Hacker News Reader

The short and sweet answer is NO :) Just because you build something does not mean everyone will come. Actually, at times - even if you build some thing absolutely awesome - people may not come.

The reason behind this is called "Value Attribution" - if you really want to understand the concept behind this - please refer to a very famous experiment conducted by Washington Post but here’s the summary of what they did.

The Washington Post asked world renowned Violinist – Joshua Bell to play on his 3.5 million dollar violin at Washington D.C metro station without revealing his identity.

The hypothesis was that Joshua Bell, who had given tons of sold out performances on auditoriums where tickets averaged $100/person, would be able to gather a large crowd just based on his sheer talent.

But, after playing some of the most intricate music ever written on a 3.5 million violin that was hand crafted by Antonio Stradivari in 1713, Joshua Bell could not get ANY TRACTION. During his 45-minute performance – no one really stopped by to listen to his performance let alone gathering a crowd to appreciate it!

So we might wonder – what went so wrong? Why did Joshua Bell fail to get any traction?

Well the answer lies in Value Attribution and Crowd Mindset!

The people traveling through Metro station that morning did not recognize that the person-playing Violin was a world famous violinist Joshua Bell. They also did not realize that the violin that was being played was worth 3.5 million dollars. To them, it was simply a guy playing violin on a busy morning. What is a value of a guy-playing violin on subway station? Nothing right? So – no one really stopped or even paid much attention.

The same thing is true when you build a product. People subconsciously attribute value to every product. This is the primary reason I believe that no one will come just because you build a product.

From above example, you should be able to tell that even if your product is world-renowned but if people fail to recognize the value of your product, they will not come.

So, it is very important to create a good product but then it is even more important to communicate its value to the users. Once you are able to do those two things then only are you ready to talk about user acquisition and user retention.

Your product value creation is your sales funnel or better known as your value proposition. The users whom you plan to acquire must first travel through your sales funnel in order to understand the value of your product. So where or how you pick up your users it is not that important. What is critically important is what you show them along the way.

The second thing that is equally important during user acquisition cycle is to understand their mindset. For example, it is easy see that the mindset of the crowd on a subway station in above example was surely different from the mindset of the crowd in a live theater. The people at subway station were there to catch a train and you can safely assume that they were not interested in listing to music. The music was probably the last thing in their mind so even though, more than 1000 people passed by, no one really stopped or appreciated the music.

Similarly, bringing a crowd of 25K users to your site on day one may make you feel good but it does not add any value unless it’s the right crowd with right mindset! I think the focus should be on acquiring the right customers but that will only happen if you truly understand the value proposition of your product and then be able to communicate it with right set of customers!

Your site needs to have a strong benefit statement. I need to find out in two seconds whether it is worth me reading more. Your primary message needs to be well above the fold and needs to solve some pain point. Without that, any visits you get to your site are somewhat wasted.

Next, you need to think about how to get your target customers to visit the site. Who is your target market and where do they gather? Advertising on Facebook can be fairly well targeted so that you're not throwing away money advertising to people that aren't in your target market.

Finding people that are social 'kingpins' and getting them to become advocates is another method. Who are the bloggers that cover your space? Can they be contacted to tweet or blog about it? Can you develop a referral system or offer the app for free/reduced price in exchange for the referrals. Perhaps Klout.com can be used to identify some of your targets, or, technorati, etc.

J Conrad Levinson wrote some good books on Guerilla Marketing that talk about leveraging this, cross-promotions, etc.

Getting Press Releases accepted by the sites/magazines/periodicals that cover your market is another way. A well written Press Release directed to the right person can sometimes get you noticed.

Social buttons, Facebook Page, Twitter account - all generate buzz and make it very easy for someone to like/share the page. Include referral codes/bonuses so that your client become your best salespeople.

Your sales message needs to do two things. It needs to convey your Unique Selling Proposition (Rosser Reeves, from the 1960's) very quickly, and, tell me what pain you're going to remove. I need to have that 'aha' when I read your site that says, yes, I have experienced that, I hate that, this site solves that problem, let me try it out.

You also have to overcome the 'hot doorknob' syndrome. Someone passionate about the product has to get out there and knock on doors and recruit clients. Since you have the passion behind the project, when you're selling that to someone, that passion will infect them. People that see how excited you are about having solved their problem, will become advocates.

Network, network, network. You know people, they know people, surely someone that you know, knows someone that might use your product.

Get the product noticed. While writing X, we discovered Y was a problem with performance. We documented Z which fixed a problem with multithreaded quantum mechanics. Those stories bring readers, those readers look at what you're doing that caused you to discover that, they recommend what you're doing. Carsabi.com comes to mind regarding Solr - they solved a unique problem, documented that and I would bet probably got a lot of people to recognize their site from the blog post.

Almost any sales book will talk about what it tells to market. Service America is a pretty good book. Tom Hopkins, How to Master the Art of Selling. There are a few other good books, but, almost every sales book has the same message - solve someones pain.

Follow up. Both Twilio and Tropo do very well with this. Recently I had a situation I needed to fix, I set up demo accounts with both Twilio and Tropo. In five minutes, I had a simple script working with Twilio that took about 20 minutes with Tropo to get the same functionality. Tropo's documentation didn't make it extremely clear and I never did find a complete example without having to use urllib to get an auth key to talk with their service. However, that aside, both have sent follow up emails (automated I'm sure) that checked on progress, asked if I had questions, offered help and suggestions. While Tropo ultimately didn't do what I needed and I used Twilio for this quick project, Tropo's followup email mentioned a potential solution to another project I've been mulling over. Without that followup, I may not have reconsidered Tropo. And I knew about Tropo from superconf.net - they were a sponsor and I used their app to be SMS'ed a URL (ok, not a great use case), but, I did have prior exposure and I knew either could solve the first project.

Thirteen contacts with a person to make a sale and it costs more to get a new client, than to keep an existing client. Almost every sales book in the world will tell you this.

Simply. Build something awesome, spread the word, someone will pick up on it and it'll grow. The speed at which it grows is directly proportional to the number of people you pitch.

Some bookmarks referenced above:

Guerilla Marketing: * http://gmarketing.com/

Landing Page Design * http://blog.kissmetrics.com/landing-page-design-infographic/ * http://unbounce.com/101-landing-page-optimization-tips/ * http://bococreative.com/blog/30-tips-for-building-a-successf... * http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/landing... * http://www.formstack.com/the-anatomy-of-a-perfect-landing-pa...

I believe in 3 "wheels":

1st wheel is PR, and reaching out to bloggers. Best time to do this is before you launch. develop a relationship, tell them you want to pick their brain for feedback. Of course not everyone will respond, maybe even 1%. But those handful can easily lead to 1000 new users.

2nd wheel is content marketing (or SEO). Develop content where you share information with others. People will see you as an expert, and give you attention. That's where you can link your content to your product.

A great example is EngineYard: http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2009/your-pages-will-load-fas... They created this blog to tell you tips about Rails, so people are interested right away. But they then connected it to their product and how it can help.

3rd wheel is build engagement into your product. Make something people will naturally want to tell others about.

These are great advises. I have been reading many articles on this issue and I have never read such a great summary. Thank you.

User Acquisition isn't the only thing, but it should be the first thing. Once you figure out how to get users, then you do need to build a good product to retain them.

First figure out a strategy to get people to use something, and then build out the product around that. For instance, I know Facebook virals pretty well, and it is through that lens that I look at new ideas - is this something that they'd post to their wall, share, like, comment on, etc. If not, how can the idea be shifted around to work? In my experience getting users is a lot more important than building a good product. I know lots of really bad products that have lots of users because they nailed the UA part. There is even one app I know that is basically nonfunctional that has over 1MM users.

Outside of FB I can only speculate, but I'd imagine that you have to think about how you could get users. If it is through ads, there is nothing stopping you from running ads before you've built the product, to see what type of ads or products people are interested in. You could find out how to get people to leave their email for invites, or what would get people to post to blogs or tweet, etc.

I agree with you. In my belief, we have built a great product yet in 6 months we only have 86 users. However I think we have not made it clear for people so they would share on their walls or timelines -which is something I'm working on.- Some of our visitors got the point and signed up but most of them did not.

Do you think "invitation only" launches are more successful? I think they are for a certain degree because from what I see people want to feel special and they want to have their place on that new thing before somebody else or everyone else does.

I don't know much about using that, because I mainly play in the FB app space. It certainly works for some people, I think pinterest is the poster child for that. On the other hand there is something to be said for letting users use as much of your app as possible before logging in, e.g. see reddit where they ask for an account only after you try to rate a link or post a comment.

If you got users already, then congrats! That means you have data, and with data you can make decisions on how to improve the app. The framework I use to evaluate what to do is based on three factors, UA/virals, retention, and monetization. Let's set aside monetization. I'd look at your metrics and see if where you are weak. If you don't have metrics, then that's the first place to start.

For UA/Virals, you want to know what your conversion funnel looks like, for example how many people that land on your app become users, what channels do you get users from, and from there a/b test to make those better. You can also try to have incentivized virals, for instance dropbox gave users more space if they referred a friend. In my world it is inviting the user to get some sort of benefit or unlocking some part of the app. Once you hit upon a strategy that seems like it work, you have to a/b test like crazy because even small changes can have a big impact. If your app monetizes really well, then paid UA can be workable, basically it becomes an arbitrage problem where you try to acquire paying users for a lower cost than they will spend in the app.

For retention, you want to know what the second day retention for your app is. If I have over 10% second day retention I find that workable, above 20% is really great. The retention curve seems to be that 14th day retention is about half of second day retention, so if you get 100 users on day 0 and have a 10% 2nd day retention then you can expect to keep 5 users from that cohort 14 days later.

To boost retention you could improve your app, but that's usually not the low hanging fruit so to speak. Do you do anything to try an reengage your users, such as sending them welcome emails, or other bacon-y emails. If it is a FB app, do you send app-to-user notifications or post stories on their wall? Basically, you need to find a way to reach out to them and get them to come back to the app. It depends on your comfort level, but I don't mind pissing off 80% of my day 0 users if I can get 20% of them to come back, because without being aggressive hardly anyone will come back anyway.

It may be 5 years. Are you willing to wait that long? Most people just give up before this point.

If you have money, you can pay for advertising. If you don't, you will need to spend lots of time finding creative ways to market your app/service.

We fortunately live in a great time where this is very possible. But I don't think anyone here can give you a blueprint to your marketing success. It's different for every idea.

Twitter is a good start. I got 200 beta testers in a week by following people that I thought would be interested in my app. The trick is to not spam people to death.

Link your app in your profile. People like private betas because they feel like they are part of an exclusive group that gets to see your app before anyone else (and they are).

You will also have a group that is genuinely interested and can give you honest feedback. This is a key to success: build the foundation with some interesting features and have your customer base give you the rest through feedback/ideas.

It's not an easy road to follow.

Thanks for the response paul.

I don't believe in overnight success. A baby does not become a teen right away, it takes years, with the patience and caring of parents. I think businesses are like babies as well. When you work hard on them, when you be patient with them and if it is useful for your customers or visitors then either this way or that way you succeed, as the baby grows.

The difference between now and then is you can spread your ideas, your tools and your products faster and easier. The only thing you need is knowing how and when to do that. This is what I am trying to learn.

Ive tried to collect some videos how previous entrepreneurs did that here: http://www.ideaoverload.com/Find-ideas/Finished-ideas/Media-...

"Crossing the Chasm" is definitely a good book to understand one perspective about how technology is adopted. Basically find any way to get early adopters who are known by their peers to visibly use your product/service, then reference those folks in your marketing to start the bandwagon to get a larger user base who start self referencing and recommending. This played out at several startups I was with.

If it's really good and people like it they'll tell their colleagues and word will spread almost automatically once you drop the initial seeds.

You can try to force a viral marketing campaign, but if you have an inferior product eventually people will see through whatever marketing B.S. you've built.

Interesting discussion. Would be really nice to hear how some start-ups dealt with this.

If i build, will they come?