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Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

Startup Lessons Learned

The net result: we sold exactly zero presidential debate avatars. Dont worry about selecting particularly good keywords, if youre new to SEM. SEM only gets at one segment of users, and for a brand new product, you presumably need some skill at marketing in general and adsense in particular to get any useful info.

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How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people

Startup Lessons Learned

Some techniques that Ive found especially helpful: Build your own tracking survey, using a methodology like Net Promoter Score (NPS) to identify and get a regular check-up from promoters (and to screen out detractors). You need to foster situations where you - and everyone you work with - is likely to see feedback that matters.

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Lessons Learned: SEM on five dollars a day

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? SEM is a simple idea. Since we were only paying per click, it didnt cost us anything to cast a wide net.

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Lessons Learned: Q&A with an actual reader

Startup Lessons Learned

Revenue is always my preferred measure, but you can use anything that is important to your business: retention, activation, viral invites, or even customer satisfaction in the form of something like net promoter score. If an optimization has an effect at the micro level that doesnt translate into the macro level - who cares?

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Cracking The Code: The Bessemer 10 laws of SaaS - Fall 2008.

Cracking the Code

This single number is the key to determine your level of sales and marketing investment and is very simple to calculate by looking at a quarterly GAAP P&L: you just have to divide the annualized net gross margin added during the quarter by the sales and marketing costs of the previous quarter. Philippe Botteri. Bessemer SaaS Law # 4.