From my presentation which I gave on May 10th, 2013 at Rockstart Accelerator (Amsterdam), about how to get massive traction & traffic to whatever project you're doing, and how we're actually doing it with our startup, Limk. (*)
(*) http://limk.com/
3. Oguz Serdar
Oguz Serdar
• Limk made 6-fig. ad revenue (almost $150k in 2 years)
with the previous product.
• Individually launched 2 local soccer related
communities until the age of 18, which reached over
400k users, and generated $50k in revenue from
scratch.
• Made almost $100k from affiliate marketing, mostly
doing arbitrage.
• 6000 alpha users %60 monthly retention.
zz
4. If you build it,
They WON T COME !
at least she won’t.
7. How to get a user onboard?
• BE REALLY AWESOME
Then the chances are you’ll get positive feedback / reactions from rest
of the world. Life is good.
Examples: Tony Stark :), Tesla, Fitbit, Nest, Waze, IFTTT, Instagram,
Buffer App...
• BE TRUSTWORTHY
If you’re still trying to figure things out, then create a trustworthiness
around your brand.
Examples: Aggressive & continuous SEO, create a Social Media fan base,
offer exclusive content, write shareable / scientific blog posts around
your core concepts, aggressive life cycle emails....
++ anything but “normal”
++ aim for long-tail
8. SEO is the MOST important one
Because people put trust in Google
9. How we’re doing at Limk?
Limk Shuffle
Aggressive
Social Media
Content
Distribition
Aggressive
SEO
Email
Marketing
• Win / win
• More visibility
• Designed
to scale with
massive traffic
• FACEBOOK!
• Partnerships
• Experiments
• EdgeRank
• AUTOMATE
• Systematic
• TRIGGERS
• Blog
• Link-building
• Focus on keywords
• Long-tail
• Pyramid
• Life-cycle emails
• Offering exclusivity
• 7-times rule
• Sent from my iPhone!
11. This PIN brought +100 signups
* even for marketing purpose, Pinterest is time-consuming.
12. Once you get those
PRO-TIP: Believe in LOLcats
You re the king
13. Pyramid
Your Content
Redistributed
Content
YOU
The earlier you start, the better it gets
By focussing on the terms / keywords that you aim for search
engines, you can redistribute your content in big platforms such
as Blogspot, Wordpress.com, Tumblr, Twitter etc. by creating
new accounts.
Then you can link back to your original product with
the targeted keywords that you want to get traffic
for. Keep in mind that it’s a pyramid, and the link
building should happen with the same way.
Example: Limk (1) << Sport Channel (2) ><
Basketball (3) >< NBA (4) >< Los Angeles
Lakers (5) >< Kobe Bryant (6) >> Limk
Always be link building!
14. Lifecycle Emails
• After 1k users starts from $150 / Month
• A lot of triggers / segments
• You can define your own stuff
• Great email templates
• You can even send mobile notifications
• $50 / Month
• A lot of triggers / segments
• You can define your own stuff
• Nice email templates
• Nice email analytics
• Starts from $50 / Month
• A lot of triggers / segments
• A/B Tests
• HTML email templates
Customer.io
• A lot of triggers / segments
• You can define your own stuff
• Great layouts
• Nice email analytics
• Starts with $75 / Month
MixPanel People Intercom (We use it!) GetVero
“Twitter uses a $6 million per year EC2 cluster to
send 200 million individually personalised emails
to its users every day.”
15. How we keep up with our users?
Got them
onboard
Welcome them
personally
Continuous
Triggers
• Session-based
• Step-based
• Conditions
• If Twitter
followers > 50
• If Klout >> 40
Evaluating &
Grouping Users
• Last seen
• Grouping
• Define fans
• Reward them
• Give exclusivity
Time-period-
based Emails
• 3 days
• If last seen >
5 days
• 7 days
• If last seen >
10 days
• 30 days
Work on ‘Lost’
Users
• If last seen > 3 days
Sent what they
have missed
• > 14 days
some exclusive
content
• > 35 days
Twitter
Mention :)
Finish
• 7-time rule
• Focus on early fans
• Loss is OK
• Group-based
lifecycle emails
• Don’t duplicate
16. Traction even trumps team & vision when going for The Million Dollar Round.
Ash Fontana - AngelList
17. Spend your time wisely
PRO-TIP: VCs would love to fuel your growth, so get the traction early on, and work on it!
Don t forget that 9 times of 10 that
the Lean Startups are unfundable
“We see Lean Startup methodology being used inappropriately as an excuse to
not take sales and marketing seriously,” he said. “Founders tell us that all that
matters is product, and sales and market will happen automatically. The ‘if they
build it it will come,’” mantra, which he noted is not always an acceptable
approach for those looking to grow.
Marc Andreessen