doing things that don't scale - counter intuitive marketing for startups

DOING THINGS THAT DON’T SCALECounter intuitive marketing for startups...

Who Am I?Developer, MeteorJS/NodeJS

Founder at Development Studio Almog Design

Developer / EntrepreneurAlmog Koren

Formerly founder of Scoreoid(funded startup)

Speak at events & meet-upsCasual Connect, Mobile Summit, ect..

Active in the community / Community Evangelist

Scoreoid

5,000+ Game Developers

Millions of players

Team of 3 / 5

$175K in Funding

01

02

03

04

Lesson's learned

Scoreoid - Customers

$75K in unding

Lesson's learned

Scoreoid – Teir 1 Games

$75K in unding

Lesson's learned

Super Hexagon Featured iOS, Android

and part of the indie bundle

LIGA WorldTapOfficial Spanish

Liga de Fútbol game

Color SheepFeatured Android game by industry professionals

Trinket Studios

Scoreoid – DevelopersLesson's learned

Our client wanted to create a worldwide online leaderboard for their app. The Scoreoid API was the best solution out there. It was super easy to implement and seamlessly worked across all of our target platforms within the Unity framework. Andrew Thompson, emberlab

I’ve been searching for a proper solution for my leaderboards without the need of servers or a database, Scoreoid was an instant hit and its no-API approach made it compatible with any platform! Kenney Indie Game Developer

Scoreoid is great! It has saved me countless hours of coding and given me the ability to focus more on creating a great game without having to worry about how I’m going to handle all the “other stuff” Scoreoid Rocks! Mark Hemingway Indie Game Developer

http://paulgraham.com/ds.htmlPaul Graham’s Essay

After closing down Scoreoid now having some free time, I enrolled startup class. Part of the reading was Paul’s Graham’s do things that don’t scale.

I realized what I did for Scoreoid in the being was exactly this, and it really works….

The Goal For This Talk?

Guest ContentWriting guest content not only works but really helps you get your message across and bring in new users (signups). While it does take a lot of time and does not bring a big amount of users (don’t expect double digits signups but single digits) over timeit makes a big difference.

Guest Content - Take Aways• Always follow up on comments

• Always follow up with the website / author

• Send a thank you note to the website / author

• Track everything - Google Analytics is your best friend

One on OneIt’s manual labor intensive but it works. I would each day look at the top 20 and lower (you want the mid tier first, as your not yet recognizable and just starting out) on the Android Play store I would contact each game developer and send them a personal message, I would also try to play each game and it 100% personalized. This is the most important thing.

One on One

One on OneThe message I sent out

One on OneI also did this for meet ups, uaergroups and anywhere that had game

developers

One on OneIf I developer did you use Scoreoid after a one on one message I would then post about it on our social networks and interview that developer.

One on One - Take Away• By playing each game or most of the games I was able to give really

feedback and make my email / message personalized

• Making your email / message personalized is the most important thing

• Don’t send out mass emails and marking emails this does not work, fact..

• If they use your service make sure to follow up and get their feedback

Community SDK’sI went to GitHub and other game developer communities looking for developers that have developed SDK’s and components. They just asked then to develop some for Scoreoid. It was hard to find developers for this but after 2 components other developers were doing this on their own without any contact from us. It grew by itself.

Videos, VideosFor each feature release we upload short videos showing what were working on, don’t expect viral videos or double digit signups but this works and over time we received an increase in both social media and signups.

Community Partners On our main website we created a community partners section were we promoted in our partners in return they listed us and their site and promoted out services. We were small noting more then a startup but over time were able to build this into a great tool with partners from Microsoft to ATT&T increasing signups and our exposure.

Doing More We also did developer interviews, spoke at events and anything we can think of. We did not look for crazy signup numbers or exposure but just going other there and doing the small stuff.

• Don’t worry about exposure or how long something might take

• Focus on little steps, doing things that are small

• It’s hard work no way to avoid that so go other there and just do it

• Ads when your starting out and bootstrapping is a waste

The Promotion

marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networking services and other technologies to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives… Wikipedia

The Ultimate Gaming Backend-as-a-Service for Game Developers!

Video clips, images

Games, email

Incentive based

Trendy based

Viral?

VIRAL = YOUR MARKET REACH


Market

Segments

Incentive size

Networking potential

Initial impact

Time frame

Viral Reach?

Social Media

Adding a like button isn't going to get you users

Doing social media isn't marketing it’s part of

marketing

Sharing and posting is not social media

Remember your network isn't scalable

Goals:• Increase Scoreoid brand awareness and awareness

within the game developers community.

• Increase social traffic and website traffic.

• Increase referrals and SEO?

• Testing the waters out.

• Can it go viral or pick up traction?

The Promotion


Outline:• Gather 6 game designers, sound artists and

developers from the community.

• Provide assets via landing page and “PayWithATweet”.

• Low budget and organic marketing.

The Promotion

8,159Unique Views

10,000Visits

1 MILLIONImpressions (Twitter)

Over 5,500Tweets

Over 6,000Social Referral

13,831Page Views

First 24 to 36 Hours

18,231Unique Views

23,000Visits

1 MILLION+Impressions (Twitter)

Over 6,500Tweets

Over 10,000Social Referral

39,836Page Views

Within A Week


Brand Awareness

Follow up after initial

spike

Target influencers more

Incentive based is key

Update hash tags

constantly

Brand awareness is key

Be more prepared to measure

Direct follow up was missed

Closing and wrapping up

What We Learned

Social engagement

Brand awareness Segment WHAT

TO DOSocial research

Find a good incentive Be genuine

Post, Post, PostSocial mechanics

Use a designer

Your Promotion?

What can you give away or provide that has value?

What does your target market need or would want?

What can I show to my target market that would

interest them?

What platforms can I use?

Brainstorm with everyone THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

Ideas

Examples

Dropbox Michigan RaceDropbox share for free space

Examples

Dropbox invite friends for free spaceCopy Tweet for extra storage

Examples

Twitter promotion (in 2009) - "Tweet Seats" sold domestic tickets through its Twitter account for just nine bucks a pop, selling 1,000 tickets in just three minutes. 33,000 followers to its Twitter account.

Grasshopper, The New Dork - bit.ly/bCFPNJ

Dollar Shave Club - bit.ly/x1RILs

Examples

- More than 1.3 million views since March 2010 (Startup, USA ).

- 2 million views within the first 48 hours, today 5 million. Used video to raise $1 million USD and gain 12,000 new subscriptions within the first two days of debut.

http://bit.ly/bCFPNJ



http://bit.ly/x1RILs



Will It Blend? - bit.ly/efO3A

The Blair Witch Project - bit.ly/GWXa

Examples

- 530,000 subscribers and over 220 million views

- budget of just over $500,000, gross almost $250 million at the box office

http://bit.ly/efO3A

http://bit.ly/efO3A

http://bit.ly/efO3A

http://bit.ly/GWXa

http://bit.ly/GWXa

http://bit.ly/GWXa

Focus Point

Rewards Engagement

Good segmentation

Wrap Up: Focus

Wrap Up: Tools that can help

Almog Design @IsAlmog Almog Design

Website: www.almogdesign.netBlog: https://medium.com/@IsAlmog E-Mail: [email protected]

Contact

mailto:[email protected]?subject=

THANK YOU

doing things that don't scale - counter intuitive marketing for startups

Marketing