go at it full time. We quickly decided to close up the web design firm using the proceeds from the last jobs to give us a 5 or 6 month window. In May, we closed up the vast majority of the client projects, I graduated and we packed up our things to move to San Francisco.

Now we’re in SF. We’ve picked up interested users every step of the way. We earned enough through web design consulting to give us a runway to really try doing a startup. We’ve learned the importance of constant user testing which is helping us improve the product every day. We’re now testing the latest build for UpOut and would love to get some feedback and suggestions. Feel free to reach out to me at martin@UpOut.com or even drop by our loft in SoMa.

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UpOut helps you discover events, places and activities worth doing. Find amazing parties, hidden bars and other things to do in your city. You can also follow users and tags to get a customized stream of the best things to do. Check it out at UpOut.com or follow @up_out.

Note: Martin is Cofounder of UpOut.com and is now based in San Francisco. If you’d like to share your lessons learned, domain knowledge or relevant product (translated out of Marketize), how about doing a guest post for 47 Hats? Email me.

You’re reading Bootstrapped Lean College Startup: UpOut from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Jenny Wager
Founder, LefTurn Labs

I am thrilled that there is interest in hearing how Next! was launched. So let’s start at the beginning- the idea for Next! was born from my obsession with productivity and desire for a solution that worked how I worked. There is a certain efficiency that technology can bring to personal productivity, but everything I tried merely replicated paper-based system.

I am not a software developer, marketer, or designer…all things critically important to launching an app. So the first thing I needed was a team- I was lucky enough to partner with my neighbor and brilliant developer Grant Wood, friend and marketing wiz Sean Irwin, and awesome designer Jay Runquist. Together we turned my idea and shoestring budget into a fully integrated and beautiful productivity app used in over 80 countries around the world. We are learning something new every day, but here are the things that I have found to be most important in the launch of Next!:

Design with intention. Like Bob said, beauty is not optional. The app store is all about first impressions so from the design of the app itself, to the app icon and website everything should be designed with intention. This was very important to the development and launch of Next!. Even with our small budget we took special consideration to develop custom components instead of using Apple’s and to create an elegant design. Don’t take shortcuts and don’t launch ugly.

Differentiate. There are thousands of productivity apps out there and more released everyday. Understandably it is extremely difficult to stand out from the crowd. There are too many apps in the market to simply create another ‘me too’ app. If you don’t have an idea that is different in user experience, design, or functionality from what is already out there you are going to have a difficult time competing in the app market. The unique features, design and user experience of Next! has helped us gain recognition.

Be persistent. I didn’t expect to launch Next! and then just sit back and watch it climb the charts. With the amount of apps out there it is critically important to keep your app relevant in the market. Thankfully, there are an amazing amount of app review sites, bloggers and other sources that can help promote your app. It has taken me a great deal of hard work and persistence to contact and follow up with outlets who can spread the word about Next!.

Work for your customers. There are going to be people who don’t understand and/or don’t like your app, but that doesn’t make it any easier to see 1 and 2 star ratings or receive harsh criticism. I’ve learned to focus on the emails thanking me for this product and the difference it has made in their lives; from the couple who is using it to plan their dream wedding to the business professional who is now more confident to take on the next big project at work. That doesn’t mean that you should ignore feedback and criticism. It is important to understand all the ways to make your app better and more usable, but I remind myself every day that I am serving my customers- not everybody.

Next! for the iPad

Launching Next! has been a wonderful and unpredictable journey which has afforded me the opportunity to participate in this exciting market and to impact individuals around the world. Next! has a long way to go before reaching its potential and we would love to hear your experiences and suggestions.

About LefTurn Labs

We founded LefTurn Labs with a mission to create the most complete and engaging software app for getting organized, improving productivity, and taking control of your life and your career. To discover the power and confidence that comes from being in control of your life, please visit lefturnlabs.com or follow the company on Twitter @lefturnlabs.

You’re reading Launching Next!: Experience of a first-time app developer from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Pierre Khawand
Founder & CEO
People-OnTheGo
http://www.people-onthego.com

(Note: I invited Pierre to do this guest post and be on The Startup Success Podcast after buying and reading his book, The Accomplishing More with Less Workbook. Got questions for Pierre? Add them to his Guest page before Jan. 31st!)

The rumors that e-mail is “dead” have been put to rest time after time. Even though some Social Media evangelists would like us to believe that e-mail is dead, and most of us who are spending hours on e-mail every day wish this would be the case, reality just confirmed once more that e-mail is still king! Our recent survey of 1000 business professionals revealed that on the average they spend 3.27 hours on e-mail every day while only 1.18 hours on Social Media. Whether we like it or not, e-mail is here to stay! Most importantly, critical business notifications and information still come to us through e-mail.
Bottom line is that we are still spending a good part of our day in our e-mail inbox! Or in “e-mail jail” as one of my workshop participants called it. This is partly necessary to conducted business and partly self-inflicted. “Self-inflicted?” You might ask. Totally! E-mail is a great escape. It is the ultimate break from more difficult tasks. It gives us this feeling that we accomplished something. It satisfies our curiosity. In summary, e-mail is seductive, addictive, rewarding, and also anxiety-provoking all at the same time.

So how can we stop this love-hate relationship with our e-mail inbox and turn e-mail into something more healthy and productive in 2011. Here are some techniques that can help. When applied consistently and over time, these techniques have helped business professionals transform e-mail from being a daunting and stressful to being a productive and stress-free!

#1: Don’t start your day on e-mail. Start by taking a few minutes to jot down the key accomplishments that you would like to achieve today. Ask yourself the simple but utterly important questions: What is important? And what do I want to accomplish today? Envision what a successful day would look like. According to Chip and Dan Heath, the authors of Switch, when we have a destination in mind, it is likely that we can create change and make things happen. This morning exercise is likely to re-direct your attention to, and focus your energy on, the bigger things instead of getting your energy and creativity stolen away by your e-mail inbox right from the beginning.

#2: Treat e-mail like a task. A task that has a beginning and an end, instead of being an ongoing task. This new “contained” e-mail task starts when you go to your e-mail inbox, and ends when you have handled all the “new” messages in your inbox (the messages that arrived since you performed this task last). When this task is done, you leave e-mail alone, and handle the more important and strategic tasks that are going to get you results. You can repeat this e-mail task as often as you think is necessary. My recommendation is that you consider repeating it every 30 or 40 minutes but not more often (check out The Results Curve free download to learn why the 30 or 40 minutes).

#3: Treat each e-mail message like a micro task. Once you start handling the message, this is it. No breaks. No opening new messages when you hear the beep. No opening other unrelated documents. No checking Twitter or Facebook. Stay focused on the message on hand and finish handling it first. Furthermore, treat this message like a “hot potato.” Get your reply out as quickly as you can. No day dreaming and no dwelling over the small stuff. If however the message requires significant thinking and/or effort, then either stop your e-mail task and switch to the task that is in the message, or tag the e-mail message so you can come back to it later add.

#4. Tag every e-mail message that you cannot handle right away. Depending on the e-mail application you are using, this may be flagging the message (see Microsoft Outlook 2003 free demo), or categorizing it (Microsoft Outlook 2007 or 2010), or labeling it (Google Mail), or tagging it (Mac Mail with SmartTag add-on), or whatever else. There are three tags I would recommend. The “Today” tag, the “Tomorrow” tag, and the “Waiting For” tag. The “Today” tag implies that this is a message that you need to get back to today, while the “Tomorrow” tag implies that this can wait, and the “Waiting For” tag means that you are delegating to someone else and expecting them to handle it.

#5: Think 80/20. 80% of our results come from 20% of our effort. The same applies to e-mail. 80% of our results come from 20% of our e-mails. So in essence, 80% of our e-mails can be ignored or dealt with very quickly. As soon as you take a look at an e-mail, make a quick determination if this is part of the 80% or the 20% and then act accordingly. Handle the 20% carefully and strategically, but spend very little time or no time at the other 80%. If you have to respond to such messages, make it very short, and don’t spend time editing.

The time has come to break free from the “e-mail Jail!” The time is 2011!
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You’re reading Stop e-mailing and start living: 5 tips to get e-mail well under control in 2011 from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Rob Clymo
Office Genie

When you’re starting a business venture then there are a multitude of things to think about. One of the main components of getting a new business infrastructure in place is to decide on where you’re going to work.

If you’ve got an idea for your venture that doesn’t really require business premises as such, then working from home is always a good way to go. However, not all of us are able to do this as there can often be distractions. Some of us simply need to go out the front door to work in the morning.

Having a business workplace to go to can therefore work really well if you look at renting some office space, either for yourself or other employees in your new start-up venture. This can be a little bit daunting to undertake if you’re new to the office space rental game, but there’s a handy way of making the process quick and easy.

Go compare

Comparison websites can be found that tell you ways of saving money and getting the best deals for just about every kind of product, from food to clothes and from cars to broadband.

Now there’s an office space rental comparison website that does the same kind of job. Head along to Office Genie and you’ll be able to search and find all manner of vacant office space up for grabs. It allows you to search all of the currently available office space throughout the UK.

This is a wonderfully efficient way of pinpointing office space that matches your needs exactly, along with providing the cheapest and best deals too. Choose from traditional leased offices, serviced offices, shared offices or simply rent a desk in an office block. The service is free to use and provides you with a one-stop-shop for new start-up needs when it comes to office requirements.

What kind of venture?

The great thing about using an office space comparison site like this is that it works for any kind of start-up venture. So it can be an excellent idea no matter if you’re a developer looking to go solo or a web designer who needs to branch out into ‘proper’ office space. There’s an office out there somewhere for you and this is the ideal way to find it.

Shared office space is great because it usually comes with the likes of broadband, utilities and security already in place. This is generally covered by a monthly flat fee, although hot desk schemes also allow you to simply pay for what you use. Shared offices offer flexibility and short term contracts too.

Serviced office schemes are also a good idea if you’re expanding by the day. These are ‘bells and whistles’ affairs, often with receptionists, post rooms and everything else that is needed when a fledgling business is on the up. It also gives your new start-up a presentable ‘face’ that will not only look good when people want to visit, but also possibly tempt new clients too.
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You’re reading Office space options for start-ups from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Note: This Guest Post ran back on July 21st, 2009: so why post it again? Well, I just rechecked the two sites Dennis talks about, with Google Instant Results on: Java-Logging.com had slipped to #7, but dotNETLogging.com was still the #1 result. Over on Microsoft’s Bing, Java-Logging.com was #4 and .DotLogging.com – in Microsoft’s own search engine – was #1. Any day a site you build can come up as #1 in both Google and Bing is a very good day indeed.
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A Guest Post by Dennis Gurock
Gurock Software Co-Founder

We here at Gurock Software recently started a SEO microsite experiment that we believe is very relevant to other MicroISVs. That’s why I would like to share the results of the experiment here on Bob’s blog and explain how it helped us improve our search engine rankings. But let’s recap the experiment for a minute. The idea was to launch a few microsites for certain topics related to our logging and tracing tool SmartInspect. The goal was to provide a useful starting point to developers new to logging tools and to get the sites ranked well for specific keywords (especially keywords we had trouble getting the SmartInspect website to rank well for). One of the questions we wanted to answer with this experiment was how important it is to have the actual keywords in the domain name. To test this, we launched the two microsites .NET logging and Java logging, hoping the keywords in the domain name would boost their search engine rankings.

Promoting the Sites

Before I share the actual results, let me first explain what we did to promote the sites. We needed to get at least a few inbound links to get Google & co. notice and index the new sites. Inbound links with relevant anchor texts are also important to get the sites ranked well. The first source of links came from reactions to our original posting with other blogs linking to our new sites. The next step was to include links to the microsites on some of our other websites, such as our blog and DelphiFeeds.com. We also announced the new sites on relevant forums, newsgroups and community sites, resulting in some additional links with useful anchor texts. We also added the sites to link directories and contacted some webmasters of Java and .NET link lists to include our sites.

We have also improved and extended the content since we launched the sites. We have, for example, split the single page we started with into multiple pages and added new Java logging comparison and .NET logging comparison pages to the site. We have also been adding additional links to tools and articles to both sites from time to time to keep the content fresh and up-to-date. We plan to do this regularly, as search engines love fresh and updated content. The main goal of promoting the sites was to build a few inbound links to get the sites indexed and ranked by search engines, and it worked surprisingly well.

The Rankings

So how did it work out? At the time of writing this posting, both microsites rank (far) better than our main SmartInspect website for many keywords, including important keywords such as .NET logging and Java logging. This is especially surprising considering how many more links the SmartInspect websites has compared to the new microsites (the quality of the links to the SmartInspect website is also a lot better, with links coming from domains such as microsoft.com and other relevant websites). Another thing that surprised us was how quickly the new sites ranked well. Just a week after launching the sites they got to the first page of the Google results for the main keywords. Although the Java site dropped from Google’s search results a few weeks after it launched, it’s back online and is working itself up in the results again. In fact, it’s ranked #4 for Java logging at the moment, ahead of popular logging tools such as log4j. The .NET microsite ranks #1 for .NET logging as of today, 7 ranks better than the SmartInspect site itself which enjoyed years of link building and buzz.

Although we are surprised by the very good rankings that the sites received so quickly, we also believe the new sites deserve good search engine rankings, as the content is useful and relevant to developers interested in the topic.

The Results

The traffic has been steadily increasing and because of the promotions and banners that we placed on the microsites, we also receive a good chunk of that traffic on the SmartInspect website. Most of the traffic comes from search engines, but we also get visitors from links and social websites (especially StumbleUpon).

The feedback from site visitors is very positive and we receive suggestions for improvements and additional links to new tools and articles from time to time. We are also able to convert site visitors to SmartInspect customers regularly, but the exact numbers are hard to tell, as SmartInspect sales are difficult to track (the developers who find and try SmartInspect usually do not place the orders directly, their managers or purchasing departments do).

Overall the microsites are a great success for us [full size screenshot of Google ranking ] and are an impressive testament to how important keywords in the domain name really are for Google. We already plan to launch additional microsites for SmartInspect and for our upcoming test management software TestRail.
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Dennis Gurock is a director and co-founder at Gurock Software, a company specialized in software quality tools and makers of SmartInspect and test management. Dennis regularly blogs about Gurock’s products, the business of software and software quality on the Gurock Software blog and on NoBugLeftBehind.com. Dennis also twitters.

You’re reading Optimizing Search Engine Rankings with Microsites from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Richard Bashara,
Community Moderator at SoftCity

We’ve all made big-ticket purchases before. It’s pretty difficult to just get up one morning and do.  It takes lots of phone calls and price comparisons before you can pinpoint what you want and can afford.  After a few back and forth conversations, the consumer usually has some good information on where to go for reviews, where the lowest prices are and who might have the best service and warranties.

That’s Social Commerce.

Today, we look at how simple interaction leads to a more secure and manageable environment to make purchases and engage customers via tools available on social commerce sites.

App Stores Remove Sales Roadblocks

Social Commerce websites should provide the tools you need to sell your software, or they aren’t doing it right.

There should be a secure payment processor and an automated system for downloads.  There should also be a way to monitor when and how sales are made.

For example, some sites encourage developers to utilize a dashboard for tracking statistics related to the actual activity a certain thread of comments receives.  Don’t speculate on traffic and try to force users into doing something, judge activity based on hard evidence and work on increasing the interactions that lead to sales conversions.

Suggestion Selling

Looking at Google and Facebook it is obvious that commerce is shifting to the predictive search, one that is done before the user realizes they wanted something.

You know another term for that?

It’s called suggestion selling and it has worked in the retail sector for years.  The more involved you are with the customer, the better your position to sell them something they did not know they wanted.  Google Instant attempts to do this as you type, but doesn’t personalize the experience the way Social Commerce can.

User Feedback

You’ll often hear the mantra “ask them what they want and give it to them.”  Is it really that easy?  That depends on the tools at your disposal.

For example, SoftCity lets a developer use a series of polls to determine what the market wants.  Even this type of passive interaction helps grant more control over the development cycle by providing data instead of guesswork.

Time gets spent listening and releasing software rather than perfecting.  The key point to take away from this is to not fear the openness of a social network.  As for your image, address those concerns publicly and brand yourself as someone who listens and cares.

You also shouldn’t have to deal with complex stats, simplify your reporting through the data available on a social commerce website that will have a targeted user community to engage:

1.       Crowd Source your research

2.       Keep track of  social interactions

Good social commerce websites will provide access to these stats (or a method to acquire them).

Spend Less Time Developing a Community, More Time Developing Software

If your end user interaction and sales are all done in one space, you have less to worry about and more time to spend developing and perfecting your software.  You don’t have to chase leads; they already exist in your social space.  Your more passionate power users can even use some of their influence to convert others to your cause.

Social commerce can be rewarding from all interactions – from the novice, the power user and of course the developer, regardless of size.

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SoftCity is the first social commerce site dedicated to software. The site merges e-commerce with social media, creating a unique destination where software developers and users connect online.  Users can review software ratings and even chat with the developer before they make a purchase. SoftCity also hosts a constant stream of articles, discussions and comments from software enthusiasts and experts alike.  With each interaction, SoftDollars, are earned which can be used on the site for additional software discounts. Visit www.SoftCity.com and become part of the first community for software enthusiasts.

You’re reading Four Ways to Benefit with Social Commerce from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Brian Noll
Code Complete Software

A few typical things can happen when developers sell and market development tools to other developers. Here are some things to be careful about:

Overselling

OK, here is the deal.  It’s plain and simple, but sometimes forgotten.  Developers, engineers, and any scientific thinking person tend to reject outlandish marketing that overpromises.  Also, that same disgust and rejection is now directed towards “management speak”. How many sites, sales processes, and emails to prospects are still bathed in sports analogies, non sequitur solution selling, and ROI vagueness, It’s simple, in reality developers just want products to make their life easier.  Keep away from sensationalism and overstating the benefits of your product.  Keep it pragmatic, honest, direct, and understated.  Solicit both good and bad feedback.   This goes not only for marketing, but also for communication during the sales process.

Also, although you might think it is about closing, it is a sales person’s job to help discover issues.  As far as development tools go, all tools have issues.  All tools have problems.  Not sure if I should write this, but it is your job is get users to come to conclusion that your tool “sucks less”.  Even if you are lacking some features, if you are responsive and helpful, you can land a happy user.

Remove roadblocks

Make it as easy as possible for someone to get a look at your product.  As a general rule, remove roadblocks for trying your product.  If you can get the user experience in a web based sandbox without an install; do it.  If you have several registration pages with logins to get a build; remove it.  Make it as easy as possible for new users to get a look at the product and make it even easier to solicit feedback.  If you can solicit feedback from within the product; code it in, as it is much easier than soliciting an email response (if you capture email information).  You will have very little time to hold a prospective users attention, so make the most of the situation.

We get it.  You’re smart. We’re smart. Now about the order?

Monitor situations where the support and development team gets into conflicts over technical details.  Is your team responding like a cheery English mouse or more like the soup nazi from Seinfeld?  Sales can and should help monitor the situation.  Think about it, for every 1 response you get about an issue, there could be 5 to 10 silently suffering.  Make sure you aren’t dismissive of technical objections on the way to an order.  Make sure the response from your company doesn’t make them look technically challenged.  After all, they are possible customers. The company goal is to sell product, not to show how smart we are, although we sometimes can get confused.

Be responsive.

Think of your product as being completely like an open source project without the need for contributors to do the hard work of coding features.  Get responses.  If someone makes a feature request; respond.  Listen, ask more questions, survey, and solicit responses.  If you are able to turn those responses into product changes, you’ve empowered those users into loyal users.

Communicate

I know it is the age or permissive marketing and spam, but it’s OK to send emails, especially if someone downloaded your product.   Pick up the phone and talk to those who respond via email or on your site.  Ask for a live chat via Skype or GoogleTalk with a customer who is having an issue.  Don’t worry as much about the finesse as the act itself.  Customers love to talk about their own experiences and not enough vendors reach out in friendly consultative ways.  After all, you are trying to improve the experience of using your product; not trying to necessarily close a deal.

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Brian and Code Complete Software, which markets and sells some of the world’s best development tools, is sponsoring 30 six-month StartupToDo.com Scholarships for startups creating/selling products to developers. To apply for a free scholarship, just email me (bob.walsh@startuptodo.com) with your startup’s URL or a brief non-proprietary description of what your startup will be selling.

You’re reading 5 Mistakes Developers make Selling to Developers from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Jim Rhoades
Founder
Crush Apps

In the article “How to be a successful iPhone developer”, Bob Walsh offered some thoughts on why apps succeed or fail. As a developer who has had an app in Apple’s app store for a few months now, I thought I’d add to the discussion with some hard data and thoughts on what I think I’ve done right, and what I could be doing better.

Ten months ago, I decided to learn to make an iPhone app because I wasn’t satisfied with any of the to do list and notes apps in the app store. All of the ones I tried were too complicated, or didn’t offer the features I wanted. So, I bought a couple of books and started learning objective-c and the iPhone programming API’s. It started off as an experiment, but I discovered that I really like developing software for the iOS platform.

In March I released my first app “Paperless“, which is used to make lists and checklists. My goal was to make it flexible and easy to use… something that just about anybody could find a use for. I’ll spare you the sales pitch though – if you want to find out more you can read about it on my website.

The first couple of months were slow in sales due to the fact that I didn’t have much time for marketing, but the people who did find it were generally very positive about it and provided good feedback. Over time I’ve made improvements based on that feedback, and my user base has grown steadily.

During May, I released “Paperless Lite”, a free version of the app to let people try it out before buying the full version. At the same time, I temporarily lowered the price of the full version to just $0.99 to generate more sales. Both of those things really helped, and after another small update 3 weeks later, I reached the number 3 spot in the Productivity category in the UK app store, and was doing okay in the U.S. app store as well.

User reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, and for most of July Paperless hovered around the #30 – #45 spot in the Productivity category in the U.S. At $1.99 per sale ($1.39 after Apple takes its 30 percent) that works out to around $100 – $150 a day. It’s not enough to meet my long term goal of being able to develop apps full time, but it’s a good start. A couple of Sundays ago, sales of my app brought in over $150 while I spent time with the family at the beach.

In the graphs below, you can see how offering the free version of Paperless helped to generate some sales – and how pricing adjustments have affected the number of sales and the income I’ve made. I can’t fully explain the first big spike on June 3rd. I released a new version then and that’s when it caught on in the UK. The popularity of it there only lasted a month, but luckily as sales in the UK dropped, sales in the U.S. picked up.

What I’m Doing Right

Some people have said that the app store is like the lottery. That, in order to do well, you have to get lucky with Apple featuring your app or placing you in their “New and Noteworthy” or “Staff Favorites” category. While that would certainly help (a lot) – it isn’t something I’m relying on. What I AM doing is:

Trying to make apps that are functional, easy to use, and look great… it’s the Apple way and it’s what customers expect. Some apps try to do too much, which leads to a complicated and cluttered user interface. With Paperless, I think I’ve done a pretty good job at keeping it simple and attractive, while offering a lot of functionality.

Enjoying what I do, and creating things out of the love for doing it – not out of trying to make a quick buck. I care more about my product and my users experiences with it, than I do about making money. I figure that if I have a good product that people really find useful – then the money will come.

Listening and responding to customers needs. I have a “Feedback” button in my app so that people can easily email me if they need help or want to offer suggestions. I’m open with customers, and am genuinely interested in knowing what they think could be done better in Paperless – and they appreciate that.

Constantly making improvements. I know that Paperless isn’t perfect, and there are a few key features (landscape mode!) that need to be added. I have an FAQ to let customers know what features I plan on adding in a future release – or at least offer some reasoning behind why a specific feature isn’t there.

Creating a recognizable brand for myself, that people trust. A few customers have said they can’t wait to see what I come up with next. So, once I do make another app, I know that I’ll have some interest in it from the beginning.

Always learning new things. I’m constantly reading Apple’s documentation, iOS development books and watching video tutorials to try and expand my knowledge.

What I Could Do Better

So, those are the things I think I’m doing right – but what about things I could do better, or that I’m not doing at all? There aren’t enough hours in each day to do everything I would like, and here are the big things I’ve neglected:

The Cloud. Users don’t like their data stuck on one device. They want to be able to view and edit their information on their computer as well as their phone and possibly their iPad. Not every app needs this, but for something like Paperless the ability to sync and share information would be very useful. I’d love to build a web service that synced with Paperless, along with a Mac OS X app and an iPad version – but, as a one person shop doing this in my spare time, those things are going to take a while.

Localization. While my app is available for purchase in any of the Apple app store regions, I haven’t taken the time (or spent the money) to have features within the app translated to other languages. Translating it to the biggest 3 or 4 non-English speaking markets could potentially double my income.

Marketing. If I’m not relying on a featured spot by Apple, then the only way I’m going to gain more customers is by reaching out in other ways. I need to spend a lot more time letting people know about my app, and in a way that sets it apart from the hundreds of other list/todo/notes apps in the app store. With so many other developers vying for attention, it’s hard to get coverage for your app on many of the app review sites or tech related news sites. I’m going to have to find ways to reach outside of the online Apple community.

In Steve Jobs’ presentation on iOS4 in April, he stated that over 50 million iPhones had been sold. If you add the number of iPod Touches to that, it’s over 85 million. The 3 million iPads and 1.7 million iPhone 4′s bring the total of iOS devices out there to around 90 million. That’s a huge market, even if you consider that some people own more than one device.

If I sold Paperless at the current price of $1.99 to be installed on just one half of one percent of those devices, I’d make roughly $600,000 (before taxes).

Surely there must be a way? I’m working towards that, and feeling optimistic…

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(Got something to share with the microISV/Startup community? Why not do a guest post for 47Hats? Email bob.walsh@47hats.com.)

You’re reading Paperless So Far – The Apple App Store from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

If there was ever any doubt that the “Pricing is Marketing” mantra of Sixteen Ventures is true, just look at the SaaS and Web App pricing related stories that have come out lately. From the positive, where RightNow used changes in pricing in an attempt to disrupt the status quo in the SaaS CRM world, to the extreme negative press generated by Zendesk – and the accompanying customer backlash – last week when they jacked up their prices. I’ll focus on the latter of those two examples in this post.

I’m going to lay it out plain and simple so there are no misunderstandings: you need to get your pricing as right as possible out of the gate – don’t just guess or make up numbers. Once you are in the market, you will learn new information, customer buying behavior, feature bundling problems, etc. This is like the Mike Tyson quote “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” This isn’t terrible, as long as you got it close in the beginning – but if you are off by a significant factor, or if you didn’t train to fight Mr. Tyson, then you are going to have a hard time changing your pricing without hurting your existing customer base, or you’re going to get knocked out as soon as the bell rings

Pricing is not static; rather, it is fluid over time, moving with market conditions, time in market, market segmentation, etc. This doesn’t mean it changes every day, or week, or month, but it is not something that you figure out once and then never think about again – until you need to make a huge adjustment. You want to avoid huge adjustments, and you can do that by getting your pricing as right as possible out of the gate and then monitoring it over time. Ensuring that your prices are part of an overall pricing strategy that is aligned with your overall marketing strategy is critical. It appears that Zendesk didn’t get their pricing close to right at first and then had to make some significant, sweeping changes; and they paid for it – and likely still are.

It is even more critical for startups that don’t have time in market and historical data to pull from to start with a solid Pricing Strategy. If you understand why you are developing the pricing that you are, you are more likely to get it right. Ask most startups what their pricing strategy goals are and some statistically significant amount will say something about “making sales.” Then they’ll ask what you mean. On our Pricing Page Tune-Up™ sign-up page, for example, we ask what your Pricing Page goals are; included selections are User Growth, Increased Sales, Lead Generation, Market Position, etc. Remember: Pricing is Marketing.

But many companies don’t get it even close to right at launch – likely because they neglected to develop or execute on a real pricing strategy. So what if they need to make a big change, like Zendesk did, and raise prices? Is it even possible to do this without a negative outcome? The answer is yes, but you need to have a strategy and execute according to plan. Some people will always be upset by a price increase – they will be vocal in their opposition. Let them vent and then let them move on. Have you successfully raised prices without causing a backlash? Please comment on this post and share your story!

Engage or Alienate

If you have a mailing list, a registered user base, or active customers using your app, you have what we refer to as a voluntarily captive audience; exploit it! When you need to raise prices, there are only two options with your users and customers: engage or alienate. Its your choice - I suggest the former. One method is to find your top users – the oldest active users – and get them to help you. Engage (there’s that word again) with them. For startups with a beta user base, this is your chance – the kids these days are calling this “customer development” – whatever the term is, get out and talk to your users and existing customers. Maybe even call them on the phone.

Find out what these folks want, if they’ll pay for it, what they’ll pay, how they’ll pay, etc. Just like anything, this should be executed according to a well thought out plan. Not only will you learn a lot while you engage the user base, you could even create evangelists. The more engaged and respected users and customers feel, the more they’ll be happy to help you – which is what you’re asking for.

The backlash from the Zendesk users was more likely that they felt betrayed and less about the actual pricing. Pricing is neither good nor bad – its empty – its all about perception and the betrayal likely clouded the perception of their customers (that, coincidentally, is very Zen-like itself). If Zendesk had actively recruited their customers to help or otherwise made sure that every customer knew something was going on with pricing, the customers might not have revolted in such a way. In fact, had Zendesk done this, they would have been made aware of some of the use cases that they should have known about, but obviously didn’t consider – the ones that lead to the 300% price increase some customers mentioned.

But to find out on a blog or via email after the fact that the prices are now 300% higher is a slap in the face. Consider that your current users (especially early adopters, beta testers, etc.) and customers want to feel special – like they’re in a club – and by telling outsiders first, you take away that special feeling of belonging that we all long for. At the end of the day, would Zendesk still have alienated and irritated a segment of their customer base? Sure. But it would have been a lot smaller and they would have had the rest of the customer base to defend them – rather than add the attack!

Grandfathering is NOT the Answer

Okay, so Zendesk admitted that they messed up with their price hike. They probably needed to do something to respond to the backlash, but what they did seems to further indicate that they really didn’t have a strategy going into this. What did they do? They “grandfathered” existing customers and are only applying the updated pricing to new customers. Let me make this very clear: “grandfathering” prices is not an acceptable alternative to having a good pricing strategy or failing to execute on it!

So, while the tactic of grandfathering prices might appease some of their customers, what is the cost – in real dollars, PR, position as the market leader, etc? Why would a company backpedal on something that was good – their new pricing? Ultimately, this all comes down to lack of a strategy, lack of preparation, and an overall inability to execute if they did have a plan. It shows they didn’t talk to anyone outside of perhaps some “star” clients and now it shows that the new customers are going to get the “bad” pricing. Pricing is Marketing and what message is grandfathering sending?

Remember, it isn’t like this grandfathering is a secret – especially when the CEO posts this to their blog and it gets picked up by Techcrunch and every other tech news site – exactly Zendesk’s target audience, by the way. It is clear that those who were members on or before 5/18/2010 paid one price and anyone else that joins after that date has to pay more. Period. What a great way to entice new customers to join, right?

Some commenters on the Zendesk site and Twitter said that they were talking to Zendesk about becoming customers in the days leading to the price hike and were not told about the pending changes nor given the option of locking in “legacy pricing.” Way to start that relationship off on the right foot! I imagine sign-ups slowed immediately following the announcement and will be slow to come back until this gets swept under the virtual rug. Which it will, but that 2Q update to investors will be interesting, to say the least.

While the majority of this post has been talking about how to engage existing customers and users, it is very important to consider the impact of these changes on new customers. Does your value proposition correlate to the new prices? Obviously Zendesk didn’t talk to their customers to get to this point so by continuing with the pricing, are they going against the customers’ value perception? What about trust – are new customers going to trust that they too will be grandfathered on the next huge price increase?

It should be obvious that you just don’t want to get to this point. It is much better to be transparent leading up to the pricing change than during the backlash and accompanying backpedaling. Forced transparency is ugly! But what happens if you do find yourself in this situation? How should you handle it? There are a lot of different ways to work with this. Keeping in mind that Pricing is Marketing, you want to make sure you clearly understand the Value Perception from the eyes of the customers who will pay the higher price. Nobody wants to pay a higher price just for the privilege of doing so. What’s in it for them? Can we give them something more?

Perhaps you could consider one of the following if you must raise prices and are backed into a corner where grandfathering seems to make sense:

• Grandfather privately – reach out to the legacy customers and tell them that their existing pricing will be in effect for some amount of time
• Offer to let new customers lock-in “legacy pricing” for some amount of time if they sign-up in the next 30 days
• Add value to coincide with the increase in price – this is the preferred option – is there a much-requested feature or service you can dedicate some resources to work on in an effort to appease them?

So, if grandfathering isn’t the answer, what is? Strategy - plain and simple.

Intentional Alienation – or – Firing Unprofitable Customers

There is the reality that sometimes it is just wise to get rid of customers that cost more than they are worth – a strategy that was undertaken by Ning when it dropped its use of Freemium. Raising prices to force low-profit or high-cost customers to leave your company and hopefully bring their troubles to a competitor is a valid strategy. Just be prepared for the backlash! From what I’ve seen, it is usually the low-end customers that do the most complaining – they have more time to do that sort of thing which is likely why they are low end clients.

They will be loud, vocal, and spread the bad word everywhere they can. When they do, you know you did the right thing – now they will move to your competitor and be unprofitable for them. Win – Win. In dealing with them, it is wise to just let them vent and then let them move on. If you have a strategy in place and know that this will happen, it is easier to deal with them and you won’t be as tempted to give in to the noise.

But to be clear, Zendesk obviously didn’t just irritate the low-end customers – they hit everyone equally hard. Again, this is something you will want to avoid. By having a complete pricing strategy at the beginning, you will know who your target audience is and perhaps save yourself from having to deal with a similar mess.

The great thing is, with SaaS or Web Apps, you can actually create different versions of your application for different target market segments – in this case low-end and high-end customers – with the same code-base! This is why we advocate decoupling the pricing strategy from revenue model in SaaS and why single-instance, multi-tenancy – or everyone using the same version of the app – is a key component of real Software-as-a-Service.

A great example of a this is the company behind SendPepper and OfficeAutoPilot. They have one marketing automation SaaS product that, through feature configuration and skinning, serves two very different market segments. Nothing like being able to send people to “the competition” and having that company be… you. Behold, the power of single-instance multi-tenancy in SaaS that few companies really understand and take advantage of.

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Lincoln Murphy (@lincolnmurphy on Twitter) is Managing Director of Sixteen Ventures, where he works with SaaS & Web App companies on Business Strategy, Revenue Modeling, Distribution and Pricing Strategy – check out the new Pricing Page Tune-Up™ service for on-demand Pricing Page feedback and improvement recommendations.

You’re reading If Our Prices Are Wrong, We’ll Just Change Them Later from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.