Shawn Anderson & Shane Corellian (Co-Founders, PDQ.com) - Alternative Marketing, or "Oops I Did A Marketing"

1. Alternative Marketing Or “Oops I Accidentally Did A Marketing” Shawn Anderson / Shane Corellian Co-founders PDQ.com
2. “We’ve gone to 11”
3. Million
4. Total Annual Sales
7. • Print Ads • AdWords • Some remedial videos • Trial only • All things to all people • Oh, and our content totally sucked Total Annual Sales
8. “You can't please all the people all the time... and last night, all those people were at my show.” - Mitch Hedberg
9. “You can't please all the people all the time... and last night, all those people were at my show.” - Mitch Hedberg
10. Spray & Pray (Our Laser-Focused Approach To Marketing)
11. • 5 GB • Pixo OS 2.1 • 60-mW Amplifier • FireWire port • 3.5-mm headphone jack • Stainless Steel • 2-inch white backlit LCD display • Battery-10 hours. Features vs. Benefits 1,000 songs in your pocket.
12. • 5 GB • Pixo OS 2.1 • 60-mW Amplifier • FireWire port • 3.5-mm headphone jack • Stainless Steel • 2-inch white backlit LCD display • Battery-10 hours. Features vs. Benefits 1,000 songs in your pocket.
13. • 5 GB • Pixo OS 2.1 • 60-mW Amplifier • FireWire port • 3.5-mm headphone jack • Stainless Steel • 2-inch white backlit LCD display • Battery-10 hours. Features ALONG with Benefits 1,000 songs in your pocket.
14. Traditional Marketing is Tough if …
15. Traditional Marketing is Tough if … • You Need Immediate $ales • Customers are ad-blind • You have limited resources • Your name is Shane or Shawn
16. Traditional Marketing is Tough if … • You Need Immediate $ales • Customers are Ad-blind • You have limited resources • Your name is Shane or Shawn
17. Traditional Marketing is Tough if … • You Need Immediate $ales • Customers are Ad-blind • You Have Limited Resources • Your name is Shane or Shawn
18. Traditional Marketing is Tough if … • You Need Immediate $ales • Customers are Ad-blind • You Have Limited Resources • Your Name is Shane or Shawn
19. Our First Attempt at Marketing • Focused on Benefits • No discussion of Features (yes, those are our bites)
20. Our First Attempt at Marketing • Focused on Benefits • No discussion of Features (yes, those are our bites)
21. 20-ish Clicks (10 of which were mom)
22. “Well, I suggest you gentlemen invent a way to put a square peg in a round hole. Rapidly.” - Gene Krantz
23. Do we want people to TRY our software or USE our software?
24. We went to a Freemium model • No Expiration • No Ads • No strings Attached • No Sh#*tware
25. “If we're not losing sleep from giving too much away…
26. “If we're not losing sleep from giving too much away… we're not doing it right.”
27. • Blogging / Videos • Freemium • 2 new (focused) products • Being ourselves Total Annual Sales
28. What if I told you… We create content for humans, not algorithms.
29. What if I told you… We create content for humans, not algorithms.
30. • Blogging / Videos • Freemium • 2 new (focused) products • Being Ourselves (embrace the suck) Added LIVE Webcasts ⬈
31. Added Cloud Features / Subscription Pricing Added LIVE Webcasts ⬈
32. LIVE Webcast • Answer Questions in Real Time • Build Community • Interact Directly
33. LIVE Webcast • Built Our Own • Still Room for Banter • Questions Don’t Get Lost in the Shuffle
34. LIVE Webcast • Built Our Own • Users Ask Questions • Users Can Upvote
35. LIVE Webcast • Built Our Own • Live Demos • We Control the Entire Experience • I
36. We had to step up our studio game
37. A real face for radio
38. Videos (Our Razzie Award Approach To Film)
39. Videos (Embracing the Suck)
40. And in Ten Years We Had an Overnight Community
41. A Global Community
42. Q&A (Embracing the Suck)

Editor's Notes

Shane’s last name notwithstanding, we are identical twin brothers.
This is our 10th US BOS, with 11 being 2017 EU BOS. Thank you Mark Littlewood for making this a must attend conference.

In 2008, our first BOS, Peldi spoke about making >1M his first year. So did Joel Spolsky. We thought “HOW DID THEY DO THAT”?
Our software sales. We attended our first BOS in 2008.
We are showing this graph because we want to show what we failed doing and succeeded in doing with marketing.
Let’s get to the ugly first.
First year 45K in sales. Nothing to compare against. We knew it was low but we were bootstrapped.
2nd and 3rd years went lower. We refer to this as the slow bleed of death. HIT ENTER
Something not right. Time for a major course correction.

Here’s what went wrong?
These things have been used by successful companies in the past, the difference was that our content really sucked.
SHANE:
We didn’t believe in ourselves, so we blindly took the advice of books, speakers, rumors, soothsayers, and pharmacists.

We hired a “professional” to redo our website look ‘n feel and our content.

Backstory on My Cousin Vinny <Enter>
SHAWN – in 2008 EVERYONE was telling you to speak to benefits instead of features. They always used the iPod example.

The guy we hired to redo our content was a huge believer in this. Problem was he wasn’t technical, so the only benefit that he could speak to was saving time and ease of use. So every single technical feature we had he listed as “save time” or some reworded version of the same message.

Result – page of page listed saving time but didn’t exactly say what you did. It was an epic fail. We made almost no sell in 3 months. The closest that we ever came to going under.
Summarize the list – WE TOOK OVER OUR OWN CONTENT.

Said goodbye to: AdWords, Print Ads, and outsourced content.

On top of better products, we blogged and did better videos.

Shawn Anderson & Shane Corellian (Co-Founders, PDQ.com) - Alternative Marketing, or "Oops I Did A Marketing"

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