Bootstrapper.com - Confessions of Serial Entrepreneurs

So this post is a kudos post for a great new software, www.Ad-Juster.com - Ad-juster is a discrepancy reporting & management tool for ad servers .A big problem with serving is ad servers often count ads difference. Jesse built a tool that tracks all the data and normalizes it so you can properly value an impression. It’s a simple thing but something that has been missing from the industry for a long time. Rubicon Project last I heard which does ad network optimization has a team (of 70?) in India that does this manually. It is a huge pain in the ass and great work Ad-Juster!

So we are on the brink of a revolution. A revolution in the world of ad optimization. For years, we have been getting away with poor optimization of advertising. Companies like advertising.com and rightmedia.com made fortunes on the back of optimization. Tacoda sold to AOL for its behavioral engine and MediaMath is the hottest company in NYC. On the publisher side, Yieldex, Rubion, Admeld & Pubmatic are all doing well. What we haven’t seen, however is true ad placement and user value optimization. I’d like to be able to know what ads in what placements at what frequency and with what targeting to show to which user at what time of day. So maybe at 2AM a dating ad in a skyscraper and a text link will perform better than banners? Also, I’d like to see how different advertising strategies and placements effects virality, time on time and repeat visits and for which demographics of users. All in all this data, would give me a true eCPM and value of every user and allow me to understand what every page view and user are worth rather than just what every banner is worth – data points that are invaluable to determining monetization strategy.

So I’ve literally grown up in the online advertising and tech industry and its’ been an interesting ride, going from lost boy to man, trying to navigate our little world. I’ve learned some very hard lessons along the way and had some success and some failures and the one thing that stands out is that the my life is finally catching up with my age. I have friends my own age now in the industry and many friends’ older but in the past its been a surreal experience, being the youngest guy in the room and not being able to relate to people. As this year progresses, I look forward to seeing what happens next and what turns my life takes.

So a friend of mine took a job running innovation and digital at a large food company and asked me to help him redesign their website. I did a 1 hour quick and dirty lesson on online direct response techniques. How did it do it? I took out a newspaper.

What!? You ask, a newspaper? Yes, a newspaper.

Long ago, our friendly publishers learned the art of eliciting fear and getting people to buy papers. By looking at how papers are laid out and headlines are written and pages structured, we can learn a lot. We can also learn a few things that don’t really work anymore.

1. Newspaper expect the person to read just the headline, photo/caption, first and last paragraph so everything is repeated in there. AKA: the equivalent size of most blog posts. Lesson: people have short attention spans, clearly state your value proposition and catch interest early and restate it when you close.

2. Subject line, photo, text is the order of the paper. Normally your eyes will read the headline, look at the picture to support it and then read so your visuals and headline are more important than your content. (sometimes you look to the picture first if its laid out to the right or left of the story. If the headline is above the photo, you tend to look at the headline first). Lesson: Your visuals and headline are 80% of your content. The rest is supporting filler.

3. All news stories have quotes. Lots of them. Even if they don’t make any sense. People like hearing things that come from 3rd party sources to confirm validity, even if its bullshit. Also quotes from people with positions of power or at well known companies are more valuable since its more believable. Lesson: testimonials are very important, especially if they come from people that have credibility (or name recognition) in the consumers eyes.

4. Front page stories are always continued on the inside. This is to get you to flip through the paper, not to read the rest of the story but to look at the ads. Lesson: if you have long content break it into multiple parts so the user has more page views. Secondly, the shorter each piece is the greater chance it’ll be read and the user will want more vs. asking when will it end.

5. Your headline tells the story. If a headline reads: “Ford on deathknell” or “Car company about to crash” or “government bailout for ford”, each headline tells a different story even though it says the same thing. How so?

In the first one, Ford is the subject and deathknell supports it so the goal of the story is to show ford is dying. The goal is to spark fear that ford is dying – to get you to ask yourself a specific question about ford.

In the second one, ‘car company’ is the subject but the keyword is crash. Their goal is to get you wondering which car company and why. Notice no mention of Ford. The goal is to get you interested in who/why – to get you to ask an open question.

In the 3rd one the subject is the government bailout, ford is an afterthought because government bailout is written first. The goal here is to get you thinking about the government, not about ford.

Lesson: the order, subject and description tell the story more than the actual story. Apply this to your tag lines and keyword text as well as your text that shows up on the search engines and on your site. Understand the purpose of what you’re saying not just the point.

Today, we’ll talk a bit about good advertising. First off, there is no such thing! ☺. Advertising is only good if it achieves the goal of the brand, not just for production value. If an agency wins an award, very nice, show me the money! So I have a special place in my heart for direct marketers who push towards a sale. I also have a place in my heart for brands that really ‘get’ advertising. Apple does an amazing job showcasing their brand and pushing the user to buy an iphone without a direct close in the ad but it so clearly projects the iphone value proposition that you want to buy one. The key to successful advertising is first engaging the consumer and second showing a clear value proposition and third a clear path to purchase.

With the iphone, they have quirky clear ads, show off the phones benefits, not features - this is a very important distinction, most companies show off features (such as megapixels) vs. benefits (clear, fast and memorable photos) – and then there is only one path to purchase, ATT which everyone already knows.

If you look at a direct response late night tv ad you can learn a lot. First, you have someone talking in a very clear voice, no music, no jingles, not many people involved, simple and clear and human, the person states the value proposition, usually followed by testimonials of ‘real’ people (testimonials work wonders esp. if video) and then a path to purchase, usually repeated 3 times (the url or phone number).

Let’s dissect:
- clear voice of the product
- clear value proposition
o sometimes ‘throw-ins’ to encourage immediate purchase or discounts
- testimonials
- repetition of the call to action

The next time you create an ad, try to incorporate these things, its not always possible but it works

In an online ad what do you do ?
- state your benefit: “Lowest mortgage rates in nyc” – use a clear action button on the ad and rotate a testimonial in the creative (I don’t understand why people don’t do this) and then on your landing page – use an image projecting your product or target customer, testimonials, with video and photos if possible and multiple of them and a clear place of action

Then after the sale ask if the user wants to share their purchase with their friends through email, facebook or twitter and offer them a discount to offer their friends (years ago studies prove that direct recommendations often lead to sales and that if you market a product to a persons friend its more likely to lead to a sale than marketing to someone random in his demographic.

So my last post was a tribute to Darren Herman for making it into the NY Times. I’d like to spend a minute talking about data. Data is extremely valuable and getting more valuable as we speak. When a user shops at say 1800 flowers and buys something, that user is worth a lot of money to say a restaurant to immediately use for ad targeting. On some sites, the data will become more valuable than the actual advertising. Say for example, you have a site dedicated to people who use a specific type of diabetes medicine and you have registered users, now maybe you only have 500,000 impressions a month but you have 80,000 unique visitors. Those 80,000 cookies are worth a fortune because now the big pharma company can target ads to those users throughout the entire internet and potentially reach them many millions of times. In the future, we will see specialty sites being built just to collect data to sell. Hmm….

So I found this ad on the net … It is both one of the most brilliant and horrible ads i’ve ever seen….enjoy

So I’m Chairman of a company called Apparition Ads, Apparition means Ghost and I had a dream where I was running an ad agency for ghosts. The ghosts were given me grief and making it so i had trouble moving and had trouble breathing. One of them woke me up in my sleep and demanded I work on their account. Talk about a transparent client …. being a pain in the ass …

So contexual marketing has been all the rage in online advertising for the last half decade or so. Whether contexual to you is gator (fine Claria or whatever, 180 solutions (or whatever they are called today) or contextweb, context is king right? WRONG. Now this post is not based on analytical data but on observation but here goes. First off, there are two types of contexual, one is User Theft Contexual (I made this up, feel free to trademark) which is the original gator model of User X is at autotrader so i’ll show a popup for autobytel.com. This is not what I’m talking about in terms of contexual. This post is aimed at the adsense, contextweb type of contexual product, which these days is what people generally refer to in terms of contexual. This is mainly targeting as a result of a hierarchy of categories based on context (keywords/statistical analysis) and there is serious value in this method but I think a lot of us marketers are missing the point. We can sub target a million ways but at the end of the day the most important thing in contexual marketing and marketing in general is HOW THE USER FOUND YOUR AD. I will call this primary context. I will posture that this is more important that any form of analytics. In real life this is akin of seeing an ad for a product vs. a friend who you trust telling you about it. Say for example you’re at an event and the host talks about X, you will naturally think and look into X (you may say you won’t but you will) vs. an ad plastered on a wall somewhere. Primary Context is about how you engaged with the marketing message at the very first touchpoint. This is much deeper than first impressions and is really first interaction. I’d be curious to see analytics where the following scenario is presented: Targeting based on an initial placement which I would use a test a respected site with a loyal audience where the ad reads “recommended by the site” and benchmark it against ads of increasing contexual relevance to the user. I would think the former would be more effective. With that said, I think both together (trust engagement & relevant context) are a slam dunk when used with one another. But if I had to choose one ad to buy I’d go for the ad of greatest primary engagement.  

3 months ago i was at a facebook developers group meeting and talked for a moment about monetization and how i thought facebook would build their own ad network and no one will make money on facebook. I am here to say that i think the climate has changed and now you can make a fortune on facebook.

Facebook is a very valuable thing. When facebook opened themselves up I never thought it would work. When they opened it up beyond Colleges, i thought it would fail too. I was wrong. Facebook has become the operating system for the internet. All they need is a powerful email system and a social search engine and they will own google and everyone else. Sure, they don’t have much revenue but that’s fixable.

lately i’ve gotten involved with the Shoes! Application that has 200,000 rapid woman’s shoes fans and growing rapidly. The app allows you to gift people shoes! and put it in your virtual closet. Now the app is showing by 8,000 new people per day.   Now, Facebook is a marketing platform for people and if you are trying to build apps as a business you really should just be using facebook as your marketing platform so that you can own the customer yourself.

All in all there are a lot of ways to make money on facebook. In general you can earn .50-1.50 CPM for rotating ads within the site. Beyond that, we feel that traditional tactics will work best like email lists and coreg and incentive systems. Incentive systems have failed elsewhere but because it is so new to facebook we think it could make a lot of money in the short term.

Why email? People don’t like buying expensive shit via social networks. The concept of social shopping is too new and confusing. However, people buy shit off of email all the time. Email is a super effective way to sell shit therefore we will be using it. We also can engage with our users and push content to them daily and remind them of our service. Most apps on facebook like at the app as an end all in itself when in truth an app on fcbk is just the starting point for leveraging their users for ourselves.

Now before going into the topic, i’ll focus on the headline. Do you know what I’m talking about? I used a very specific word in my headline, can you guess what it is? C’mon….here’s a hint…his on tv and he’s very arrogant…TRUMP

Now Trump is briliiant marketer. People associate NYC Real Estate with Trump because he built a brand around himself. He supported the brand with books and a tv show and arrogant self promotion. Why he may not be respected in most business circles (he isn’t, esp. not in real estate in NYC - he is hated) he is the most brilliant personal marketer in the world. He is fucking brilliant. He can promote himself like Ron Jeremy promotes his dick - he makes sure everyone knows he’s the man and they end up believing him.

Most entreprenuers esp. techies don’t believe in marketing, it’s not scientific they say or it’s all bullshit or if i have a good idea, people will come to me…well they are wrong (and YES IT IS A SCIENCE - ask Lester Wunderman- if you don’t know who he is go back to school)

The better you market yourself the more press you can get. The more people will reach out. The easier it will be to get investors and clients and recruit people. A few examples

I started a company when I was 15. I didn’t know shit. Well, no that’s wrong, I had shit for brains. As a friend of mine likes to say “I was a pimply faced teenager” and I was. I was shy and naive and self conscious and anti-social..however when it came time to do business I went into my phone booth (bathroom in HS) and came out SUPERMAN. I went to my office in the city (yes, i had an office when I was 15 and yes it was insane) and was an arrogant prick. I self promoted my age to no end , got tuns of press and was well known in the industry and people thought i was smart, I didn’t know shit. I got lucky a few times but I didn’t learn the business I was in until after I had LEFT IT. But it worked, now I can admit I didn’t know shit but back then I couldn’t i had to be arrogant and it worked.

Another example, I left the online space for a little while (sort of, partially) and then came back and wanted to tell people where I was so i thought what’s the best way to do it - and i created www.RichHecker.com, the worlds’ only animated website. It impressive every entrepreneur i know (and all the guants think im insane) and it builds a mystique around me. I walked into a meeting with the head of a publishign company the other day and the first thing he said was “I feel like I know you, I love the site”. My personal site has opened up doors you wouldn’t believe.

Then the question becomes how to promote yourself. While arrogance works and is sometimes neccessary (when you are young be arrogant so people take you seriously - no other way to get respect but to demand it at that age) but if you’re not super young you need a way to get noticed. Telling people go to my site is arrogan. I never tell people about my RichHecker site. Instead I have it in my signature in a creative way …

Sincerely yours,

Richie Hecker
Chief BootStrapper, BootStrapper.com
Direct: 347.385.7865
Fax: 877. 678.3346
Email: Rich@BootStrapper.com
AIM: WhoIsRichHecker
Speaking of which, who am I?…www.RichHecker.com

“In fact, I’m such a cereal entrepreneur, I eat startups for breakfasts with milk in the morning.”

Now after my AIM name which is WhoisRichHecker…I answer the question with my site, 1/2 people that i email with end up at my site. And my site is sticky as gum, everyone wateches it for minutes, sometimes hours….i bet you will too if you check it out…

Its a matter of leading people to your brand - don’t demand attention, lead people to want it. This way they become your brand ambassadors and tell other people about it instead of saying “who does this guy think he is telling me to go watch the story of his life” ..see how that sounds and what the difference is?

So say you aren’t a master animator how do you do it? STAND OUT. A great show is called the PickUp Artist on VH1…the guy that runs it teaches people to pick up chics. He says make sure your appearance stands up. Do that in one way or another.

WARNING: THIS POST IS BASED ONLY ON FIRST HAND OBSERVATION!

Now, I was just researching the quality of a new business idea, a dating site for a certain community when I realized that I’ve gone over the edge. Gosh Golly Darn Batman! What do I mean? (sans the reference to that great 1960’s TV show)

Well, I opened up my trusty browser, went to Google and typed in the choice terms for my research and lo and behold, i didn’t even look at the natural search results - my eyes went straight to paid listings. Now, one could argue they stand out more but I would like to put forth a different argument, we (as in I) are so used to seeing the paid results stand out from the crowd that we gravitate toward them first and give them our priority. Now, I am an Internet Marketer - I have been trained to IGNORE paid listings when I want to search for something. In fact I remember when Adwords launched and never even looked at the paid results. Alas, Google has taken over the Internet and has trained us to look for advertising over content. Isn’t it a great world we live in? I think it’s tme someone created an ADVERTISING FREE search engine, go back to the basics, a single sponsor for the page, no blinding PPC on the right column. Either that or we’re doomed!

PLEASE HELP US NPR - CREATE A SEARCH ENGINE!

Food for thought!