Tap To Market

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CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Introduction
Dave Levy and I were honored to be asked to present at the United Way Youth
Venture conference this year, an opportunity to talk to entrepreneurial teens about
their social good ventures. When we started to think about what we could offer that
would be of greatest benet to students for their endeavors, we quickly realized that
they probably had never had a single digital marketing class in their lives, and this
age, digital marketing could help them tell people about their goals and ventures
and earn further support.
We also faced the situation where some of the normal, traditional tools and
techniques that we would use on behalf of clients largely would not be available.
Payper-click advertising, brand building advertising, paid social media updates,
and a variety of other very expensive tools are no problem for Fortune 1000
companies, but would be a signicant problem for high school students.
As a result, our talk became about marketing on a shoe string, building
reputation and digital presence with freely available tools, and, in many cases,
using mobile apps. Despite coming from a variety of backgrounds, almost every
student had an Internet-connected smart phone. That helped us to rene what we
could share, and what we knew was accessible to them.
This book, intended for use by students everywhere, is the slightly longer version
of the presentation we gave. We encourage you to use it, share it, give it away, and
direct students who are working on social good ventures to use it. All we ask is that
you not sell it or make a derivative work of it although if you have an idea for
anything additional, please send it our way so we can incorporate it.
Dave Levy and Christopher S. Penn
May, 2014
SHIFT Communications
CHAPTER TWO
Basics of Digital Marketing
Basics of Digital Marketing
Lets start by talking about three things that your social startup is going to need
in order to be successful. Every business, every startup, every social venture,
everything from the largest corporation to the kids' lemonade stand on the corner,
all need to attract the attention of three types of people to be successful.
The rst group of people that you will need to be successful are audience
members. Out there is a big wide world, and a certain percentage of that big wide
world will be interested in what you are doing. Your rst job will be to nd those
people who could be interested in what you're doing, and get them to your digital
properties such as your website or your social media proles.
The second group of people that you'll need to be successful are leads. These
are people from your audience who have raised their hands and said, "I am
interested in doing business with you". They could say I am interested in helping
you. They could say I am interested in donating to your cause. They could say I am
interested in buying something from you. Your second job will be to take these
people who are expressing interest and nudge them towards the behavior you want.
The third group of people that you'll need to be successful are actions, people
who are willing to make some sort of tangible commitment to you. It could be
volunteering, donating, purchasing, or joining up with you in some fashion. Your
nal job is to take the people who are leads and turn as many of them as possible
into sales.
In a standard corporation, the job of generating audience is typically that of
public relations and advertising. The job of generating leads is typically that of the
marketing department. The job of generating sales is, unsurprisingly, the job of the
sales department. In the beginning of your startup, the lines separating these
functions will be very blurry or nonexistent. As your startup grows and scales, more
and more people will take on specic roles in each of these three categories.
CHAPTER THREE
Success Story: FSH Society
Success Story: FSH Society
One of the most important things for students and any entrepreneur to realize is
that success is within reach, that success is possible. We want to highlight a client
success story as a way of showing that the tools, techniques, and ideas in this book
do, in fact, work.
The FSH Society is a client of ours at SHIFT Communications, and it is a
privilege to work with this non-prot organization as they work to raise awareness
of FSH Muscular Dystrophy - a specic type of MD that has become the most
common. I wont get into the basics of the condition other than to let you know that
it can range in severity from preventing someone from whistling or smiling all the
way to signicant disability as muscle strength fades in the upper body, face and
arms. The audiences for disease awareness organizations are many - patients, their
families, caregivers and scientists, just to name a few. Connecting all of them
together isnt always appropriate in the tangible world, but online communities
offer many different ways to bridge that gap.
When we began working with the Society, they had set up social media pages
for their efforts, but they werent quite sure how to use them. Do they look for
people talking about the disease and talk with them? Do they focus on promoting
events around the country? Do they try and build a support network for those who
are looking to engage after being diagnosed? Do they try and encourage donations?
The short answer Yes.
People need different things at different times since they are looking at social
media from those mobile devices, and thats why any of those questions are
relevant. Thats part of the beauty of the social media channels. An added bonus:
elements that may be expensive to focus on in traditional channels - because they
require direct mail, press releases or other items with costs can be tested or
piloted at almost no cost within social media.
The best case study to emphasize how the social media page came together was
a push in February where we tied a donation to the organization to social media
activity. The idea should have rallied people on its own, but even in the best plans
and causes, things need a push. Success was tied to how easy the ask was to do
from any type of access and the work put in by the team to develop that
community to respond. One click of the retweet or like button, thats all we ask.
One initiative turned into hundreds of mentions, a great donation for the FSH
Society and continued awareness and growth of the page.
CHAPTER FOUR
Foundation Work
Prerequisites
Before we get into the tactics, the how of marketing your startup, we need to
discuss the what and why. Why does your startup exist? Can you explain it in 140
characters or in a single text message? This is the groundwork that you need to do
before you take a single step towards marketing your startup. There are three things
you need to think about when it comes to being able to describe your startup.
One, what cause or mission does your startup ght for, or ght against? Be
able to explain that in a single text message.
Two, what will the world look like when you have accomplished your goals?
How will things be different in your community?
Three, if you remove the name from your startup and substitute it with any other
companys name, could you still tell that it was uniquely you in your description,
your mission statement? Or is it so generic that your mission could apply to anyone
and anything? There are thousands of companies that say they deliver quality
products and services and care about the customer. No one can tell them apart,
and therefore, no one really cares about them.
The essence of great marketing is being able to explain why somebody should
choose you versus anyone else.
Weve talked a lot so far about where to publish content. Lets talk for a minute
about what makes great content. I have what I call the 3-L rule. When you are
creating your content, if you don't laugh, love it, or learn something, you have bad
content.
Did you laugh when you were creating the content? If it was funny to you,
chances are is at least mildly amusing to someone else.
Did you learn something when you were creating content? After all, you are the
subject matter expert on your startup and the people it serves. If you didn't learn
something new, chances are no one else will learn anything new from it either.
Finally, do you love what you have created? Do you talk about it to your
signicant other, to your boyfriend or girlfriend, even if they're telling you to shut
up? Do you talk about it in your sleep? If you're so in love with the content you've
created, if you just can't stop talking about it to people who frankly might not care
about it, then you have created good content.
Your content has to do one of those three things in order to pass. Ideally, it does
all three and certainly we want to shoot for two out of three ain't bad. But at the
very minimum it must do one of these three. If it doesn't, then scrap it and start
over.
My friend and fellow author Jay Baer has another great test for content. Ask
yourself this simple question. Would someone buy this content even if they didn't
want to do business with your startup? Is it so good that someone would pay
money for it all by itself? For example, the investment company Bloomberg
publishes a daily newsletter that is so valuable, people pay $2,000 a year just for
the newsletter, even if theyre already Bloomberg customers for other services.
Thats valuable content worth paying for.
You're probably wondering what does all this cost? Believe it or not, everything
we have just shown you is something that you can achieve on a budget of $0. Even
more unbelievable, most of these tools can be operated from your smartphone.
Let's look at some of the tools and methods that you would need to use in order to
achieve similar results for your startup.
We're going look at 5 categories of applications that you can run straight from
your smartphone, a grand total of just 11 apps. All of these apps are free, which
means that you can run a startup on an almost literal shoestring. And the 5
categories of apps are social networking, e-mail marketing, content management,
fundraising, and measurement apps.
CHAPTER FIVE
Audience
Facebook
As we stand here, we want you to understand and believe one thing - that social
media can in fact make an impact in telling people about a new organization. It is
a big, bright beautiful world out there and the fact is that adding another kingdom
to the world of online communities. Even those this map is outdated (2010 is a long
time ago in the world of the Internet!), the biggest change is that the way you are
using these different networks is almost guaranteed to be from your mobile phone.
So, what we want to do is show you a few examples of the power of these
networks, in executions that took no more than a mobile device to get people
engaged.
Lets start with the biggest neighborhood in the online block: Facebook. Years
ago, we used to start this presentation with the question, How many of you are on
Facebook? Well, we dont need to do that anymore, its just easier to assume that
everyone is on Facebook, or at least enough people among your peers or the
people you want to reach that its kind of important to consider. Plus, its easy, its
fast and you already know how to do it. Using Facebook as your organization is
almost the exact same way you use it as a regular user. The more people talk about
you, or like you, the more you get a chance to see your name in the News Feed.
So, as we promised, everything we are talking about is about getting you going
and things you could literally do right now from whatever mobile device you have
on you today. You could take out your phone, log into the Facebook app and ip
over to the left panel.
Youll see that there is a button in the middle that lets you create your own Page.
In less than a minute, you could be up and running with a place to call home
within the biggest social network. Thats not too shabby...and free!
Once you have the home, though, you cant just rely on having it there to be
enough. This isnt the Field of Dreams - you cant just build it and expect people to
come. The focus then? Writing those questions, those posts and adding pictures that
will actually get people to see you. Again, lets focus on what you can actually do
from your phone - you can manage everything on that Facebook page you created
from Facebook, or you can even snag a Pages only app (so you dont accidentally
post to your own account!).
You can also use something like Instagram, which Id guess many of you again
already use personally. Once you have that Instagram account open, you can link it
to the page so you can link everything and take the picture and post it from the
same place.
I know Im an old fogey on this now, but I still see a ton of value from the way
people engage and drive the discussion - we spend enough time there every day,
why not try and make it worth it.
Twitter
One of the best social networks for building new audiences to nd out about
your company is Twitter. The reason why is that Twitter has a unique relationship
model. I can follow you on Twitter, but you don't have to follow me back. That
makes people much more comfortable about who they follow. Additionally, you
dont have to follow me to have a conversation with me. Most conversations on
Twitter happen in full public view, and that means that people's friends and their
friends can see their interactions with startups like yours.
The rst step to getting Twitter working for your startup is to create a prole. You
can do this right from the mobile app. Pick a photo of either you or your startups
logo, a headline image of some kind that is relevant to your startup, some basic
information about you, and then a 160 character biography, the length of a text
message. That biography is super important, because it is usually the rst
impression someone has. Choose a biography that doesn't try to cram in everything
under the sun about you or your startup. Make it something that is a conversation
starter, something that gives people a reason to want to talk to you and nd out
more.
The next step in using Twitter effectively is to have content worth sharing. You
have to tweet about things that will be of interest to the audience you are trying to
attract. For example, if I am doing a startup about Community gardens, I might
want to share gardening tips, ideas, photos of the work that I am doing. I might
share videos of how to do certain difcult tasks from YouTube. At the end of the
day, you need to share things that are going to be helpful and useful to the
audience you are trying to build.
You will nd all kinds of advice and information on the Internet about how to
use twitter and other social media tools, Lists and lists of tips and tricks, but
ultimately, you have to share something that other people want.
The third and nal part of building an audience on Twitter is following people
who you want to have a conversation with. This can be customers or volunteers,
this can be donors or prospective donors, this can be inuencers in your
community who can spread the word of your project. From your phone, dedicate
time to using the search features to search for topics and people near you who
would be great audience members. Try to follow 25 people a day.
If your targeting is good, you could see anywhere from 30 to 70% of them
follow you back and start having conversations with you about the work you're
doing. From there, do your level best to get them as involved with your
organization as you possibly can, from donations to volunteering to advocacy to
promotion.
CHAPTER SIX
Leads
Website
In the realm of building yourself a home, you may also want to consider build a
website. Now, the good news is that this is so easy these days - you dont need to
know much about the world of the code to make things happen.
You can simply go to a free service like WordPress.com and within a few
minutes, again, have a home page up with who you are, what your organization
does, and a place for people to contact you. Id recommend downloading the
application and seeing if you can get a site with your organizations name - that will
help take it from there.
Another great and free option for your projects website is Tumblr. You can set
one up for free, apply any number of good-looking themes to it, and within just a
few minutes be publishing text, audio, video, and a whole bunch of other types of
media. Copy and paste in some code from MailChimp (in the next section), and
you can collect e-mail addresses.
Most Tumblr themes also support social media, so you can have people come to
your website from social media, or send people to your social media accounts from
your website. Tumblr is also excellent for supporting multiple users, so if you have
volunteers, other organizers, or other participants, you can have them edit your
Tumblr, or reblog their contributions from their personal Tumblr accounts. Finally,
Tumblr is compatible with free marketing analytics tools like Google Analytics. You
can use the industry standard measurement tool for absolutely no cost just by
copying and pasting a little bit of code into your Tumblr theme.
One of the most powerful things you can do with Tumblr is reblogging. If youre
not ready to start creating great content, you can reblog other relevant stuff. This
helps you keep fresh, interesting content on your blog every single day, without
requiring the enormous time commitment it would take to create that content.
Additionally, curation of excellent content on Tumblr is a way to demonstrate your
knowledge of your space and your connection to everyone in it. Reblog and re-post
often!
Email Marketing
When it comes to marketing your project, nothing works quite as well over the
long-term as e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing gives you the ability to reach out
to people who give you their e-mail address in order to stay in touch with what's
going on in your project. You can send e-mails to supporters, you can send e-mails
to donors, and you can send e-mails to people who are interested in your project.
The only golden rule of e-mail marketing is to send e-mail only to the people who
have asked to receive it, typically by lling out a form on your website.
One of my favorite tools for startup e-mail marketing is MailChimp. MailChimp
gives you the ability to send up to 2000 e-mails a month for free, before they
charge you, so if you're doing a community project, chances are you'll be able to
stay at the free level indenitely. MailChimp gives you two different apps on your
phone to work with; the rst is a campaign manager app that allows you to send e-
mail. The second is an e-mail composition app that allows you to edit e-mails right
on your phone.
When it comes to building your e-mail list, you are not permitted by law to just
e-mail anyone you want. That's both annoying and legally classied as spam.
However, you can e-mail anyone who has given you permission to do so as often
as they will let you. To build your e-mail list, consider a variety of free tactics, from
showing up at events like this and having conversations with interested parties, to
asking people to subscribe to your newsletter on social media and on your website,
to publishing such an unbelievably good newsletter that is so useful that other
people will want to share it .
If we go back to our example of community gardens, if your weekly newsletter
contained amazing and useful gardening tips every week, you would nd that
growing your list would get easier and easier as more people shared it.
We do you get content for your newsletter? The easiest answer is from your blog.
If you are doing a great job of nding and creating content about your startup and
the industry it is in, you will have no shortage of things to share both on the blog
and in an e-mail newsletter. In fact, if you want to avoid ooding people with a
surplus of useful and if she content as you are surng Tumblr, put some of it on your
blog using the reblog feature and some of it in your e-mail newsletter.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Commitment
Kickstarter and Fundraising
We know that all of you are in different stages of what you are trying to build as
your organizations. Some of you may be a little more beyond these stages and
while we promised to make this about whats free and easy to do, we dont want to
forget about the new rise of social media channels focused on community-giving
and crowdfunding. In their own way, they are awareness drivers in their own and,
not for nothing, stand to make you some money if possible! Whos heard of
Kickstarter?
Kickstarter is a place you can go if you know whats coming next and having
something really specic for which you want to raise funds. Be focused in what you
want to create, and list out the reasons why - then make sure you bridge that into
your status messages, too!
I dont want to just focus on Kickstarter, which is probably the biggest one out
there but doesnt have a lot of focus on specic areas. If you are building
something, like a product or a tool, thats a good place to go. But if you are trying
to get your organization going, you may want to evaluate one of the other similar
places that are on the Web.
CrowdRise is one example: its where because you may want to go if youre
doing a fundraiser around a specic event, or even if you are hosting a fundraiser
where you can ask friends to build their pages, too.
IndieGoGo is another one: that is place that is attractive for non-prot
organizations who are looking to gain awareness and support.
Afliate Marketing
A shoestring budget doesn't mean no money at all. It just means that any
marketing you do, you have to pay for out of the money you earn, the revenue
you generate. Where does that revenue come from?
There's another avenue you can take, the avenue of afliate marketing. If your
community project is talked about enough, visited enough, and engaged with
enough, you might be able to offer other peoples products and services for sale,
and collect a small sales commission for each sale. This is what is known as afliate
marketing, and it's a great way to raise incremental revenue to pay for additional
marketing costs.
One of the most reputable programs is from Amazon.com, called their Amazon
Associates program. The Amazon Associates program allows you to place items
from the Amazon product catalog on your website or blog. When someone clicks
on one of those items and goes to Amazon to purchase it, you get a small
commission, typically around 1 to 4%.
Will you make a ton of money this way? No. But you don't have to - many of
the marketing programs that we have NOT talked about, that require payment, such
as paid social media promotions, don't require a huge budget. You can get away
with ve or $10 per campaign, which means that you can pay for your marketing
as you go. If you can raise $5 a week for marketing purposes using afliate
programs, you can use more and more advanced forms of marketing - and not have
to spend your own money in the process.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Measuring Success
Google Analytics
So far, weve talked about your startup, how to publish great content in order to
attract new audiences, and what great content is. Lets now talk about how you can
measure your success. When it comes to measuring the success of your new
startup, there are so many tools available, so many different ways to look at
everything that's happening, that it can be a little overwhelming. I'm going to give
you a few basic things to look at in the free Google Analytics tool. Assuming that it
is set up correctly, which is a topic for another time, you'll want to look at three
different numbers.
The rst number you'll want to look at is the number of new users to your
website. If this number isn't consistently going up, your website and your startup is
in trouble. You'll need to do more activities like write blog posts, maybe write blog
posts for other peoples' blogs, follow more people on social media, attend more
events like this. Do whatever you can to get more new people showing up every
day, every week, every month, every year.
The second number you'll want to look at is the number of returning visitors to
your website. This number should also be going up consistently. If it isn't, that
means that people are getting to your website, but they don't see why they should
come back. This is especially bad news if your startup relies on volunteers or other
forms of active participation. To remedy a decline in returning visitors, create more
content, more frequently, so that people have a reason to keep reading, to keep
coming back, to keep talking to you.
The third and nal number that you will want to take a look at is the number of
conversions that have occurred your website. This could be people signing up on
volunteer forms, this could be monetary donations collected, this could be products
sold or services rendered, but it has to be something that is tangible and important.
Again, you want to see more of these over time rather than less. If your conversions
are dropping, then there's a good chance you have tapped out your current
audience and need new audience. Or, the offer that you have is not a good t for
the audience you have. For example, if you are offering coffee to tea drinkers, It
doesn't matter how good your website is or how pretty the design is, you're not
going to get those tea drinkers to drink coffee.
CHAPTER NINE
Conclusion
Conclusion
We hope that we have given you some inspiration and insight into how you can
market your startup idea for almost no money besides what you're already paying
for your smartphone, its data plan, and your time. You have seen today that success
is achievable from our examples. Success is affordable, even on a shoestring
budget. And success is practical even using just a smartphone most the time to run
your startup's marketing plan. All you really need is to get started and build some
momentum; once you've got momentum, you'll be able to secure additional
customers, volunteers, donations, or other resources that will help you grow past
the launch stage.
Additional Resources
To learn more about Google Analytics, take Googles free courses:
https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course
To learn more about email marketing, check out MailChimps free basic guides:
http://mailchimp.com/resources/
To learn more about social media, check out Mozs free beginners guide to
social media:
http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-social-media
Dave on Twitter: @levydr
Chris on Twitter: @cspenn
SHIFT Communications on Twitter: @shiftcomm
Get More PR and Communications Insights!
Want to keep on learning about public relations, communications, and how
they can benet your company? Subscribe for free to SHIFT Happens, the weekly
email newsletter from SHIFT Communications that wraps up what you should
know each Wednesday. Its completely free and will help you learn better how to
leverage all of the earned media youre getting.
Click here to subscribe to SHIFT Happens:
http://www.shiftcomm.com/about-shift/news/subscribe-to-shift-happens/
Blatant Sales Pitch
We would be remiss if we didnt say that if all of this feels overwhelming, were
happy to help. Engage our services for your marketing and earned media needs and
well show you how your company and brand can shine, get attention from the
audiences that will benet you most, and drive bottom-line results in a measurable
way.
Click here to contact us and engage our services:
http://www.shiftcomm.com/contact/
Blatant Social Panhandling
If you liked this guide, please share it on the social network of your choice! Be
sure to also follow SHIFT Communications on these channels:
Twitter: http://www.shiftcomm.com/t
Facebook: http://www.shiftcomm.com/f
LinkedIn: http://www.shiftcomm.com/l
Google+: http://www.shiftcomm.com/g
About SHIFT Communications
SHIFT is an integrated communications agency with ofces in Boston, NYC and
San Francisco, composed of over 100 creative, smart, and sassy brainiacs. We help
nd, build, and convert the new audiences you need to drive business growth for
consumer, technology and media companies, ranging from edgy startups to
established brands.

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