Marketers: How do know which messages and campaigns will resonate best with your target audience?

New York-based Persado wants to provide marketers with data to help them build a successful campaign or promotion. Today, the startup has pulled in $15 million in funding in a round led by Bain Capital Ventures to further build-out product that automatically selects and generates optimal marketing messages for its customers.

The startup will use the funding to significantly expand its sales and marketing efforts and establish a new headquarters in New York City. Persado CEO and founder Alex Vratskides said his team spent years and millions of dollars building Persado’s “marketing persuasion technology.”

“Working with CMOs of customers on five continents reaching over a billion consumers, I became increasingly frustrated at the limitations of old methods of engaging and persuading customers to act,” Vratskides said. High-profile customers include Skype, Badoo, and TIM Brazil, one of the largest mobile operators in South America.

Vratskides said he considers companies like Bloomreach and Adchemy as competition but claims Persado is the only company that works with “language designed to persuade human readers.”

Blank billboard image // Vibrant Image Studio, Shutterstock

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Google is launching a new $200 million promotional campaign to push its original YouTube channels across the rest of its properties, the company announced yesterday.

The purpose of the campaign is to help brand YouTube as an entertainment property on par with other major media companies.

The new promotional campaign supports YouTube’s current strategy for boosting the amount of premium original videos available on its site — and making it more than just a place to watch funny cat videos and viral content. YouTube committed $100 million on channel partnerships back in October 2011 to ensure that this strategy succeeds. YouTube channel partners previously debuted a number of original shows, including news programs from Reuters, a new indie film fest channel in partnership with Ridley Scott, original sports programming from Bleacher Report.

Google made the announcement at an event for advertisers last night, which included performances by Jay-Z, Flo Rida, Neon Trees, and others as well as lots appearances by many YouTube channel partners.

It’s nice to see that Google is getting behind its push to get more original programming on YouTube. However, success is unfortunately going to come down to the channel partners. If they can’t create enough big hits, no amount of promotional money in the world will make people tune in.

Via AdAge; Photo via Korosirego /Flickr

For better or worse, snacking and gaming seem to be inexorably linked. Now social gaming giant Zynga is building on this relationship, by teaming up with Frito-Lay and Walmart, to offer in-game rewards for its popular Facebook games with purchases of specially-marked snacks.

The promotion is a great way of giving the Zynga brand a strong presence in Walmart stores, where $15 and $25 top-up Game Cards will be sold alongside the snacks. They will be prominently placed, in displays near the check lanes, and will no doubt make a great impulse purchase for some of the 240 million active Zynga game players that will be out doing their weekly shop.

From March 1 to April 12, 2012, the promotional codes will be featured on five million bags of snacks. The codes can be redeemed against exclusive virtual items in the three participating Zynga games — FarmVille, CastleVille, and CityVille.

If you want a Flowery Oak to spruce up your castle, you’ll need to grab yourself some Funyuns. A Spring Dragon can be obtained by eating your way through a bag of Cheetos Crunchy Cheese, and a packet of Doritos Nacho Cheese will reward you with a virtual Nacho Garden for FarmVille. Seriously.

Players wanting to get their hands on super items, such as Glowing Glass Condos or Spring Pegacorns, will need to do some serious snacking. These items are unlocked by redeeming on-pack codes from four different specially marked Frito-Lay snack brands, along with a $15 or $25 Zynga Game Card, in the same game.

Jeff Karp, Zynga’s Chief Marketing and Chief Revenue Officer, said: “This promotion between Zynga, Frito-Lay and Walmart is a fantastic example of how brands can work together to bridge the online and offline worlds, all for the benefit of the consumer. We are continually looking for ways to surprise and delight our more than 240 million monthly active users, and we can’t wait to offer our players online, in-game rewards for their offline purchases.”

Full details of the promotion, including a picture of what a Nacho Garden actually looks like, can be found at the Zynga website.

Just remember, as much as you want that Spring Pegacorn, snack responsibly folks.

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The automated customer service representative annoys all of us. We have all navigated numerical menu options (press one for ‘I want to bash your product against the wall’) that make us wait for a solution until we yell, “Can’t I just speak to a human?” We’ve also dealt with customer service over e-mail, watching threads of miscommunication go on for days. Built up frustration and unsolved problems often lead a user to complain on social media – the same digital place that companies are trying to promote themselves.

According to an infographic created by Zendesk, Facebook is the top social network for people looking to interact with a specific brand. People spent 53,457,258 minutes on Facebook last May. That’s over 890,000 hours of pure social media. Facebook’s main goal is to get people to share their interactions and content across the Web. Thus, it provides tools to help people be brand promoters without even knowing it. For example, the company recently launched “actions,” which allows Facebook users to do more than just “like” something, but rather “want,” “bought,” or “ate” that item. This creates a more engagement-friendly way to say, “I want the latest Big Bang Theory DVD set more than I want proof of String Theory!”

Big name brands are using Facebook to promote through its applications interface as well. For example, Ticketmaster created an Facebook application to allow friends to share where they are seated at an event, and suggest future events that user would like.

People generally “become a fan” of a brand on Facebook to get discounts, be the first to receive news about the brand, and more. So, why wouldn’t they also air their grievances to the brand in the same place? Around 73 percent of people say that if they were supplied the right tools, they would be happy to interact with customer service on the social level. Currently, the majority of customer support requests have been in the retail sector, with telecommunications following in second place.

Check out the infographic to find out more about customer service going social.

Customer service image via Shutterstock, Infographic via Zendesk

The rule of thumb is that a few crucial conferences are a must, and that it’s better to go all-in for the best events, like CES, then to spread yourself thin at a lot of lackluster ones. And CES, which begins this week in Las Vegas, is definitely one of the events for tech startups to attend.

It’s hard enough to make a splash with a six-figure budget, so how do you make an impression as a startup at an event like CES? What can you do with a small budget and limited human resources? Luckily, you don’t need a booth to make an impact, you need a plan.

What’s most important about CES is that it’s the one place where everyone in the industry gathers for a few days each year. That means a wealth of opportunities for new business meet-and-greets, a forum to connect with people you’ve only communicated with via email, and a chance to pitch your story to the media.

If you’re spending the majority of your time looking at other people’s products at CES, then you’re not pushing your own. The name of the game is booking 50 meetings in one day instead of 50 days of meetings. If your goal is business development then your focus is building relationships, and there’s nothing quite like meeting face-to-face to do that. When you meet someone the second or third time, and feel like you know each other, that’s when the big integrations happen.

Here are a few other helpful hints to consider for CES, and for any other big conferences on your schedule this year. They aren’t earth-shattering revelations, but they’re often things that busy entrepreneurs forget time after time:

Early bird specials: Show up a places early because there’s a good chance others will too. Hotel lobbies and bars will be packed with people killing time before the show or events start — a perfect opportunity to meet them before things get too hectic.

Be visible: Be your product, your platform and your brand. Wear that company t-shirt, it’s a sure-fire way to strike up a conversation quickly and create a presence (so bring a few extras to give out!).

Be frugal: You have neither time nor money to waste. Book the low cost flight, share an Airbnb with other start-up folks. Don’t have a booth? Tap into your partners to see if you can also share their space.

It’s not a holiday: Focus. Stick to a schedule. Let people know what parties you’ll be attending and forward them invites. You need to go where the people you want to meet are. Ask around. Ask potential partners and journalists where they will be. Ask VCs. Read blog posts about conferences in your field. Organize.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas … but it shouldn’t: There’s no point in treating this as a one-off. Be sure to follow-up with the connections you’ve made and work those relationships for when you meet them again.

When the show’s over, you need to come away with more than a stack of business cards, you need to have built some solid relationships. Maybe there’s a deal or two in the bag. That’s when you’ll know that CES was a winner.

Henrik Lenberg is the Vice President of Platform at SoundCloud, the leading social sound platform that lets anyone create, record, promote and share their sounds on the Web. In this role, Henrik is responsible for SoundCloud’s partnership integrations and business development. Henrik joined SoundCloud in 2009. You can follow him on Twitter at: @lenberg.

It’s no secret: Times are tough and there’s economic uncertainty on the horizon. And when that happens, everyone – from consumers to businesses to lenders – tend to tighten the grip on their dollars. For small business owners looking to gain some traction in the market, these conditions can be disastrous. Still, it doesn’t have to be this way. Business owners can market their companies and spark some interest around it – but they’ll need to be willing to take some risks on out-of-the-box ideas.

This way of thinking takes me back to the early days of my company. When Geebo was born back in 2000, it was pretty much limited to the Sacramento region, a place that I called home at the time. I operated out of my bedroom in a home that I shared with a roommate (which was also a good money saver) and had to come up with ways to get listings on the site, get people to visit the site and maintain a balance that would help it grow. And I had to do it all with a very small budget.

And so, I embarked on a series of “out-of-the-box” marketing techniques that would hopefully bring in more listings and more visitors – and eventually more opportunities that could lead to more revenue. Below are five examples of initiatives I launched that got my site rolling. They may not be ideal for your business, but if not they may spark some ideas on unusual ways to market yourself.

Barter system: As a classifieds site, one of the key segments that we needed to reach were car buyers and sellers. We needed the listings and we needed the shoppers, so I approached a local auto mall, which had a big electronic billboard along Interstate 80 in suburban Sacramento.

In exchange for advertising space on an electronic billboard that would be seen by tens of thousands of commuters on a daily basis, we created and served banner ads for those dealers in our Vehicles category. And since we were also providing auto dealers with free listings at the time, we were able to encourage those dealers to list their cars on our site, as well, for more exposure.

Colleges: Classifieds are often about finding discounted items for sale – and who knows better about bargain shopping than college students? Geebo hit the college campuses in two ways. The first was an obvious one – advertising in the college papers, a much cheaper ad that what the regional newspapers were charging. The second outreach was in the form of bookmarks and “Netcards,” or large postcards.

The bookmarks were freebies that we distributed on campuses around the bookstores and libraries. The netcards were posted on all of the open billboards across the campuses – and replenished regularly. The costs of the netcards and the bookmarks were minimal and the open billboards were free.

Virtual events: I needed a way to quickly boost the number of visitors to the site, as well as the number of listings – and so the Geebo Virtual Job Fair was born. This wasn’t an “event,” per se, like a real job fair. Instead, we convinced employers around the region – including state government agencies – to let us post their job listings on the site and then promote them as being part of a “job fair.”

At the same time, we advertised the job fair as the place to find all of the best jobs in the region in one convenient place. In this case, it was all about how the “event” was marketed, (Remember, this is before online classifieds had really gained any traction – so the idea of looking for jobs online was still pretty new.)

It was a great success in that the number of listings topped 500 (with many of those employers becoming Geebo regulars over the years), as well as a boost to our traffic numbers.

Partnerships: I always wanted a community component for my business, a way to give back. But I really didn’t know how to go about finding a worthy organization – until I came across the Keystone Club for teens at a local Boys and Girls Club. Geebo partnered with the group to help it meet its goals (which revolve around community service and career preparation) by sending the teens into the community to identify and recommend organizations worthy of a donation.

The buzz from the event caught the attention of local media outlets, which created some publicity for Geebo, as well.  In the end, I coughed up $3,000 – a $1,000 award for three of the teen-recommended organizations. We weren’t a profitable company at that point, but chalked up the $3,000 donation as money we didn’t have to spend in publicity and advertising.

In the end, the partnership was a win-win-win – a win for Geebo, the organizations that took home checks and for the teens at the Boys and Girls Club, too.

Pizza box stickers: Getting the word out about a new site is half the challenge – and so we started thinking about different ways to reach people in the community. With an investment of a few bucks for some Post-It Note types of stickers, we cut a deal with some locally owned pizza joints to place Geebo stickers on their pizza boxes.

Working with the big chains was not so easy. But the local guys were willing to place our stickers on their boxes in exchange for some free banner advertising on our site, which was reaching the same local audience they were hoping to attract. The investment was minimal – but the potential for return was great.

About the author: Greg Collier is founder and CEO of Geebo, an online classified ads site that serves cities and regions across the U.S.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple today released details of its 2011 back to school promotion, which offers eligible buyers a $100 app store credit with the purchase of a Mac computer from Apple’s education store.

In years past, Apple offered an iPod as the promotional item of value, which is less practical for educational purposes than the plethora of iOS and OS X applications available for purchase with the $100 credit.

Apple probably chose the $100 credit because it not only helps promote the App Store but also saves the company money. Unlike with the iPod giveaway, the company will recuperate at least 30 percent of any purchase made using the credit — more if the purchase happens to be an Apple application like Pages or iWork.

However, this year Microsoft is running its own back-to-school promotion that is arguably a better deal for students (although maybe not such a plus for their study habits). As we reported in May, the company is offering an Xbox 360 with 4 gigabytes of storage (a $199 value) to any student who purchases a Windows 7 computer for $699 or more.

For $700, it’s not difficult to find a Windows machine that matches or beats the specs of Apple’s least expensive computer, which start at $899. And while Apple’s education store does knock off $100 from the regular price, it’s still the more expensive option.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft’s promotion digs into Apple’s back-to-school Mac sales through the beginning of September when both promos end.

First reported by The Financial Times, Facebook Places is getting a larger percent of businesses using the service compared to location-based competitors Foursquare and Gowalla. The survey suggests that 32 percent of businesses are promoting their services through Facebook Places, while 12 percent plan to over the coming months. Just 9 percent of businesses are currently using Foursquare and Gowalla comes in at around 3 percent, both also have businesses planning to use their services in the near future, though small percentages.

While one might think that Facebook would naturally have an advantage over these startups because businesses are already creating business Pages, the Places check in feature is relatively new, launching in August of 2010. Foursquare and Gowalla were both launched in 2009 and, while first to the scene, it appears that Facebook’s already established presence among businesses is paying off in the space. This may be because there is an easier transition for businesses to go from using Pages to promote themselves to Places.

The survey also noted that 72 percent of local businesses only plan on spending less than $5,000 a year with 34 percent of that number spending less than $1,000. With so much competition for these dollars, it makes one wonder if these startups have alternative business models in mind.

Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he’ll proudly describe his stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun. Then he’ll describe his cutting-edge platform — cloud-based, scalable, distributed version control, continuous integration, one-click-deploy. Maybe you’ll even get a wobbly demo.

“Great,” I always exclaim, sharing the thrill of modern software development, “so how will people find out about this brilliant website?”

Four uncomfortable seconds later, a smile breaks across the founder’s face. “Here it comes,” I think, “there is a strategy after all!”

Except the “strategy” is a tirade of drivel I’ve heard so many times I can lip-sync as the words spew out the founder’s mouth:

• “We’re going to A/B-test AdWords campaigns until we discover our hook.”
• “We’re going to A/B-test our landing pages until the right message appears.”
• “We’re better than everyone else at SEO.”
• “A friend of mine knows how to get popular on Twitter.”
• “We’re going to get reviews on blogs.”
• “We’re going to start with our own network and grow it from there.”
• “We’re going to use an affiliate program so our customers sell it for us.”
• “We’re putting a ‘Retweet’ button inside the product to encourage viral growth.”

The obvious problem is that every new startup on Earth says exactly these things. Nowadays the “strategy” above sounds the same as:

• “We’ll have a website so people can read about us.”
• “We’ll have an email address so people can communicate with us without picking up the phone.”

Yes, you’re going to do those things, but since millions of other people are doing that too, you’re still invisible. Visibility-fail. Anyone-gives-a-crap-fail.

So what can you do to rise above the cacophony that is the Internet? Here are a few ideas.

Infection built-in, not bolt-on – WhenBusy is a bootstrapped startup that lets people schedule meetings with you in currently-available time-slots without you having to share your calendar [disclosure: I'm an advisor].

Instead of trading emails with lists of available time-slots when trying to set a meeting, founder Josh Baer just sends the link to his page (pictured at right) and the other person uses the product to schedule a meeting. This is the viral step: Having trialed the tool, the stranger might use it herself, then more people find out about it, and so forth.

Note that at no point did I say “a button lets people ‘like’ this on Facebook.” I know of no companies who have “gone viral” because of buttons. Buttons are good — why not use them? — but they don’t make your product intrinsically viral like WhenBusy.

Which is OK — not all products need to be viral! But if it’s not viral you still need a killer method of finding customers, and if it is supposed to be viral it better be encoded in the DNA of the application, not bolted on as an afterthought.

Frightening honesty – Balsamiq Mockups is a ludicrously popular wire-framing tool. The software is good — don’t get me wrong — but what sets Peldi (the founder) apart isn’t prescient feature selection or bug-free releases, it’s his startling transparency. He published revenue figures even when they were still pathetic, He pledged loudly and eagerly to give away lots of free copies to non-profits, and he revealed all his (remarkably effective) marketing strategies, even though it meant competitors would learn them too.

He didn’t just have an “authentic voice,” he made public promises. That’s compelling.

In a world where everyone and their brother is “joining the conversation,” you have to truly bare your soul if you want to compete on the transparency front. It’s not for everyone, and I’m not suggesting it ought to be, but there’s no sense in half-assing it.

Making Oprah cry – The number one mistake founders make when trying to generate press is talking about what the company does rather than telling a compelling story.

Does Twitter get press when it helps Iranians fight an illegitimate government or when it creates a new internal IT process to increase up-time? Does Apple win the hearts of millions because of their obsession with design or because of their development APIs?

Without a powerful narrative, your chances of getting big press and enthusiastic users who spread the word for you approach zero as a limit.

With Smart Bear, it took me five years to figure out (a) I needed a story and (b) what the story was. It’s hard. But one story beats a pile of AdWords A/B tests.

Advertising → [transmogrification] → Revenue – Yeah, yeah, nowadays marketing is about “relationships” and “authority” and other things which cost time but not money. It’s all I hear about anymore.

But don’t be so quick to throw out the idea of spending money to make money. Advertising isn’t dead; you can still buy eyeballs. I’m not talking about “triage” strategies like buying AdWords linking to a page of ads, I’m just pointing out that most companies on Earth don’t depend on “joining the conversation” to acquire customers.

It sounds simple: The average cost of acquiring a customer is $C (advertising, sales, support, doing demos) and the lifetime revenue you get from that customer is $R, so if C < R you have a business. C can be driven down with cheaper ads, better lead quality, a more efficient conversion rate, and straightforward trials with minimal tech support.

Of course it’s not that simple, and many business plans I’ve seen (unintentionally) omit many of the true costs of acquisition.

Have some more ideas on ways to reach customers that aren’t the same as everyone else? Share ‘em in the comments below.

In business, “turning on the faucet” is a metaphor for flooding your market with the full spectrum of marketing and business development. It’s an important step in your company’s maturity. Take it too early and you’ll misrepresent your service. Take it too late, though, and you’ve missed the boat.

My entrepreneurial “a-ha moment” came when I was running TargetScope, an interactive marketing and web development company. We were successful, but then the website of one of our biggest clients (a very large, very well known turkey company) was hacked … the day before Thanksgiving 2007.

It was a critical time for our client, and we (the development team) scrambled to help get their site back online. We realized instantly the potential for a vastly larger business opportunity — secure web hosting.

We pursued that, but more than two years passed before we turned on the faucet. Knowing when the timing is right, I learned, came down to six factors.

Get the product in shape – We made the decision to become a secure managed hosting company in 2007 and spent the next year working on the business. During that year, we didn’t launch our website. We didn’t deploy a complex search marketing strategy or ad campaign. We just focused on the hosting solution to ensure it could fulfill the needs of websites in peril.

Start pounding the pavement – Every entrepreneur convinces him or herself that launching a business is a chicken and egg game. You believe you need marketing to get customers, and customers to get investors so you can afford marketing.

That’s sad and lazy when you can get customers the old fashioned way: By pounding the pavement and talking to people about their business needs. If the CEO personally calls on several prospects and can’t close a deal, then your product isn’t ready (or your product is a dud). It’s not the easy route, but it is the effective route.

We won several clients this way, but more importantly, we learned a metric ton about what we were doing wrong. That’s why it’s necessary to be in business before you launch the business. Don’t issue a press release; don’t sign up for a tradeshow; don’t commit a penny to media coverage until you have a proven solution with happy customers to back you up.

Set your sights – When we started down this new path, we focused on just one customer profile – companies whose websites have been (or are being) hacked. We knew we had a solution that was appropriate for a wide array of businesses, but we ignored them. We didn’t call them. We had anointed ourselves the “white knights,” and searched for companies who had experienced the devastation of cybercrime.

We screwed up.

It took six months to realize we’d set our sights on the wrong target and another six months to get it right. We needed to position as the web host that prevents the hack. This was an important lesson that taught us to define a target market, conquer it and then expand horizons. You may be surprised by where you find your most lucrative clientele.

Prepare for liftoff – So you’ve got clients signing up. You’re discovering the most lucrative target market. The “system” is working smoothly. It’s time to launch? Not quite.

Ask yourself, “If we received 100 orders in 24 hours, could we handle it?” Answer honestly because this could make or break your future. Make sure you have sufficient levels of automation in place to receive, process, fulfill and sustain orders.

Make a splash (or a belly flop) – Two years after the great turkey hack of 2007, we had a few hundred customers and a new name for our business venture, FireHost. By then, we were becoming known among our key user base as a secure, affordable managed hosting solution. We were now ready to turn on the faucet.

At the end of the day, knowing when to turn on the faucet can be just as risky as anything else in business. Plan the best you can, hedge your bets, and remember: The quickest way to kill a startup is to market a bad product. Make sure you have a proven model first and turn on the faucet second.