This is Part 5 of the 5-part series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches. Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he'll proudly describe his stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun. Then he'll describe his cutting-edge platform — cloud-based, scalable, distributed version control, continuous integration, one-click-deploy. Maybe you'll even get a wobbly demo. "Great," I always exclaim, sharing the thrill of modern software development, "so how will people find out about this brilliant website?" Cue sound of cicadas buzzing. (Or "crickets chirping" but in Texas the cicadas are louder.)

Four uncomfortable seconds later, a smile breaks across the founder's face. "Here it comes," I think, "there is a strategy after all!" Except the "strategy" is a tirade of drivel I've heard so many times I can lip-sync as the words spew out the founder's mouth:

"We're going to A/B-test AdWords campaigns until we discover our hook." "We're going to A/B-test our landing pages until the right message appears." "We're better than everyone else at SEO." "A friend of mine knows how to get popular on Twitter." "We're going to get reviews on blogs." "We're going to start with our own network and grow it from there." "We're going to use an affiliate program so our customers sell it for us." "We're putting a 'Retweet' button inside the product to encourage viral growth."

The obvious problem is that every new startup on Earth says exactly these things. Nowadays the "strategy" above sounds the same as:

"We'll have a website so people can read about us." "We'll have an email address so people can communicate with us without picking up the phone."

Yes, you're going to do those things, but since millions of other people are doing that too, you're still invisible. Visibility-fail. Anyone-gives-a-crap-fail. OK, so what can you do to rise above the cacophony that is the Internet? Here come a few ideas; leave more and discuss in the comments! Infection built-in, not bolt-on WhenBusy is a bootstrapped startup that lets people schedule meetings with you in currently-available time-slots without you having to share your calendar [disclosure: I'm an advisor]. For example, here's what the founder's (Josh Baer) availability looks like:

Instead of trading emails with lists of available time-slots, Josh just sends the link to this page and the other person uses the product to schedule a meeting. This is the viral step: Having trialed the tool, the stranger might use it herself, then more people find out about it, and so forth. Note that at no point did I say "a button lets people 'like' this on Facebook." I know of no companies who have "gone viral" because of buttons. Buttons are good — why not use them? — but they don't make your product intrinsically viral like WhenBusy. Which is OK — not all products need to be viral! But if it's not viral you still need a killer method of finding customers, and if it is supposed to be viral it better be encoded in the DNA of the application, not bolted on as an afterthought. Frightening honesty Balsamiq Mockups is a ludicrously popular wire-framing tool. The software is good — don't get me wrong — but what sets Peldi (the founder) apart isn't prescient feature selection or bug-free releases, it's his startling transparency. He published revenue figures even when they were still pathetic, he pledged loudly and eagerly to give away lots of free copies to non-profits, and he revealed all his (remarkably effective) marketing strategies (updated here) even though it meant competitors would learn them too. He didn't just have an "authentic voice," he made public promises. That's compelling. He didn't just "tell it like it is," he gave up his marketing secrets and opened his company books. That's newsworthy. This isn't merely "being human" and all that claptrap, it's almost too much honesty, like when you ask someone how it's going and they tell you about a weird pustule on their middle toe that's been oozing since last Wednesday. In a world where everyone and their brother is "joining the conversation" (oops, I use that phrase constantly!), you have to truly bare your soul if you want to compete on the transparency front. It's not for everyone, and I'm not suggesting it ought to be, but there's no sense in half-assing it. Making Oprah cry The number one mistake founders make when trying to generate press is talking about what the company does rather than telling a compelling story. Does Twitter get press when it helps Iranians fight an illegitimate government or when it creates a new internal IT process to increase up-time? Does Apple win the hearts (yes, hearts) of millions because of their obsession with design or because of their development APIs? Does 37signals have over three million users because their software is "better" than the competition, or is it because they motivate designers and entrepreneurs through their writing and philosophy? Without a powerful narrative, your chances of getting big press and enthusiastic users who spread the word for you approach zero as a limit. It took me years to figure this out at Smart Bear. At first when someone asked what the Smart Bear tool suite was, I would say: Smart Bear makes data-mining tools for version control systems. It's a description so esoteric that, although accurate, not even a hardcore geek would have any idea what it is, much less why it's useful. Years later, when it was clear that code review software became our sole focus, I got better at describing it: You know how Word has "track changes" where you can make modifications and comments and show them to someone else? We do that for software developers, integrating with their tools instead of Word and working within their standard practices. Better, yes, and for a while I thought I nailed it, but still no press. Eventually (thanks to helpful journalists) I realized that I was still just describing what it is rather than why anyone cares. I left it up to the reader to figure out why she should get excited. Eventually I developed stories like the following, each tuned to a certain category of listener. Here's the one for the journalists: It's always fun to tell a journalist like you that we enable software developers to review each other's code because your reaction is always: "Wait a minute, you're seriously telling me they don't do this already?" The idea of editing and review is so embedded in your industry you can't imagine life without it, and you're right! You know better than anyone how another set of eyeballs finds important problems. Of course two heads are better than one, but developers traditionally work in isolation, mainly because there's a dearth of tools which help teams bridge the social gap of an ocean, integrate with incumbent tools, and are lightweight enough to still be fun and relevant. That's what we do: Bring the benefits of peer review to software development. Now the reason for excitement is clear: We're transforming how software is created, applying the age-old techniques of peer review to an industry that needs it but where it's traditionally too hard to do. That's a story. It took me five years to figure out (a) I needed a story and (b) what the story was. It's hard. But one story beats a pile of AdWords A/B tests. Advertising → [transmogrification] → Revenue Yeah yeah, nowadays marketing is about "relationships" and "authority" and other things which cost time but not money. It's all I hear about anymore. But don't be so quick to throw out the idea of spending money to make money. Advertising isn't dead; you can still buy eyeballs. I'm not talking about "triage" strategies like buying AdWords linking to a page of ads, I'm just pointing out that most companies on Earth don't depend on "joining the conversation" to acquire customers. It sounds simple: The average cost of acquiring a customer is $C (advertising, sales, support, doing demos) and the lifetime revenue you get from that customer is $R, so if C < R you have a business. C can be driven down with cheaper ads, better lead quality, a more efficient conversion rate, and straightforward trials with minimal tech support. Of course it's not that simple, and many business plans I've seen (unintentionally) omit many of the true costs of acquisition. Read this great interview with Sean Ellis at VentureHacks for a great discussion of how to seek a repeatable, profitable model where C < R, and then optimize and grow. It's a little heavy on the "huge VC-style company" strategy for my style, but you'll come away with a strong perspective on how to build a machine that turns advertising dollars into (a greater number of) revenue dollars. Celebrity Championship I already beat you to death about how celebrity endorsement can serve as an untouchable competitive advantage, and it's also an answer to how to burst out of the dull roar of Internet marketing. Take me. I'm no Seth Godin, but consider what I could do if I were a co-founder in a new software development tool company:

I have personal relationships with the CEOs and other influencers at hundreds of software development companies. During ideation, they would brainstorm. During beta-testing they would be guinea pigs. After release of v3.0 some would be ready to become paying customers. I have relationships with editors of nearly all software development publications (on-line and off); I've already published articles with them. Some would help vet our stories, some would publish our articles. I've bought ads in every major (and quite a few minor) software development websites, magazines, newsletters, conferences, and webinars. So when it's time to advertise, we'll come in with the right message for the audience and probably cut a deal. If you read this blog you're probably a software developer, so even just a few mentions here might be more powerful than $10,000 in A/B tested Google AdWords. If we were trying to raise money, my previous success would not only get us the initial meetings but would be a significant bump in our chance of raising it.

While everyone else is mucking about with a new blog, blasting their LinkedIn network with pleading emails, and paying out the nose to test AdWord variants, we're years ahead in the marketing war. Let's generate more ideas Share the love in the comments section. Let's come up with more ways to reach customers that isn't the same as everyone else.

This is Part 5 of the 5-part series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches. Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he'll proudly describe his stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun. Then he'll describe his cutting-edge platform — cloud-based, scalable, distributed version control, continuous integration, one-click-deploy. Maybe you'll even get a wobbly demo. "Great," I always exclaim, sharing the thrill of modern software development, "so how will people find out about this brilliant website?" Cue sound of cicadas buzzing. (Or "crickets chirping" but in Texas the cicadas are louder.)

Four uncomfortable seconds later, a smile breaks across the founder's face. "Here it comes," I think, "there is a strategy after all!" Except the "strategy" is a tirade of drivel I've heard so many times I can lip-sync as the words spew out the founder's mouth:

"We're going to A/B-test AdWords campaigns until we discover our hook." "We're going to A/B-test our landing pages until the right message appears." "We're better than everyone else at SEO." "A friend of mine knows how to get popular on Twitter." "We're going to get reviews on blogs." "We're going to start with our own network and grow it from there." "We're going to use an affiliate program so our customers sell it for us." "We're putting a 'Retweet' button inside the product to encourage viral growth."

The obvious problem is that every new startup on Earth says exactly these things. Nowadays the "strategy" above sounds the same as:

"We'll have a website so people can read about us." "We'll have an email address so people can communicate with us without picking up the phone."

Yes, you're going to do those things, but since millions of other people are doing that too, you're still invisible. Visibility-fail. Anyone-gives-a-crap-fail. OK, so what can you do to rise above the cacophony that is the Internet? Here come a few ideas; leave more and discuss in the comments! Infection built-in, not bolt-on WhenBusy is a bootstrapped startup that lets people schedule meetings with you in currently-available time-slots without you having to share your calendar [disclosure: I'm an advisor]. For example, here's what the founder's (Josh Baer) availability looks like:

Instead of trading emails with lists of available time-slots, Josh just sends the link to this page and the other person uses the product to schedule a meeting. This is the viral step: Having trialed the tool, the stranger might use it herself, then more people find out about it, and so forth. Note that at no point did I say "a button lets people 'like' this on Facebook." I know of no companies who have "gone viral" because of buttons. Buttons are good — why not use them? — but they don't make your product intrinsically viral like WhenBusy. Which is OK — not all products need to be viral! But if it's not viral you still need a killer method of finding customers, and if it is supposed to be viral it better be encoded in the DNA of the application, not bolted on as an afterthought. Frightening honesty Balsamiq Mockups is a ludicrously popular wire-framing tool. The software is good — don't get me wrong — but what sets Peldi (the founder) apart isn't prescient feature selection or bug-free releases, it's his startling transparency. He published revenue figures even when they were still pathetic, he pledged loudly and eagerly to give away lots of free copies to non-profits, and he revealed all his (remarkably effective) marketing strategies (updated here) even though it meant competitors would learn them too. He didn't just have an "authentic voice," he made public promises. That's compelling. He didn't just "tell it like it is," he gave up his marketing secrets and opened his company books. That's newsworthy. This isn't merely "being human" and all that claptrap, it's almost too much honesty, like when you ask someone how it's going and they tell you about a weird pustule on their middle toe that's been oozing since last Wednesday. In a world where everyone and their brother is "joining the conversation" (oops, I use that phrase constantly!), you have to truly bare your soul if you want to compete on the transparency front. It's not for everyone, and I'm not suggesting it ought to be, but there's no sense in half-assing it. Making Oprah cry The number one mistake founders make when trying to generate press is talking about what the company does rather than telling a compelling story. Does Twitter get press when it helps Iranians fight an illegitimate government or when it creates a new internal IT process to increase up-time? Does Apple win the hearts (yes, hearts) of millions because of their obsession with design or because of their development APIs? Does 37signals have over three million users because their software is "better" than the competition, or is it because they motivate designers and entrepreneurs through their writing and philosophy? Without a powerful narrative, your chances of getting big press and enthusiastic users who spread the word for you approach zero as a limit. It took me years to figure this out at Smart Bear. At first when someone asked what the Smart Bear tool suite was, I would say: Smart Bear makes data-mining tools for version control systems. It's a description so esoteric that, although accurate, not even a hardcore geek would have any idea what it is, much less why it's useful. Years later, when it was clear that code review software became our sole focus, I got better at describing it: You know how Word has "track changes" where you can make modifications and comments and show them to someone else? We do that for software developers, integrating with their tools instead of Word and working within their standard practices. Better, yes, and for a while I thought I nailed it, but still no press. Eventually (thanks to helpful journalists) I realized that I was still just describing what it is rather than why anyone cares. I left it up to the reader to figure out why she should get excited. Eventually I developed stories like the following, each tuned to a certain category of listener. Here's the one for the journalists: It's always fun to tell a journalist like you that we enable software developers to review each other's code because your reaction is always: "Wait a minute, you're seriously telling me they don't do this already?" The idea of editing and review is so embedded in your industry you can't imagine life without it, and you're right! You know better than anyone how another set of eyeballs finds important problems. Of course two heads are better than one, but developers traditionally work in isolation, mainly because there's a dearth of tools which help teams bridge the social gap of an ocean, integrate with incumbent tools, and are lightweight enough to still be fun and relevant. That's what we do: Bring the benefits of peer review to software development. Now the reason for excitement is clear: We're transforming how software is created, applying the age-old techniques of peer review to an industry that needs it but where it's traditionally too hard to do. That's a story. It took me five years to figure out (a) I needed a story and (b) what the story was. It's hard. But one story beats a pile of AdWords A/B tests. Advertising → [transmogrification] → Revenue Yeah yeah, nowadays marketing is about "relationships" and "authority" and other things which cost time but not money. It's all I hear about anymore. But don't be so quick to throw out the idea of spending money to make money. Advertising isn't dead; you can still buy eyeballs. I'm not talking about "triage" strategies like buying AdWords linking to a page of ads, I'm just pointing out that most companies on Earth don't depend on "joining the conversation" to acquire customers. It sounds simple: The average cost of acquiring a customer is $C (advertising, sales, support, doing demos) and the lifetime revenue you get from that customer is $R, so if C < R you have a business. C can be driven down with cheaper ads, better lead quality, a more efficient conversion rate, and straightforward trials with minimal tech support. Of course it's not that simple, and many business plans I've seen (unintentionally) omit many of the true costs of acquisition. Read this great interview with Sean Ellis at VentureHacks for a great discussion of how to seek a repeatable, profitable model where C < R, and then optimize and grow. It's a little heavy on the "huge VC-style company" strategy for my style, but you'll come away with a strong perspective on how to build a machine that turns advertising dollars into (a greater number of) revenue dollars. Celebrity Championship I already beat you to death about how celebrity endorsement can serve as an untouchable competitive advantage, and it's also an answer to how to burst out of the dull roar of Internet marketing. Take me. I'm no Seth Godin, but consider what I could do if I were a co-founder in a new software development tool company:

I have personal relationships with the CEOs and other influencers at hundreds of software development companies. During ideation, they would brainstorm. During beta-testing they would be guinea pigs. After release of v3.0 some would be ready to become paying customers. I have relationships with editors of nearly all software development publications (on-line and off); I've already published articles with them. Some would help vet our stories, some would publish our articles. I've bought ads in every major (and quite a few minor) software development websites, magazines, newsletters, conferences, and webinars. So when it's time to advertise, we'll come in with the right message for the audience and probably cut a deal. If you read this blog you're probably a software developer, so even just a few mentions here might be more powerful than $10,000 in A/B tested Google AdWords. If we were trying to raise money, my previous success would not only get us the initial meetings but would be a significant bump in our chance of raising it.

While everyone else is mucking about with a new blog, blasting their LinkedIn network with pleading emails, and paying out the nose to test AdWord variants, we're years ahead in the marketing war. Let's generate more ideas Share the love in the comments section. Let's come up with more ways to reach customers that isn't the same as everyone else.

This is Part 2 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.

What if someone copies your awesome business idea? About twenty people on Answers OnStartups have asked this question in one form or another: When I meet an angel investor, he may ask: "What if a big company copies your idea and develops the same website as yours after your website goes public?" How can I answer this question? No, the question is: What are doing now knowing that a big company will copy your idea? No, wait, the real question is: What are you going to do when another smart, scrappy startup copies it, and gets $10m in funding, and is thrice featured on TechCrunch? No, wait, I'm sorry, the real question is: What are you going to do when there are four totally free, open-source competitors? No wait, I forgot, actually the question is: What happens when employee #2 makes off with your code and roadmap and marketing data and customer list, moves to Bolivia, and starts selling your stuff world-wide at one-tenth the price? The good news: There are good answers to these questions! The bad news: Almost no one I talk to has good answers, but they think they do. And that's fatal, because it means they're not working towards remedying that situation. Which means when one of the above scenarios happens, it will be too late. The first step is admitting you have a problem. Last week I detailed the most common misconceptions about competitive advantages, so go read that if you haven't already. To summarize: Anything that can be copied will be copied, including features, marketing copy, and pricing. Anything you read on popular blogs is also read by everyone else. You don't have an "edge" just because you're passionate, hard-working, or "lean." The only real competitive advantage is that which cannot be copied and cannot be bought. Like what? Insider information They say the only way to consistently make money on Wall Street is to have insider information. Unfortunately it's not a joke, and although it's illegal (and people occasionally go to jail for it), those in the know will tell you it's the norm.

Fortunately, using intimate knowledge of an industry and the specific pain points within an industry is a perfectly legal unfair advantage for a startup. Here's a real-world example of how this advantage manifests. Adriana has been a psychiatrist for 10 years; she understands the ins and outs of that business. During a lull in her practice she got a serendipitous opportunity to shift gears completely and ended up leading software product development teams.  (Turns out that for big-business project management it's more valuable to be a sensible thinker and counselor than to be an expert in debugging legacy C++ code.) Now Adriana has an epiphany: Traditional practice-management software for psychiatrists totally sucks; she knows both the pain points and the existing software first-hand. But now she has the vision and ability to design her own software, capitalizing on modern trends (e.g. a web application instead of cumbersome installed applications) and new interpretations of HIPPA regulation (which allows web-based applications to store medical records like patient histories). Adriana holds a unique position: Expert in the industry, able to "geek out" with her target customer, yet capable of leading a product team. Even if someone else saw Adriana's product after the fact, it's almost impossible to find a person — or even assemble a team — who has more integrated knowledge. At best, they could copy. Of course by then Alicia has moved on to version two. Single-minded, uncompromising obsession with One Thing A popular comment on the previous post was that a "Unique Feature" could be a competitive advantage in some circumstances. Some examples of a feature being a company's primary advantage are:

Apple compromises everything in the name of design. Their products are over-priced, buggy, lacking features, and every experience I've had with their tech support has been atrocious, but man their stuff looks and feels nice! (I'm typing this on an Air and there's an iPhone in my pocket, so no Apple fan-boy mail please.) Google's search algorithm was just better, therefore they won the eyeballs, therefore they were able to monetize. Sure Bing and Yahoo are good now, but the advantage lasted long enough. Photodex is a little company you've never heard of I worked for in Austin in the 90's. We made an image browser with thumbnail previews so you didn't have to open each file individually to see what it was. (In the 90's, y'all, before that was built into all the operating systems!) Our advantage was speed. Not the best, not the most stable, didn't read the most formats, didn't have the most features, just "fastest." For many users of that product, speed wins; Photodex now makes tens of millions of dollars a year, and "speed" is still the only point on which they will not compromise.

However it's not enough for a feature to merely be unique (like my mini-browser) because it's still easily duplicated. Indeed, most of the innovations we've made at Smart Bear in the art of code review have already been duplicated by both commercial and open-source competitors. Rather, this requires unwavering devotion to the One Thing that is (a) hard, and (b) you refuse to lose, no matter what. Google has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on their search algorithm, the single biggest focus of the company even today, a decade after they decided that was their One Thing. They refuse to be beaten by competitors or black-hat hackers, whatever it takes. 37signals can build simple — almost trivial — software and earn three million customers because they absolutely will not compromise on their philosophy of simplicity, transparency, and owning their own company, and that's something millions of people respect and support. Competitors could build trivial web applications too (as Joel Spolsky is fond of saying, "Their software is just a bunch of text fields!"), but without the single-minded obsession it's just software with no features. To remain un-copyable, your One Thing needs to be not just central to your existence, but also difficult to achieve. Google's algorithm, combined with the hardware and software to implement a search of trillions of websites in 0.2 seconds, is hard to replicate; it took hundreds (thousands?) of really smart people at Microsoft and Yahoo years to catch up. 37signals' ranting platform — a blog with 131k followers and a best-selling book — is nearly impossible to build even with a full-time army of insightful writers. "Being hard to do" is still a true advantage, particularly when you devote your primary energy to it. P.S. For more, here are detailed examples of how this mindset also sets up your sales pitch. Personal authority Chris Brogan commands $22,000 for a single day of consulting in an industry (social media marketing) where all the information you need is already online and free. Joel Spolsky makes millions of dollars off bug tracking — an industry with hundreds of competitors and little innovation. My company Smart Bear sells the most expensive tool of its kind. How did we earn this powerful authority, and how can you earn this overwhelming advantage? I'm a great example of someone who wasn't an authority on anything, but built that authority over time to the point where now my company (Smart Bear) is untouchable as the leader in both revenue and ideas in the area of peer code review. Not only was I not an expert on code review prior to building a code review tool, I wasn't even an expert on software development processes generally! I didn't give lectures, I didn't have a blog, I didn't have a column in Dr. Dobbs magazine, and most interesting of all, I didn't even know "code review" was going to be what made the company successful! Unfortunately all this "authority" crap takes years of expensive effort, and even then success is probably due as much to luck as anything else, so is it worthwhile? Yes, exactly because it takes years of effort and a little luck. Authority cannot be purchased. You can't raise VC money and then "have authority" in a year. A big company cannot just decide they want to be the thought-leaders in their field. Even a pack of hyper-intelligent geeks cannot automatically become authorities because it's not about how well you can code. But how does authority convert to revenue? Here's one tiny example: I give talks on peer code review at conferences. My competition pays thousands of dollars for a booth, then spends thousands advertising to attendees begging them to come to that booth, then gives sales pitches at the booth to uninterested passersby who are also being bombarded by other pitches and distracted by the general hubbub. Whereas, because I'm a known authority on code review and software development, I get to talk for an entire hour to a captive, undistracted group of 100 people, self-selected as interested in code review. After the talk typically 5-20 people want to chat one-on-one. Some head straight to the booth to get a demo; for many I give a private demo of the product on sofas in the hallway. It's not unusual to get $10,000-$50,000 in sales over the next three months from people who saw me at that talk. That's just one example!  Now add to that: What's the effect of a blog that tens of thousands of people read? What's the effect on sales of my writing the book that's the modern authority of code review? Authority is expensive and time-consuming to earn, no doubt. But it's also an overwhelming, untouchable competitive advantage. (P.S. I'm hoping that the authority I'm slowly earning from this blog will help when I launch my next venture. That's not why I blog, but I certainly will leverage it when the time comes!) (P.P.S. I apologize for blatantly abusing the word "authority," considering I just lambasted everyone who does things like that.) The Dream Team The tech startup world is littered with famous killer teams: Gates & Allen, Steve & Steve, Page & Brin, Fried & DHH. In each case, the founders were super-smart, had complimentary skill sets, worked together well (or well enough to get to important success milestones), and as a team represented a unique, powerful, and (in retrospect) unstoppable force. Of course that's easy to see in retrospect, and retrospect is a terrible teacher, but the principle can work for any startup, especially when your goals are more modest than being the next Google. Take the success of ITWatchDogs, the company I helped bootstrap and eventually sell (before Smart Bear). The elements of our Dream Team were obvious from the start:

Varied skillsets. One experienced startup/business/salesman (Gerry), one proven software developer (me), one proven hardware developer (Michael). Common vision. We agreed what the product ought to be and that the ultimate goal of the company was to sell it. Insider knowledge. Gerry had done another successful startup in the same space, I had deep experience with the language and tools for embedded software, and Michael had decades of experience building inexpensive circuits and processors.

Of course a Dream Team doesn't guarantee success but it significantly reduces the risk of the startup, and furthermore is difficult for the competition to duplicate. This is especially true when someone on the team is already successful in their field, e.g. with a massively successful blog or a big startup success under their belt or a ridiculous rolodex. Since those are the kinds of competitive advantages that can't be bought or consistently created, having that person on the team is by proxy a killer advantage. P.S. This is the primary competitive advantage in a new startup I'm working on right now (to be announced soon), so shortly you'll see another example of this theory and — better yet! — you and I both will witness over the subsequent months whether or not this really resulted in a killer advantage! (Yes of course I'll share details!) (The right) Celebrity endorsement Hiten Shah's third company is KISSMetrics. On the surface, it's yet another "marketing metrics" company. This is a crowded, mature market with hundreds of competitors in every combination of large/small, expensive/mid/cheap/free, and product/service/hybrid. But Hiten has something none of those competitors has: Investors and mentors who are celebrities in exactly the market he's targeting. Folks like Dave McClure, Sean Ellis, and Eric Ries, all of whom not only help via conference call but actively promote KISSMetrics on their blogs, Twitter, and personal appearances. How much advertising will it take for competitors to overcome Hiten's endorsements and exposure?  Even if a competitor also wanted celebrity endorsement, these guys are taken, and in any field there's a limited number of widely-known and respected authorities. Many competitors have more features than KISSMetrics has. I can see the sales pitch now... The customer objects: "Gee it would be nice to have all those features," and Hiten responds "Well not really, because Dave, Sean, and Eric all say that those features are actually distractions and don't add to your bottom line. Our features are the right ones, as evidenced by these 20 companies that have shown increases in revenue." Just on the basis of these advisors, Hiten will get hundreds if not thousands of customers. You can't buy that kind of jumpstart, not even for millions of dollars, because it's not about faceless leads who saw KISSMetrics in an ad, it's people who trust Hiten because of his association with other people they already trust. P.S. If you're raising money, investors love to see a co-founder or even just an advisor who has been successful before. The VC game is more lemming-like than most care to admit. Existing customers ...or as Frank Rizzo says: Open your ears, jackass! Everyone you've ever sold to (and those who trialed but abandoned) possess the most valuable market research imaginable, and it's the one thing a new competitor absolutely will not have. This is kind of a cheat, because everyone says "I listen to my customers," which (nowadays) is just as bullshit as "We're passionate," but it's true that if you're actively learning from your customers and you never stop moving, creating, innovating, and learning, that puts you ahead of most companies in the world. As a company becomes successful it gains momentum, which means that it's going in one direction with one philosophy. Like physical momentum, change becomes harder to affect. It's logical; for example at Smart Bear we have 35,000 users, so making a drastic change to the user interface or typical workflow would mean too much retraining, even if the end result is better. Even "cool, agile" companies like 37signals are trapped. They've been so clear and confident in their philosophy of "do less," they cannot go after markets where "less" is not more but, actually, just less. For example, with more than a few sales people in a traditional sales organization it's impossible to use Highrise — the folks-of-many-signal believe pipeline reports and geographic domains and integrated campaign management are unnecessary complications, but actually it's Highrise that is unnecessary. Of course the world is changing, and in particular your customers are changing. Normally this leaves room for the next competitor, but if you're already entrenched you can leverage your existing status, insider knowledge, and revenue stream as long as you're willing to change too. You have more money, you're better known, you have existing happy customers to help spread the word, you have employees to build new things, and you have more experience with what customers actually do and actually need, which means you should have the best insight. Any new competitor would kill for just one of these advantages. If you're not using them, how silly is that? Zoho made exactly this argument to explain why they're not terribly worried that Microsoft is now a direct competitor: Companies don't get killed by competition, they usually find creative ways to commit suicide. Office 2010 will be the end of Zoho, if we stop innovating, stop being nimble and flexible in our business model. Then again, if we stop all that, Zoho will die anyway, no Office 2010 needed to do the job. 37signals is trapped inside their self-imposed philosophy, but you don't have to be. Go git 'em Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but it's still sucks when someone does it to you. Of course you can still battle it out in the marketplace, but you need something that can't be duplicated, something they could never beat you on, then hang your hat on that and don't look back. Don't despair if you don't have an unfair advantage yet. I didn't either when I started Smart Bear! But I built toward having some, and eventually earned it. What else? What other competitive advantages can't be easily copied, or if they are copied it doesn't matter? Leave a comment and join the conversation.

I just reviewed several hundred startup pitches for Capital Factory. Most were on paper and video; 20 were invited to pitch in person.

Interesting patterns emerged:

Everyone makes the same classes of error. Those who avoided just one of those errors stood out in the crowd. These are problems with the business concept or the founder's attitude, not specific to raising angel money.

You're probably making a lot of these errors too. Not that I blame you! After all, these became clear to me only after seeing hundreds of applications; you don't have the luxury of that perspective. So for the next few weeks I'm doing a series on these mistakes and what to do about them.  This post serves as a hyperlinked table of contents, so either bookmark this page or subscribe by email or RSS to get notified when new articles get posted. Here's the list:

Invalid competitive advantages (coming soon...) "Superior SEO" and "unique features" are not competitive advantages. Lacking an unfair advantage (coming soon...) You need one killer advantage that no one on Earth can beat you on. ('Cause you might get beaten on everything else!) No one said they'd buy it (coming soon...) You don't need statistically-significant studies before you begin, but it's astonishing how many founders blaze ahead before they've found even a single person willing to give them money. Incorrect positioning against competition (coming soon...) The two faults here are opposites: Believing that uniqueness means competition doesn't exist, or defining yourself by the competition instead of constructing your own message. No significant route to customers (coming soon...) If your marketing strategy is to run A/B tests and build RSS subscribers, you've already lost.

There's also this list, equally common but I didn't feel the urge to write an entire blog post on each one:

Unable to describe the company in 60 seconds. We've all heard of the elevator pitch, but when asked to produce it almost no one succeeded. This is important whether or not you're raising money because it means you understand your customers and why they buy your stuff. Building for yourself instead of the market. "Scratching your own itch" is how many great ideas begin, but it's not a business strategy. Often you assume your customer is the same as you — sees the problem the same way, wants to solve it your way, and wants to pay for it. But you're explicitly not like your customers; for one thing, you have enough initiative and insight to quit your job to start a company. It's easy to let your idiosyncratic preconceptions prevent you from observing what the larger market will accept. Pretending your faults don't exist. You have all sorts of shortcomings: First startup, inexperienced, ignorant about how "sales" works, buggy software, whatever. None of it's a problem if you're willing to acknowledge and cope with it, but if you persist in lying to me and your customers about it, that's a problem. (And a lie by omission is twice the lie.) Don't know what you don't know. I don't care that your resume doesn't prepare you for a startup — mine didn't either! But if your answer to any question is "How do I know? I just do," then I know right away you're not only ignorant but incapable of fixing that ignorance. How do I know this will result in your business drifting aimlessly until you finally run out of money? I just do.

Stay tuned!  The first post in the series goes up Monday.

You probably think of "tech support" as the bottom of the food chain. "Shit flows downhill" and all that. After all:

Tech support deals with insane customers. Tech support answers the phone; a job even salesmen don't want. Tech support keeps angry customers at bay while having no power to effect change.

Yep, that sounds lowly. Dismal too — how would you like to deal with an irate voice screaming at you when you know how to fix the problem but lack the authority to do it? This is a masochistic job for a poor slob with no other job prospects, right? If this is your attitude, your conception of tech support is completely backwards and you're missing out on important channels for marketing, product development, and sales. The unexpected face of your company We've all been jarred by someone's voice not matching their picture. Take English footballer David Beckham, the quintessential picture of manly sportif — washboard abs, ex-captain of the English national team, and married to Posh Spice. But then he opens his mouth. It's like Kermit the Frog got kicked in the balls. (Oh, sorry UK folk, I mean kicked in the bollocks.) It's so unexpected it's the only thing you remember. Of the 3,204,523 pub conversations where someone said "Have you heard him speak?" maybe only 17 could tell you what he actually said. You assume your home page is the public face of your company, but what happens when you open your mouth? What happens when your bullet points collide with your behavior? For most of your customers, tech support is the only human interaction they'll have with you. Are you really going to leave that up to your worst-treated, least-paid, least-qualified employees? Tech support is sales At Smart Bear we made millions of dollars in both individual and enterprise sales without "sales." Well, at least without the usual definition of "sales" — a collection of processes, personalities, and management single-mindedly focussed on hauling in revenue on a quarterly schedule. How did we get six-figure deals without playing golf or using Salesforce? Simple: Our tech support was sales. You could say the purpose of tech support is to answer questions or to unstick people who are confused, but I say the purpose of tech support is to make your customers fantastic at their jobs, which happen to involve your product. (Yes, I'm flagrantly paraphrasing the legendary Kathy Sierra, but the idea applies as much to tech support as to product development.) So this means you don't just help them locate a command in the menubar, you find out what they're trying to accomplish and help them do that. You don't just explain a feature but help them use the result to impress their boss. You don't just apologize because you don't have the feature they want, you help them work around it and be successful anyway. You know your product and problem-space better than your customers, so it's not that hard to make them far more successful than they would be stumbling around without calling tech support. Enabling your customers isn't just about your product, but rather your entire company. Make your customer awesome and she'll give you money so she can keep being awesome. That's sales. A pleasant surprise Everyone's stereotype of tech support is negative. Oh the tales:

Ask tech support how to change the font and they'll tell you to reboot your laptop. Ask tech support to change your billing address and they up-sell you on three things you don't want. Calling tech support requires a GPS to navigate the labyrinth of menu options (which may have changed), wait-queues, and typing in your account number 3 times "for security purposes," as if someone who stole your account number is incapable of typing it more than once.

When your customers expect a turd sandwich and you deliver a turkey club with chipotle mayonnaise, you earn major bonus points, like users twittering about your service, people switching to your service because of tech support, or customers not only following your Tweets but instructing their followers to do the same. Oh look! Apparently tech support is a better "social media outreach" program than hiring interns to spray comments on random blogs. Are you surprised? They say "under-promise, over-deliver," and tech support has "under-promise" built in! Sure super-fantastic tech support is best, but even if you merely act like a human being you're already ahead. If you just answer email with a non-automated response you're killing it. Why pass up such an easy opportunity to thrill a customer? Isn't "a pleasant surprise" too rare in business, and don't you want to be known as the company where it happens every day? The closest thing to getting "outside the building" while staying inside the building The Internet is abuzz with Steve Blank's phrase that everything you need to know about your customers is "outside the building," meaning that real customer development means talking to folks face to face, seeing their problems in the wild, and watching their faces react to your pitch, not brainstorming around a whiteboard and twiddling the font size in your PowerPoints. And I agree! Still, for the Work-a-preneur or the bootstrapper with no travel budget it's hard to get outside the building. Yes you should try as much as you can — it's worth it — but what about the other 94% of the time that you're at your desk, by which I mean the coffeeshop table closest to the power outlet that isn't loose? Tech support is the next-best thing. Tech support is where people complain about what's not working, what's missing, and what's confusing. But it's not enough to just catalog problems! The insights lurk in the meta-questions. If someone's confused, for example, the immediate task is to set them straight, but there's valuable product development to be had:

What caused the confusion in the first place? Is my customer's world-view different from mine? Is our terminology wrong? Are we using the wrong metaphors? Do I need to optimize the new-user experience instead of the expert-user experience?

Those are tactical questions stemming from the immediate problem, but then there's even more interesting strategic questions:

Does this hiccup belie a customer pain-point I didn't know existed but I can solve? Is there enough evidence of a conceptual mis-match that I should pivot? Is there a new product idea here? If they're abusing my product to get what they really want, can I provide what they really want from the start?

This last line of questioning is exactly how Smart Bear came to be a company about peer code review and not "version control data mining." If I hadn't paid attention attention to these meta-questions, you wouldn't be reading this right now. Yes, it's that critical. To answer these you have to go back and forth with customers to hack into the root cause. You have to see hundreds of emails so you get a gut-feel for what customers are experiencing — something you can't get from a Incident Summary Report or somesuch automation. Tech support is the closest, most honest chance for product development — certainly more straightforward than squeezing it through traditional "sales." Here's where real users discover and report on your product. Are you listening, or just throwing it away? What else? What else can tech support do if you're willing to give it the attention and power it deserves? Or do you think I'm wrong and it really is better to have $1/hour people protect you from those inane customers? Leave a comment and join the conversation.

It's time to retire the following phrases. They should no longer be used, ever, in any context except derisive mocking:

Fast and easy Putting customers first The Holy Grail of The leading provider of Legendary customer support

Also eschew these words, as devoid of meaning as a yogi's mantra and as useless as a simile that doesn't contribute new information:

Authentic Solution Genuine Powerful Secure Simple Innovative Insight Disruptive

These words have been corrupted by those who claim to honor their meaning but do not act accordingly. When a company claims to "put customers first" but then uses "Level 1 support" as a shield to prevent customers from intruding on profits, we realize talk is cheap. When a company claims to have "secure" payments but then 100,000 credit card numbers are stolen, we realize you don't need a permit to claim security. When a company claims to be "innovative and disruptive" but then pitches an idea you've heard ten times in the past month, it reminds us that if you have to say it, it's probably untrue. When 78% of "About Us" web pages claim "the leading provider" of something, we are no longer impressed. Like a song over-played on the radio, like a restaurant over-hyped in the magazines, repetition of even powerful, wonderful phrases can kill them. Oh I know 21% of you stopped reading as soon as you saw that "authentic" made the list, and shot down to the comments section to unleash a scathing missive explaining how "authenticity" is the prime mover of modern marketing, honorable salesmanship, and meaningful relationships. I agree! In fact all these words and phrases should theoretically carry meaning, but theory is for people who don't need to sell $2,600 more software by next Friday so they can make rent. If I had enough hubris to run around christening years, I would declare 2009 The Year of "Authentic." Enough! We get it! I respect the work of all those bloggers and Twitter-ers and lecturers and consultants who drove this word deep into our psyches. Indeed it's a tremendous gift: bringing concepts like authenticity, genuineness, and give-first-sell-later to the traditionally aggressive, non-engaging, selfish world of marketing. The more people honor this new code, the better for us all. Nevertheless, it's time to retire words like "authentic." The misuse is to too widespread, the abuse too deep. So what should you do instead? Be specific. Many of the dead words weren't especially illustrative to begin with. As far as I know, a "solution" just means product and/or service, so the word doesn't add information anyway. Instead, be specific and inspire me.

Instead of "easy" say "so straightforward, you won't need a manual." Instead of "inexpensive" say "just a dollar a day." Instead of "powerful" say "processes 6,253,427 requests daily." Instead of "disruptive" say "72% of our customers say they'll never go back to a normal email client."

Show, don't tell. Some dead words are descriptive, but they don't paint a picture. "Powerful" sounds nice I suppose, but how does that change my life? Showing something in action is more evocative than describing it.

Instead of saying it's fast, show a speed test (especially against competitors). Instead of saying it's easy, have a video demonstrating your tool solving someone's problem in 60 seconds flat. Instead of saying you have eager, responsive, intelligent tech support, put a "chat now" bar on every page of your website. Instead of a bullet-list of benefits, quote actual customers describing your impact on their lives.

Face it. My favorite way to start a sales pitch is to make fun of typical sales pitches. For example: I know you were hoping for a 22-slide PowerPoint deck with our mission statement and company history. I'm really sorry to disappoint! 'Cause I'm just going to start the demo and let you interrupt me with questions. Or: People claim that peer code review tools will do magic things like make your developers smarter or fix existing social problems with the team. Actually, if anything code review can magnify social issues! However, I do believe our tool will save you time and aggravation in these 4 specific ways .... so as we go through the demo, see if you agree. Because you're willing to say what others won't, especially when we all know it's the truth, you've earned credibility. Now folks are more open to your claims — even those that are well-worn. Own it. You can still use an abused word if you totally, 100% own the concept. You can claim "legendary customer service" if you back that with first-ring, human phone service, online chat from your home page, quick-response Twitter monitoring, and 15-minute turn-around time on tech support emails even at 3am on a Sunday. Be sure to communicate all that too, because if you lead with the dead phrase I'll leave before you get the chance to prove it. Be the change you wish to see in the world.   —Gandhi When old ideas become cliché, that's an implicit call for new ideas. This time around, can you lead instead of follow? Of course this is a bit unfair. Quick: Come up with a compelling new philosophy for human interaction and global communication, marketing, sales, and relationships! Yeah it's an unreasonable expectation, and not certainly required, but remember the best ideas often aren't (excuse the clichés) ground-breaking, innovative, out-of-the-box, Earth-shattering epiphanies. Often great ideas are a synthesis of other ideas with just a smidge of novel insight, or just putting into words what others sense but cannot articulate. This is the hardest and most time-consuming way to break out of the mundane, but also the most rewarding. And if you do come up with something, there's a lot of people who will love to help you spread the word. What else? What other phrases should be avoided? What are good alternatives? Leave a comment and join the conversation!

Eric Sink says that tradeshows are like sex: When it's good it's really really good, but when it's bad...  it's still pretty good.

A lot of tradeshows have been cancelled due to low attendance (which in turn is probably due to slashed travel budgets), but those which remain are that much more interesting. It's easy to waste time and money at tradeshows. It's not just the booth ($2k-$20k) and travel expenses ($1000/day including airline, hotel, rent car, shipping, and buying an extension cable at an outrageously overpriced convention center office supply center), it's the week of time spent at the show (including travel days) plus weeks of time spent preparing your strategy, crafting your sales pitches, organizing the booth crap, and chewing out the stoned guy at the print shop counter who claims to not see that the "red" in the color swatch is not the same as the "red" in your 6' x 6' banner. Tradeshows are a combination of high-level strategy and low-level minutiae, so a checklist comes in handy. 3-6 months before the tradeshow

Have a goal. Although there are many benefits of attending a show, you need a primary goal. A goal helps you make the decisions below and provides a yardstick for whether the tradeshow was "successful," and therefore whether you should do more. Examples:

Make a sale on the tradeshow floor Get at least 20 genuine prospects Talk with 10 industry leaders Find 10 good recruiting prospects Find 3 serious investors. Ask potential customers 3 specific things (market research)

Schedule a vendor presentation. Most shows allow vendors to give presentations, sometimes for a fee. Always do this. Even if just 20 people come to your talk, that's 20 people you get to talk to in depth for 45 minutes — far more valuable than talking to 100 of people at your booth for 5-60 seconds. I frequently get a few sales just from the presentation.

Decide on your main message. Just like your home page, you get 3 seconds to convince someone to stop at your booth. You'll need this message elsewhere (e.g. banner) so you need to decide what it is early on. Remember the goal is to get people to stop, not to explain everything about who you are and what you do! Boil it down to a single, short sentence.

Pick your booth. Booths go fast, and location does matter. Booths next to the bathroom are good even though they're "in the back" because everyone's going to hit the head. Booths near the front doors are good. Booths nearer to the center of the room are better than the ends. Booths at the ends of isles are good because you have a "corner" which means more traffic and your stuff can spill out over the edge.

Design your banner and handouts. Printing takes longer than you think because you'll need to iterate. I've never gotten the result I wanted from a print shop on the first try. Never. The colors on your screen aren't the colors on their paper. The Pantone® colors you selected for your banner won't look the same as the samples. The sales guy you see at the counter screws things up. You need time to iterate and complain. And to find the right person:

Find the techie in the back of the print shop. The first person you see at the sign shop is typically the sales guy, who knows nothing about Adobe InDesign, DPI, CMYK, vector vs. raster, or anything else important to making your stuff come out properly. Ask for the techie and talk to her directly.

Finish all the travel arrangements. Airplane tickets, hotels, rent cars. Fares are cheaper and there's no last-minute surprises with things being full.

Buy shirts and other swag. With customization (i.e. your logo on a shirt), it can sometimes take a while, so get this done early. At least have a "tradeshow shirt." It's the law.

1 month before the tradeshow

Postcard mailers work! I know, you thought "print media" was dead. Well not before a tradeshow, and not if you do it right. Best is to offer something cool/expensive at your booth, but only if they bring the postcard to you. This means they keep the postcard handy starting now and even during the tradeshow, which means whatever else you put on there (marketing material) gets seen repeatedly. It also means they seek you out on the tradeshow floor. Then, because you collect the card, you have their contact info (their name, company, and address), so you get to follow up later. Don't forget to put your booth number on there!  (Another reason to pick the booth early.)

Emails probably work. Because you can use the tradeshow's name in the subject of the email, people will probably read your email blast.

Set up meetings. Yes meetings! Tradeshows are a rare chance to get face-time with:

Editors of on-line and off-line magazines. Often overlooked, editors are your key to real press. I've been published in every major programming magazine; almost all of that I can directly attribute to talking with editors at tradeshows! It works. Bloggers you like, especially if you wish they'd write about you Customers Potential customers currently trialing your stuff Your vendors Your competition Potential partners

Proactively set meetings. Call/email everyone you can find. It's easy to use email titles which will be obviously non-spam such as "At [Tradeshow]: Can we chat for 5 minutes?" I try to get at least 5 meetings per day. Box of everything. I can't tell you how many times we've been saved by a box of stuff. A small, cheap plastic box from Walmart is fine. You won't use all the stuff every time, but I guarantee you will use an unpredictable subset every time. The box should contain:

pens (multiple, different colors) Sharpie Scotch tape masking tape extension cord electric plug bar post-it notes rubber bands tiny stapler highlighter paper clips scissors all-in-one tool (screwdriver, can opener) medicine (Tylenol, Advil, Motrin, DayQuil) zip-ties Generic business cards (in case anyone runs out)

Comfortable shoes. You'll be standing for much longer than you're used to; comfortable shoes are a must. Attendees can't see your shoes so sneakers or clogs might be OK; you can change into your pumps when you leave the booth. You can also bring floor pads designed for people who stand all day, or for a fee most venues can put padding under your booth's carpeting.

At the tradeshow

A/B test your pick-up line. This is no different than your landing pages! A tradeshow is a wonderful place to test attention-grabbers. What gets people to stop? To laugh? To say "OK, fair enough, tell me more?" Test all show long. After the 100th pitch, you'll know exactly what gets people's attention — now put that on your home page! Ask questions instead of pitching. Everyone else "pitches at" people; be different and actually have a conversation.  Good conversationalists are genuinely interested in the other person — what do they do, what are they interested in.  If you start chatting they will actually ask you for a pitch as a form of reciprocation.  Then you've got permission to "sell," and they're truly listening. Don't ask how they're doing. Your opening line should engage them with something you specifically have to offer. "Hello, how's it going" is not interesting or unique. Even just a simple "Are you interested in [thing you do]" is better, although still weak. Ask questions, don't just transmit. Sure you want to pitch your stuff, but this is a fantastic opportunity for direct market research on your potential customers! Come up with 3-5 questions that you're going to ask of people who walk by the booth, then ask away. No need to carefully record the results — the big trends will be obvious and the rest is noise. Stand, don't sit. Sitting looks like you don't want to be there. It's uninviting. The head-height differential is psychologically off-putting. I know your feet hurt; stand. Get into the aisle. Just because there's a table there doesn't mean you have to stand behind it. Break out of your 10'x10' prison and engage people in the aisle. Best is to have someone inside the booth to talk to folks who walk up and another in the aisle getting attention and directing folks inward. Especially during high-traffic, just being a barrier in the middle forces people to squeeze by your booth, which gives you a chance to engage. Learn from the guy in the bear suit! Moving pictures rock. When you're sitting at a bar and there's a TV behind the person you're talking to, it's really hard not to look, right? We tend to look at moving images, especially when they're bright. So your booth should have a big monitor or better yet a bright projector. Don't just show a static screenshot or PowerPoint image, and don't leave it stuck wherever the last demo left off — get a demo movie going and catch some eyes. We did this at Smart Bear and I can't count the number of times another vendor said "OMG we have to do that next year." Always be able to demo. Nothing is more sticky than a live demo. Not swag, not brochures, not clever phrases, not raffles. That other stuff is good — both for getting traffic and as a reminder — but you need a demo to make the experience memorable. I prefer demoing on a projector so it's big and passers-by get hooked as well, but a large monitor works too. Large. Not your laptop screen. Make notes on business cards. You'll talk to hundreds of people; you'll never remember what one guy said or what he wants. Always write it down on their business card. If they have one of those silly cards where you can't make notes (why people, why?), use a post-it from your box-o-stuff to keep notes together with the card. Sales people aren't enough. Most attendees don't want to talk to sales people anyway; if they're interested at all they want to geek out with their peers. Air out some of those folks who typically don't get to go on sales calls. Don't depend on the Internet. Tradeshow Internet is spotty at best. Your demos and note-taking must operate without being online. Use LinkedIn every night. Most people will accept, especially if you add the contact the same day and reference the conference. Take advantage of this opportunity to significantly expand your online network. Walk the floor and talk to everyone. As a fellow vendor, you can commiserate about how the show is going and how it compares to other shows. Try to think of a way your two companies could work together; usually it doesn't work out but the discussion helps them remember who you are. Try to skip past their salespeople. Meet the founder if she's there. Note the jokes. People will make fun of you. Actually, if they don't, maybe that's a bad sign because they can't figure out what you do. Usually you get some wise-cracks. That's interesting, right? Could be a good thing, could be a bad thing. Free food. Works better than almost any other free thing. The more "real" the food is (i.e. not just candy) the better. Cookies are good. Put it at the center of your booth so it's harder for someone to take without talking. Raffle something. I'm not a fan of raffles as a way to get sales, but I do like them at tradeshows because it gets a crowd to appear at your booth. Crowds make other people think your booth is interesting. We've seen people stop by our booth a day after a big crowd saying "I didn't want to stop yesterday because you guys were swamped, but I guess whatever you're doing is interesting!" Make sure you have to provide contact info to enter (fill form, scan badge, drop business card). Those leads won't be particularly qualified but it's better than nothing. Take names instead of pushing brochures.  Attendees get dozens of pieces of paper pushed into their hands and pre-filled in their tote bags.  Even if yours is clever, funny, and useful, it's still going to be lost.  Instead of hand-outs, scan their badge or get a business card, and mail them something.  It will be waiting on their desk one morning without all the distraction of a tradeshow. Quality not quantity. It's cliché, but it's better to have six solid conversations with people who will buy your software than to give away 200 pieces of branded swag to people who can't remember who you are.

After the tradeshow

Follow up! Attendees are saturated with presentations and vendor pitches, so there's a 99% chance they've forgotten about you. Yes, even if they took your oh-so-memorable swag or your fabulously-designed brochure. It's up to you to follow up and remind them who you were, and take them up on their offer to get a demo, trial the software, or look at a draft of an article you want published.

Apply what you learned about selling. You talked to hundreds of people, pitching a hundred different ways, with mixed results. What did you learn? Some questions to get you started:

Which one-liners got people's attention, and what did people not relate to? How can you incorporate the successful one-liners in your home page? What new AdWords text do you want to try? How should you change your 2-minute demo? What were people saying about your competition? What were your best retorts?

Apply what you learned about your software. Having to demo the product 50 times always churns up invaluable product information. Some questions to get your started:

What features did people ask about which you already have, but it wasn't obvious? What features did people keep asking for which you don't have? What part of your demo seemed to drag because your workflow wasn't easy enough? What part confused viewers because the interface wasn't obvious? What terminology made no sense to newbies? What did people hate about your competitors, and how can you maintain that advantage? What did people love about your competitors, and how can you close that gap?

What are your tips? Leave a comment.  I'll incorporate ideas into the main text. Contributors:

Jason Calcanis, Mahalo Ferruh Mavituna, Mavituna Security Jay Neely, Social Strategist Joseph Fung, serial entrepreneur Michael Trafton, owner BlueFish Development Group

Related posts:Painful, Surreal, and Surprisingly Effective: The Personal ChecklistFive ways to listen to customers instead of goin' fishin'Love the messengerToo small to fail: How startups can grow in recessionsAvatar Marketing: Sell to Carol

Last week we presented 8 Useful Tips To Help Your Website Convert – we discussed various rules and guidelines from marketing, such as subliminal suggestion, prevention of choice paralysis, AIDA-principle, attention guide and the Gutenberg rule. The main idea was to help designers and developers create a design that would help the site to grow and become a success the financial point of view. As we see more and more businesses move their services online, and even more that begin their life on the Web, a greater need arises for websites that are designed and built to sell. A great-looking website may achieve the goal of shaping and delivering a strong brand, but its good looks alone aren’t enough to sell the products or services on offer. For that, you need to introduce the element of marketing. This article presents further principles and rules that will help your site convert. Among other things, we cover A/B testing, footnotes, testimonials, feature lists, the sign-up process and typography. You may be interesting in the following related posts:

10 Principles Of Effective Web Design 5 More Principles Of Effective Design 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques

1. A/B Testing There is no reason to stop developing your website once you’ve come up with a design that you’re happy with and that you think best sells your product. Practice often differs from theory, and every market is different. Things you believe should work may not actually perform well in your context. This doesn’t mean your implementation was completely wrong; perhaps it just needs a little tweaking to achieve its full potential. You can tweak your website using what’s called A/B testing (also known as split testing). Basically, this test pits design A against design B and determines which performs better. This simple test helps you figure out things like, Which headline works better, or Where should you place the “Buy now” button? Google Website Optimizer Google Website Optimizer is a free tool you can use to perform A/B testing, as well as multivariate testing (testing many combinations of variables), on your website. It’s relatively simple to use: all you need to do is provide Google Website Optimizer with the different assets you want to test, and it will randomly load them for your visitors and track which ones lead to better conversions.
2. Footnotes: The Good and the Bad Ones Sometimes, when writing a description of your service or a product feature, you may need to disclose additional information about things like availability and price. This extra information can usually be placed in a footnote at the bottom of the page. This is logical because you want to keep the copy on your main page as slim as possible to ensure people actually read it. If the copy has any extra information that is not relevant to the pitch, then it may break the flow and add needless weight. To add a footnote, just insert a reference number in the main text (using the sup-tag), and then place the accompanying explanation at the bottom of the page (the larger the font size, the better). A typical feature description on Apple’s website. The little asterisk in the first line under the heading “Built for Time Machine” indicates that a technical description is in the footnote. However, some companies use footnotes for another purpose: instead of hiding superflous technical details, they trick customers into buying something, offering services “for free” and referring with footnotes or asterisks to details of the deal. These details are almost always unreadable – because of the font size and the font color – and almost always result in misunderstandings and problems. If you or your company use footnotes for this purpose, you are definitely doing something wrong. Once your users lost trust for your company (for instance, because they purchased something that they didn’t want to buy), it will be damn hard for you to win it back. The German company T-Mobile offers the iPhone for a sensational price: 1 Euro. Of course, the customer needs to pay attention to little footnotes that explain further costs. This is hidden marketing and disrespectful behavior towards customers. Price details in the footnotes: unreadable blocks of unscannable chunks of text with numerous numbers and traps for customers. That’s not how footnotes should be used. Conclusion: if you care about your customers and aim to build a solid, long-term relationship with them, you better make sure you communicate with them honestly and directly – and use footnotes properly.
3. Testimonials Testimonials are great because they tell your visitors that other people use your product and would go as far as recommend it. Testimonials help relieve some of the risk associated with purchasing a new product or service. You have little way of telling whether something is good or not until you try it, and knowing that others have tried it and liked it helps a lot in breaking down this risk barrier. There are some formatting tricks you can use to make your testimonials more effective. For example, read the following three testimonials:

I found Product X to be incredibly useful in my daily workflow. “I found Product X to be incredibly useful in my daily workflow.” “I found Product X to be incredibly useful in my daily workflow.” John Smith, ACME Corp, New York

The first testimonial doesn’t have anything attached to it — it’s just a sentence and so doesn’t look very believable. The third one on the other hand has speech marks around it and attribution to the source. Just adding speech marks already makes a testimonial look better. For best testimonials though make sure to add a source. Business Catalyst formats their testimonials perfectly, with a picture of each client next to their quote. Quotes from publications on The Resumator site follow the same rules. It’s also a good idea to provide readers with case-studies that describe the process of your work and explain how customers liked it, what were the problems and how the service can be useful to solve tasks from the daily routine. 4. Scannable Feature Lists Your visitors don’t have a lot of patience. Why? They’re spending their time browsing your website, time that could be spent doing a myriad of other things. Time is money, and people are investing it when they navigate around your website. This means you’ve got to offer something valuable in return. You must grab their attention and not let go. If they get bored or don’t like what you offer, then they will click away and likely be gone forever. Rapidweaver makes its feature list scannable by using white space, headings and images. To address this, present your information in a way that is easiest and quickest to digest. You’ve got to slice up your marketing pitch into bite-sized chunks that are fast to read and simple to understand. You may want to give each chunk a heading or highlight areas of the text to stand out. You can also add images, such as an icon next to each chunk of text. All of this makes the text scannable. People are then able to look over the text, pick out headings and read more detailed blurbs about the elements they like. …and so does MyFonts. 5. Streamline The Sign-Up Process Selling has a lot to do with breaking down barriers. These barriers are mainly the objections people imagine to buying your product, but these barriers can also be physical; for example, the sign-up form on your website. Users have to fill in forms, and that means a little work on their part. To ensure you don’t lose conversions at this stage, you can do a few things. First of all, ensure the sign-up form is as short as possible. If a field is optional, it doesn’t have to be there. Users can always fill in optional fields later on their settings page. Don’t make potential customers do more work than they have to; keep the form nice and short and easy to fill in. Posterous, a blog host, doesn’t even ask you to sign up to start using it: just email your first post to its address. Secondly, to ensure users don’t make any mistakes and have to re-fill information, you can validate fields live using AJAX. You could, for example, display a green tick next to each filled-in field when it validates, or display a red cross along with a short error message if some error occurs (such as if a required field is left empty or a user name that is already taken is chosen). This allows people to see any errors as they’re filling in the form and fix them before clicking the “Submit” button. The Veritocracy sign-up form isn’t even a separate page; it’s a form that pops up as a modal window and requires only four fields to be filled in. Lastly, you can simplify the page layout of the sign-up form by removing any irrelevant navigation elements. Your objective here is to get the visitor to sign up rather than navigate to other sections of the website, so you can remove any extra navigation to help the user focus on the task at hand. 6. White Space Is Not Lost Space Have you ever seen those cheap ad booklets one gets in the post, all full of bright colors, big text and pictures, every millimeter used to display a latest offer or new deal. The designers try to fit everything they’ve got into the booklet and make sure no space is wasted. Cramming everything you’ve got into a limited amount of space isn’t always the best approach, though, and in most cases it’s the wrong approach online. Perfect use of spacing and white space in a magazine-layout on Good.is. The space makes the content look clean, attractive and readable. White space, the empty space around and between various pieces of content, is important. It gives your design air to breathe by separating elements. This separation is valuable because it allows people to focus their attention on individual areas of the page, be it the navigation, a feature description or the website’s description. When everything is stuck together, it becomes more difficult to distinguish between its components and thus more difficult to focus on and thus less scannable. You can read more about the proper use of spacing in Liam McKay’s excellent article How to Spot Quality within Web Design: Examples & Tips. 7. Set your type properly The way you set your type has an effect on how well your copy performs. Good typography can give your copy the punch it needs. Use large font sizes to make headings stand out. If you’re selling to an older demographic, ensure all font sizes are large enough to read easily. Small fonts may look great, but if they’re difficult to read, they will turn people off. Also, ensure the text and its background color have enough contrast. Black on white is a good start. Inverted color schemes (light text on dark background) do not work so well in most cases, especially if your audience is used to more traditional media (e.g. newspapers), where black on white is the standard. The redesigned 37signals website features eye-catching typography that takes advantage of big font sizes, varying colors and high contrast. To focus people’s attention on certain elements, you can decrease the contrast of surrounding elements by using something like dark gray on white (instead of black on white) to fade them out a little. Use stronger contrast for the stuff you want people to notice. One good technique is to use the highest contrast for a feature heading or brief description, and then a lower contrast for the detailed blurb below. The aim here is to make the page scannable: let people glance over it and settle their gaze on the text that’s most important and quickest to digest. To Conclude Design definitely has a role to play in selling the product or service on your website, though it’s more of a support than a lead role. Design should reinforce the copy: help it stand out and be readable. Choose images that send the message you want. Ask yourself what purpose each image on your website has. If it has no purpose, why is it there? Use white space and typography to give your copy punch. At the end of the day, though, you have to make sure your content actually works, because a great design alone won’t be enough to close the sale. About the Author Dmitry Fadeyev is the founder of the Usability Post blog, where you can read his thoughts on good design and usability. (al)

© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 44 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine

Post tags: convert, guidelines, marketing, principles