Deepak Goel is a seasoned product management and marketing executive who has worked at companies like Coupons.com, IndiaHomes.com, and MSN/Microsoft. He has experience across domains like email, content, e-commerce, and real estate, and across functions like engineering, product management, and online marketing. He discusses strategies for customer acquisition through product features, SEO, SEM, and retention through product features and email marketing. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on value over growth, using real metrics, frequent experimentation, and iterating on products along with marketing.

1. Online Marketing
Deepak Goel
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dgoel07

2. About me
• Seasoned product management and product marketing executive
– Chief Product Officer of IndiaHomes.com
– Director of Product Management at Coupons.com
– Executive at MSN/Microsoft
• Experience
– across domains (email, content, coupons, retail, e-commerce, real estate and
maps & traffic)
– across product types (consumer, enterprise, mobile, social & platform)
– across functions (engineering, product management and online marketing)
– across levels (individual contributor, manager, director & VP/CXO).
• Angel Investor and Mentor at 500 Startups
• MBA from Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley

3. Online Marketing
• Customer Acquisition
– Via product features
– SEO
– SEM
• Customer Retention
– Via product features
– Email Marketing

4. Disclaimer
• If a company is good at using one particular
strategy/tactic, it doesn’t mean that they are
doing well in all aspects.
• The user experience of the company might
have changed since the time this presentation
was created.
• I have advised or worked at most of these
companies at some point of time, so there will
be a personal bias.

5. Customer Acquisition (via product features)
• Phenomenal first time experience
– Do you give your users enough reasons to sign up
with you at least as a free user?
– e.g. Roomations, TheStyleUp, etc
• If you have a platform, what are your killer
apps?
– Wildfire interactive

6. Customer Acquisition (via product features)
• Phenomenal return user experience
– Online-offline combination
– e.g. Coupons.com, IndiaHomes, etc
• Sign in experience
– e.g. Linkedin

7. Customer Acquisition (via product features)
• How do you enable your existing users to
touch non-users?
– Hotmail signature
– Facebook photo sharing
– Linkedin vanity URL
• Note that it is not the same as “virality”.

8. Customer Acquisition (SEO)
• User pages
– Linkedin, Facebook, etc
• Customer pages
– Linkedin company pages
– MightyNest PTA pages

9. Customer Acquisition (SEM)
• Intent-based vs. Demand-Gen
• Law of diminishing returns
• Online-offline combination
– Indiahomes, MightyNest, etc

10. Customer Acquisition (SEM)
• Optimize for the right metric
– Leads vs. Qualified Leads
• e.g. IndiaHomes
– What may seem intuitive may not be right.
• e.g. an e-commerce site could be selling few products
with little/no margins. (Tushky, IndiaHomes)
• Lifetime value of a customer

11. Customer Acquisition (Paid)
• Affiliate Marketing
– Cost Per Acquisition
– Infinitely scalable
– e.g. Adsense, Brandcaster, etc

12. Customer Retention (via product features)
• Where all are you touching your existing
users?
– Mobile (e.g. LinkedIn signout experience)
– Facebook, etc
– Affiliate program
– Toolbar

13. Customer Retention (Email Marketing)
• How often are you touching your existing
users? Can you provide them with something
of value "n" times a week? Bigger the "n",
better it is.
– Thestyleup
– Groupon daily deal newsletter
– LinkedIn emails
• Latest in Email Marketing
– SimpleRelevance

14. Final Words
• Focus on value before you focus on growth.
– Learn from the retail distribution world
• Real metrics vs. Vanity metrics
– Sverve, Resume, etc
• Experiment as frequently as possible.
• Product and marketing go hand-in-hand. Your
experiments may not be very meaningful if
you don't iterate on the product constantly.

15. Thank You
Deepak Goel
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dgoel07