Inbound on a shoestring
WILL CRITCHLOW

Fame done cheap

“We want the best. Better get
the cheapest”
-- No-one, ever

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/30/business/la-fi-mo-richest-woman-20120830

Did you see this
article?
I didn’t actually
think it was a great
promo video.
http://blog.kickofflabs.com/how-to-do-a-great-product-promo-video-for-less-than-200/
(Though I do love the kickofflabs product and team)

Most cheap marketing is one-shot
It’s not scalable or repeatable http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/174088066/

“Hyper-successful marketing
activities you can do with no
money that scale up, stay free
and stay wildly successful”

“Good luck with that”
--@willcritchlow

Let’s invent a perpetual motion machine
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Murphy's_law_application_for_antigravitatory_cats

Who can tell me who this is?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmaresca/8098982355/

Steve Blank: Entrepreneur, Lecturer
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmaresca/8098982355/

His hardest marketing
challenge:
Selling Apple Mac graphics
cards
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngreathouse/2012/10/15/steve-blanks-most-audacious-guerrilla-marketing-stunts/

Marketing team of 14 spent $4m / year
http://www.flickr.com/photos/msimdottv/4012752000/

15,000 customer registration cards
He personally called the first 300

They run 4 main applications.
Read 3 main publications.
Speed is what matters.
Price is irrelevant.

An engineer would ask to
speed up the card

Steve asked for one 10% slower and
one 20% slower

Then hiked the price of the top
end
• If you can’t afford marketing, you probably aren’t charging enough

Gave magazine editors access
to their benchmarking tool

“For 3 1/2 years, neither the magazines nor my competitors
realized that our company was on Potrero Street and that the
address of the Potrero Benchmark Organization was the
identical address of SuperMac”

There are 2 kinds of
“bootstrapped”

#1 Pay using something other than money

#2 Spend someone
else’s money

A quick note on measurement

This isn’t a useful divisor
ROI is a terrible metric for bootstrapped marketing

If you don’t have money, you
need at least one of…

Talent
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beleaveme/5840856849/

Relationships
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beleaveme/5840856849/

Fame
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicoll/346259443/

Assets
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jedlangdon/7369276320/

…or even just balls

But the big one is TIME

Pixar spends 1,825 man-days...

...on each minute of movie
http://www.quora.com/Pixar-Animation-Studios/What-are-some-mind-blowing-facts-about-Pixar-Animation-Studios#ans1573197

Read Dr. Pete on “big content”

“Spend” your effort & skills

or spend someone else’s money

The democracy of the web
works in your favor

You’ve heard of kickstarter

Lockitron – level up and DIY
https://lockitron.com/preorder

You won’t want to ship them yourself
Warning: not zero budget! [www.shipwire.com – check out the API]

Check out Printfection.com
Not only fulfillment – but also print on demand so no up-front cost

If you take credit card payments,
invest early revenue in acquisition
You can make this cash flow-positive http://www.flickr.com/photos/doyoubleedlikeme/2520228943/

2006
40% off
Rumors that Thresher was “going
to go bust” after viral spread of
their voucher

2008
They did it
again
“Later it emerged that the
scheme had been a huge
marketing success”

Appsumo-type deals exchange margin
for marketing
And it can even spread further than the people they reach directly

Action:
High gross margin? Use deep discounts
…or even giveaways. You can use the discount to drive your marketing
http://www.flickr.com/photos/68751915@N05/6710895025/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/panapp/3413589725/

I want to tell you the story of
Dortmund concert milk
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

A concert hall took their orchestra to
dairy farms
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

Farmers took care of packaging and
logistics
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

Invited bloggers to private concerts,
served the milk at the concert hall
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

And got their “advert” in all the local
shops
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

The concert hall had their most
successful season of all time
The farmers made a return within the first year as well
http://www.ameawards.com/winners/2012/pieces.php?iid=430653&pid=1

Find someone who has what you want
Got content? Find traffic. Got traffic? Find content.

Ladbrokes wanted to put beermats in 100s of pubs with a free bet promotion
http://www.flickr.com/photos/russelljsmith/12043344/

It’s surprisingly expensive to print and ship beermats to 100s of pubs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/russelljsmith/12043344/

A partnership with KP peanuts gave free distribution and point-of-sale promotion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ladbrokes.middlesbrough_007.1.jpg

Neither the app makers nor the film studio paid for this media

Do you have distributors?
Timberland have an e-commerce store and feature on others’ sites

Best recent example I’ve seen
(from Rainforest Alliance)
Follow the frog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iIkOi3srLo

Green rooibos isn’t a huge brand

But they make it into this great video
They get featured because of the rainforest alliance logo [arrow theirs]

“Spend” your effort & skills

This infographic was about 10% of Oli’s
guest post on SEOmoz
Check out unbounce.com – he’s earned it!

Real guest posting brings real business
benefits
Not only links (or even traffic) but conversion rate improvements

It should be obvious that you really win if you
get people creating this content for you
Well done Rand

Get in other people’s emails
This is traffic to distilled.net from the moz Top Ten

Cold emailing totally works
But only if your product kicks ass

Without the nudge, we wouldn’t have even created this offers page

LinkedIn – use “people you may know”
This
Means this button connects directly
with no awkward questions

The LinkedIn API doesn’t ask awkward
questions if you know an email address
This is the rapportive plugin for gmail. Highly recommended

Most people have email in their profile
Don’t be a ****

No connections? Rapportive makes it
easy to find email addresses
http://www.distilled.net/blog/miscellaneous/find-almost-anybodys-email-address/

Make your next guest post pitch a guest email pitch
Bonus – you can re-use content you already have

Wavelength helps you find similar
email newsletters to your own
http://wavelength.mailchimpapp.com

I want to see more
blog commenting
Not like this. But
thank you Mr
Fiorenza881.

Some blogs (like AVC) have more value in the
comments than in the posts themselves – which often
serve to spark the discussion. This is a compliment to
Fred Wilson BTW for the community he has built.

Commit to trying a new community
Commit to sticking with it for a month
That’s long enough to create a habit (if you like it)

Localize, personalize

Local hairdressers work because of
economics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/unwomenasiapacific/7370927212/
Local is a feature and it’s hard for the big guys to compete with

@SpaceTheShiba at our
Seattle meet-up
Local events work for the same reasons

We think of Pinterest as the archetypal
“product-driven growth” startup
But you should read this AllThingsD article on how they really grew

Many local events feel big
budget because they worked

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was
just employees the first year
http://www.flickr.com/photos/musicwala/5209170537/

The Tour de France was a promo for a
newspaper
It put their rival out of business

“Go to a race with a digital camera and a banner.
Take thousands of photos.
Use mechanical turk to identify the participants.
Repeat at weekly meets.
Get famous.
???
Profit” --Cycling website owner
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjr-images/6949648280/

Opportunity is like serendipity

Linford Christie wore Puma contact
lenses to a press conference where
endorsements were banned

Lego recreated the Red Bull freefall
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/video/2012/oct/15/felix-baumgartner-skydive-lego-video

So how do we do this online?

Mash things up

Embrace the trolls
Bodyform’s exceptional response to a Facebook troll

A guy named Thomas Cook asks Thomas
Cook for a holiday

Thomas Cook says “no”

LowCostHolidays.com says “yes”

No-one here
knows who
Urs Meier is
do they?
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/British_tabloids_let_rip_on_Swiss_referee.html?cid=3967910

He was a referee at Euro 2004 (soccer!)
He disallowed a goal that screwed England

http://www.flickr.com/photos/derrickding/323218989/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/14174853@N04/3751824078/
ASDA immediately started offering free eye tests for the Swiss

You could do the Swiss thing online
(With some careful monitoring and without too much at stake)

Target the tech sector (and press)

What other groups could you target?
Country / city (sports?)
Windows / Mac
Mobile / Non-mobile
iPhone / Android

If you run a
magazine site,
why not detect
the device and
play up this
research?
Remember this OKCupid data?

No time, talent, fame or friends?

Then you need balls

WePay dropped a 600lb block of ice
full of money at a PayPal conference
I’m not saying WePay have no friends, BTW

WILL CRITCHLOW
Founder, Distilled
will.critchlow@distilled.net
@willcritchlow

Celebrities work

Just a little message

I thought I’d get an endorsement from
the other sideUnfortunately Mr. Romney couldn’t be reached for comment

Celebrities are expensive

WILL CRITCHLOW
Founder, Distilled
will.critchlow@distilled.net
@willcritchlow