startup hustle

Startups often want to use viral marketing (aka word of mouth) because it is free, the public does most of the work for you and people are more likely to use a product recommended by a friend. My experiences with viral marketing often involves a startup asking me to turn on viral marketing like a light switch. The problem is viral marketing is not like pay per click, there is no “on” button. Viral marketing is closer to search engine optimization (SEO) because it involves multiple factors that have to be in unison.

The major lapse in viral marketing is the product was most likely not built for a viral audience. Viral marketing and word of mouth are just buzz. Business to business products are not generally viral. I’m not saying they can’t be, I’m just saying they are not by nature. Electronics on the other hand have a much better chance of producing viral growth.

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So I came across a site called Venture Capital Wear. They produce humorous (in someones opinion) t-shirts that can only be bought by accredited investors and they cost $100 a piece. Or you can buy the entire company for $100,000, which includes the VC Wear site and 20 of each t-shirt (remember, $100 a piece). I am assuming this is a joke but you really never know with those crazy Valley guys. VC Wear also has their VC Pitch (PDF) on the site. Below are a few of the t-shirts.

UPDATE: The site was not made by crazy Valley guys, it was made by crazy Andrew Hyde in the mountains of Colorado (comment below). Mr. Hyde runs Startup Weekend, which is also a crazy event. I am now interested to see Andrews next project. He is definitely a creative entrepreneur.

Sites are always trying to rank higher in search engines. The best way to rank well is to have well written, original content that sites want to link to (this is the non-spamming technique). This is why many web optimizers push you to have a blog on your site. A blog will generate new, original content (hopefully). The problem is, depending on your sites focus, there are only so many articles that you can write that are quality and relevant to your business.

There is another way to generate new, original pages and your website members will do it for you. A member profile can be a very powerful SEO tool. I like to call it “Profile SEO” or “Name SEO“. If you search a name in Google, like mine, you will find profiles that I have signed up for (Linkedin and the Go BIG Network) as well as profiles that I did not create (Spock). These profiles are an excellent long tail SEO tactic for a website. Anyone who searches my name to find out more about me will most likely check these sites first.

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I have been tracking Google’s indexing for a few sites I work on (this is how I track Google’s indexing). The index for one site has dropped hard while the other sites saw no large movements. While this is a weak conclusion, I assumed a change on the site had caused the shift, not a change on Google’s side.

As I was researching possible causes for the shift downward, I remembered that our server (we have complete control of our server, it is not hosted by an external company) had issues around the same time. The site traffic and search engine crawling was working our servers hard. We started to experience server timeouts and slow server response times. Could this be the cause?

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Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends had a great post last week with marketing experts sharing one of their marketing secrets. I have quoted some of my favorites with a reason why I think the point is important below.

Toby Bloomberg, Diva Marketing – “Forget what your mama or your preacher taught you. The Golden Rule does NOT work for developing marketing strategy. Your customers do not want to be treated “as you would like to be treated.” In understanding your customers you might discover that their values, needs and expectations differ from yours. New Golden Rule For Marketers: Do Unto Your Customers As THEY Would Like To Be Treated.”

• I work with many startups and a common issue I find is as the product changes and molds in the first few years (as it does in all startups), many lose sight of their customer. Too many startups make changes because they believe they are not growing fast enough and it usually breeds a poor product and poor quality.

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