A presentation I gave at SURF's meetup. You don't have to spend tons on marketing to get results. You DO have to make the effort, though. Lots of little tips and tools await...

1. BE SIGNIFICANT
NOT ANNOYING
INTERNET MARKETING FOR STARTUPS
This is a somewhat annotated
version of the presentation I
Ian Lurie
gave at a SURF CEO meetup in @portentint
December, 2012.
ian@portent.com

2. portent.co/sigannt
Yes, like this, no ‘m’.
The link, finally correct after 3
typos and an unknown number
of silly mistakes.

3. In which I tell a tale of
Compuserve spamming, and
why being significant is real
marketing – being annoying is
not.

4. YOUR CAREER IS ABOUT
MARKETING
No matter what you do, if you’re starting a
company, you’re a marketer. Your products,
your presentations, etc. are all about
communicating value – significance – and
that’s what marketing is.

5. This is not marketing.
In which I tell the story of how Bicycling
Magazine taunted me publicly in 1992.
Yes, I tend to carry grudges for a while.

6. This is what it’s like when Bicycling.com
pukes a popup ad in the middle of a page.
This has nothing to do with marketing. It’s
harassment/browbeating.
buybuybuybuybuy

7. MARKETING:
COMMUNICATING TRUE VALUE &
SIGNIFICANCE TO YOUR AUDIENCE.
‘NUFF SAID

8. MARKETING IS ABOUT BEING
SIGNIFICANT

9. NOT SIGNIFICANT
I haven’t even read a page on
this site yet, and they’re
spamming me with a signup
request. I don’t think so.

10. Mashable, on the other hand,
doesn’t mess around. I
searched, I clicked, and there’s
my article.

11. Bicycling, you guys just make it way
too easy.
Seriously, though: This particular
popup is worthless to me, even if I
didn’t hate popups. I’m a bike
mechanic, for God’s sake. Why are
you bugging me with advice on how
to apply handlebar tape? Seriously?!

12. Check out this post from
Bikerumor.com. Straight-
up info. And no popups.
Thank you. They went
straight to my Google
Reader list.

13. I refuse to annotate this.
It’ll take too long.
Hopefully it makes sense
on its own.

14. IT’S SIMPLE
BUT NOT EASY
Marketing: Simple, but
not easy.

15. STEP 1: MAKE CONTACT
Step 1: Make contact. You
have to actually get found.

17. On Google, I find stuff. If I
already know I want a Di2
group, I can find it.

18. If I have no idea, though, I ask
in social media. This is where
I can discover new stuff.

19. Of course, some answers are
more helpful than others,
aren’t they, @jcolman?
Phhbbbbt.

20. Now, armed with what I
learned from my social media
friends, I can go find what I
want.

21. 100%
91%
80%
60%
Search, though, is the
dominant force. It’s kept
66%
growin, with 91% of users
saying they use a search
40% engine every week. Social
media? Not so much. Search
20% Social
0%
2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012
From http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Search-Engine-Use-2012.aspx

22. Channels
used
for
purchase
decisions
Search
engines
Ads
E-consultancy data. Hmmm.
Where are you spending
most of your money? On
search, I hope.
Social
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70

23. WHERE PEOPLE CLICK: SEARCH
A lot more people click on
Never
organic results than PPC
results.
Rarely
Occasionally
PPC
Natural
Frequently
Always
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%

24. BUDGET ALLOCATION BY CHANNEL
Yet far more marketers say
they’re putting most of their
budget into PPC than any other
channel. And Social Media,
which generates even less, gets
a sizable chunk, too.
Why? I don’t know. Rand Fishkin
gets a great look on his face
when he tries to explain this – he
thinks it’s ridiculous, too – like he
just ate a lemon that went bad.
Me? I just get heartburn.

25. 30% OF CLICKS Why? Someone, please just tell
43% OF BUDGET me why?!!!!
70% OF CLICKS
22% OF BUDGET

26. Whhyyyyyyyyyyy….!?
10% OF CLICKS
.6% CONVERSION RATE
50% OF BUDGET
80% OF CLICKS
3% CONVERSION RATE
40% OF BUDGET

27. If nothing else, make sure you
get the SEO folks involved while
building your site, not the day
OK, let's get
before launch. The results
otherwise seo in
the may be, uh,
disappointing.
here
OK, let's get
the seo in
here

28. And in social media, understand
that more is not better.
Sometimes…
MORE <> BETTER

29. …it’s better to just shut up.

30. FOLLOW THE
GOLDEN RULE.
ALL THE TIME.
In which I tell the story of Carmel Limousine in Manhattan,
who earned my eternal enmity with godawful service three
weeks ago.
Treat everyone you ‘meet’ in social media as an important
person, and as you’d want to be treated. Never know when
you’ll piss off someone with 14,000 Twitter followers.

31. STEP 2: BE SIGNIFICANT
Really, it all comes down to this. Once folks
find you – once you’re visible, you have to
matter.
And you have to matter even if I’m not buying
right then.

33. KNOW WHY.
If you want to really nail
this, understand the ‘why’
of your business. I’ve read
this book 3-4 times now.
You only have to read it
once.

34. Etsy’s why – to me anyway
– is to connect cool people
and cool stuff. So they
write about that, a lot.
That makes them
significant to me, even if
I’m not buying a thing.

35. Sometimes, significant
means writing stuff that
isn’t directly about you or
your brand.
It means writing things
that appeal to folks who
aren’t even potential
customers yet.

36. Significance also means
delivering.

37. MEH.
And ‘delivering’ doesn’t
mean a big fat ad right in
the middle of the stuff I
wanted to read. Does this
ad actually generate any
money?...

38. MEH.
Ford gets it. They have all
sorts of fun stuff, and I
don’t have to be car
shopping to want to read
it.

39. There is NO BETTER VALUE IN MARKETING than great
content. If write it yourself, it costs zero hard dollars. If
you hire a fantastic pro to write it, it might cost you
$500/article. If you do a video, maybe $2500.
And each piece you produce is a permanent asset and
authority builder.
Plus every piece is a shot at a viral ‘home run.’
Spend $500 on paid advertising and see if you get
that.
I’m not saying ‘ignore paid ads.’ Paid ads – PPC or
otherwise – are crucial. We always put them into
clients’ marketing mix.
But they generate a proportional, short-term return.
You need to also invest in something that generates a
long-term, potentially geometric return. That’s all this
significance stuff.

40. ANSWER QUESTIONS
Another great way to build
significance – to matter to
your audience – is to
answer their questions.

41. One easy source of
questions: Google Suggest.

42. Running a Seattle real
estate site? Here are your
next 10 blog posts.

43. Quora. I’ve landed 2 great
clients by answering
questions here.

44. Significance, 3: Have a site that
loads fast.
K, even I’m feeling a little bad
for picking on Bicycling this
much, now.

45. MEH.
But if they ran Google Page
Speed, they’d see lots of easy
ways to trim a second or so off
their load times.

46. Target: If I just want a pair of
jeans, don’t make me use a
whole configurator-whatsit. I
just want 32-34 Levis. Can’t you
just, I dunno, list the brands or
something?

47. Or at least make the product
grid so it doesn’t look like it got
between Liam Neeson and his
daughter in Taken?

48. Airbnb is brilliant at this. They
establish significance by being
so damned simple.

49. …and by anticipating my needs,
without seizure-inducing screen
crowding.

50. STEP 3: BUILD COMMUNITY
Once you demonstrate
significance, it’s time to build
‘community.’ Which is a trendy
term for what we used to call
the ‘house list’ – aka the folks
you can reach out to when
you’re selling stuff.

51. THE HOUSE LIST

52. Bicycling, I’d stop if it weren’t so
damn easy.
How, exactly, do I subscribe to
your blog if I find an article I like?

53. Ooooh. It’s this little 10 x 10 pixel
chicklet at the top of the page,
basically a continent away from
the content that got me
interested.
Fail.

54. Side note: Significance can be bad,
if you so piss off your customers
that they create a Facebook page,
purely to say how much they hate
you.

55. The same day Carmel earned a
spot in my Book of Grudges,
Alaska Airlines showed why I love
them so. Long wait for bags, so I
tweeted about it at 12:15 AM.

56. I had a reply about 5 hours later.
We exchanged a few more
messages – they made sure I was
taken care of.
The baggage delay, by the way,
ended up being Seatac’s fault. But
@alaskaair was STILL there
offering to help.

57. Probably part of why they have
220k likes as a relatively small
airline…

58. While United Airlines spends their
time growing their ‘United Airlines
Sucks’ page.

59. Ahem. Getting serious: Part of
building the house list is seeing to
it that everyone converts. We offer
free e-mail series on all manner of
topics. Folks can sign up and get
free learning. In exchange, we get
to occasionally pester them about
more free learning.

60. LAUNCHROCK
But you’re a startup, and you have
no time for this. Your dev team is
slammed, and so are you.
OK. Use a tool like Launchrock to
set up a quick ‘keep in touch’
page. It takes 2 minutes.

61. FACEBOOK CUSTOM AUDIENCES
Just cool. Learn about them.

62. Subscribe Facebook Ad

63. Don’t forget about other places to
build your house list and
community. Slideshare.net has
been awesome for me.

64. Vimeo ain’t too shabby, either.

65. Or write a Kindle eBook and
distribute it. It works.

66. STEP 4: CONVERT
I’m not going to say much here.

68. EVERYONE CONVERTS

70. Full Circle provides lots of
conversion opportunities here:
Sign up for their newsletter. Like
the post. Tweet about it. Or yes,
buy their service.
Don’t make conversion an all-or-
nothing proposition.

71. ASSUME TESTING
Assume you’ll be testing your site.
Build in the flexibility, the
resources and the time to do it.
DO IT. Yes, it takes time. It will pay
off 10-fold.

72. MAKE IT EASY
Make it easy for me to convert. I
know, duh…

73. But it would take 15 minutes to
code this so it’s a 1-step, not a 2-
step process.

74. Love this lander from Cheezburger. Plus,
their CEO does a wicked Gangam Style.

75. UNBOUNCE
OPTIMIZELY
Easy testing tools that require zero
development skills.

76. They provide nifty analytics.

77. …and nifty design tools.

78. THE INEVITABLE

79. Can you even
prove it works?
If you ask this question, I don’t hate you. I
just like capybaras. C’mon, look at this
dude. The splayed toes. The knowing, zen-
like pose.

80. MEASURE EVERYTHING
You can’t capture every bit of ROI, but you
can capture a lot. Measure everything.

81. This fantastic report that Avinash Kaushik
developed (and shared) lets me see how
well content is driving conversion.

82. GETTING A BOOST
Don’t hesitate to give your marketing
campaign a bit of a boost, too.

83. Use Followerwonk to find people to follow.
Target your friend-making efforts.

84. OUTBRAIN.COM
ADWORDS
STUMBLEUPON PAID DISCOVERY
Use paid services to get your content
introduced to the world.

85. BE CONSISTENT

86. DON’T QUIT
THIS
And never, ever, ever quit. Keep at it.
Persistence is a great marketing advantage.

87. THIS ALWAYS WORKS
In 17 years I have NEVER seen this kind of
marketing fail. I’ve seen folks quit 6 months
into it. But I’ve never seen someone stick
with it and get zero payback.

88. This is Portent’s traffic. Our inbound lead
generation has been roughly proportional.
We weren’t exactly starving in 2007-2008,
but look what happened as we kept at it.

89. COMMENCE HECKLING
@PORTENTINT
IAN@PORTENT.COM
PORTENT.CO/sigannt
The end.