Category: Startups

Data Marketing Startups Tactics

Marketing Personas Are Almost Always a Boondoggle (but they don’t have to be)

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Boss: “We need marketing personas for each of our customer targets.”You: “Got it. What problems are these personas meant to solve?”Boss: “You know, um… Strategy. Targeting. And, uh… give ’em fun names like Workin’ Wendy and Stay-at-Home Steve, or something.”You: “Oh god, not again…” A few years back, I worked on a 6-month project to collect survey, interview, and industry…
Product Psychology Startups

SaaS Churn and Short-Term Customers: The Contrarian View

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Ever wonder why so many business software companies make it so darn difficult to start using their products? Or why subscription-focused tools are so obsessed with making it hard to quit vs. making it easy to sign up? Why don’t these SaaS (software-as-a-service, aka subscription) companies want customers who might only need their product every few months or even only…
Hiring Marketing Psychology Startups Team

Why You Should Hire Agencies & Consultants (for everything you can)

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
In my first decade as a tech CEO, I consistently got advice about how building a great team was essential to building a great business. Agencies and consultants were never part of this conversation. It was always: hire full-time employees in areas where you need a competitive advantage; only hire agencies for functions you want to put on autopilot or…
Psychology Startups

We’ve Gotta Stop Using “Lifestyle Business” as a Pejorative

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
For a long while, American business culture has worshiped at the altar of big. Entrepreneurs want to build “big” companies, because they believe that’s how they prove their worth. The media tells us that’s true when they report on every move made by big companies, but barely cover small ones. Speakers on stages and webinars reinforce it when they talk…
Marketing Startups

Where Should You Start Marketing a New Business or Product?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
There’s no question I get more when presenting on startup marketing than this: “I feel so overwhelmed… Where do I even start?” It’s a fair response, one for which I have great empathy. If you start consuming information about marketing a business online, the rabbit hole can quickly lead to some very overwhelming and, in my opinion, misleading advice. When…
Marketing Psychology Startups

Read The Room.

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
When folks ask me about how best to do marketing right now, my answer is consistently turning into the same three words: Read the room. Imagine you’ve walked into a religious space. This room is sacred to the people inside it. When you speak, whatever you say will be viewed through the context of where you are. That’s exactly what…
Events Marketing Psychology Startups

Extraordinary Times Call For Extraordinary Measures

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
There can no longer be doubt: the majority of people in advanced economies are living through the most life-altering event of the last forty years. Natural disasters, wars, economic turmoil, political shifts, technological disruption — all of these pale in comparison to COVID-19’s breadth, speed, and the raw quantity of prolonged, global change. That’s in no way meant to minimize…
Startups

Google in 2020: From Everyone’s Search Engine to Everyone’s Competitor

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I’ve written a lot this year about the shifts we’re seeing from Google — moving from search engine to answer to engine and now to a direct competitor for an enormous number of websites and businesses. Today, I’m sharing the latest numbers from our friends at Jumpshot on Google’s Q3 CTRs (using their recently updated estimation methodology), and providing some…
Startups

As the Antitrust Case Against Google Kicks Off, Here’s Where the DOJ Should Start

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Google has been, in many ways, a positive force in the worlds of technology, society, convenience, and information dissemination. It’s hard to argue that any of the other tech giants (save, perhaps, Microsoft) have done as much to improve numerous aspects of the lives of people around the world. But in building services outside their core web search business —…

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