ConversionXL

MAY 11, 2017

Knowing what the competitors are doing – how they are thinking about the market, what tactics they are using, how they are crafting messages and design – can make all the difference in the battle for the customers’ mind share and conversions. How do my customers think of my company compared to the competitors? How do we stand out?

SEO 131

SEO Analytics Conversion Search 131

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

While we sometimes cut the price of graphics boards, it was only because we offered our customers no compelling reasons to buy one that was priced equivalently to the market share leaders. If we tried to match them on their playing field we’d never catch up. And we lost money when we did so.

Silicon Valley 157

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 157

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. By 1961 its customers now included our intelligence agencies. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. The “customers” in Washington had never seen anything like it. There were no venture investors.

Silicon Valley 194

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 194

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there? Can it scale?”

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 9, 2022

If the website doesn’t match the user’s mental model, the user will find the website hard to use—unintuitive. Go to your customers and observe them using the web in their natural habitat. The last link in a horizontal navigation menu (or the bottom one in a vertical menu) should be “Contact.”

Design 116

Design Web Search Chicago 116

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me –“That’s a great hypothesis, do customers tell you that they’d buy your version if it was cheaper or on the web?

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

You should be brainstorming messages with current and potential customers. Your messages should have been pre-tested with prospects and existing customers way before you go to a show. If you think you are going to offend your customers or embarrass your engineering organization, get out of the marketing department.

Silicon Valley 203

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 203

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

These days, many agencies start as a lean operation. Inversely, if you’re using the agency model to fund another startup or product, you should probably keep things lean. Interviewing your customers can reveal the priorities they’re aware of. Choose to expand vertically or horizontally. Image source ).

PR 120

PR B2B Lean Audience 120

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 13, 2018

Chapter 3: Brand Identity Research: Customers, Competition, and Your Brand. A brand is the sum total of the experience your customers and customer prospects have with your company or organization. Your company’s brand is a promise you make to customers and prospects about your products, your services, and your company.

Marketing 162

Marketing Charlotte Naming Design 162

ConversionXL

AUGUST 29, 2012

If the website doesn’t match the user’s mental model, the user will find the website hard to use, unintuitive. You go to your customers and observe them using the web in their natural habitat. This is why you have to figure out their closest experience to using your site. Know thy user (study them!).

Design 111

Design Web Search Chicago 111

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

To a Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail In hindsight my failure was that I executed to my strength – telling a compelling story – without actually listening to customer feedback. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to listen to customers. I had outsourced customer feedback and ignored the input.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Dinner in a Strange Land When I was in my mid 20′s working at ESL, I was sent overseas to a customer site where the customers were our three-letter intelligence agencies. I think it is because in the end, customers count. No amount of paid publicity can achieve much if the product fails to make the customer happy.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 210

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Founding a company is a sheer act of will and tenacity in the face of immense skepticism from everyone – investors, customers, friends, etc. Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. Does any of this match your experience or people you know? And that’s just to get started.

Founder 310

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2009

Since we were the hip, new, edgy, “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” video game company (more about “ big hat, no cattle ” startups in subsequent posts,) our office obviously had to match the image. Our receptionists’ desk was built on the wing of a WWII P-51 fighter plane, and the rest of the office décor matched. steve Michael F.

Silicon Valley 137

Silicon Valley San Francisco RSS Vertical 137

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 16, 2017

We as growth/performance marketers are accountable for results, often measured with conversions, new customers, or revenue. Despite this, Clearhead found last year that only 17% of online retailers have a path to develop personalized experiences for customers, and similar stories can be found in other industry verticals.

Conversion 124

Conversion Audience Video Vertical 124

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

In fact, according to our Potrero benchmark suite this new board ran our customer applications ten times faster than our current products. Each of my competitors each had 5-10 graphics boards covering a range of prices with performance to match. This turned out to give our customers immense value.

Silicon Valley 145

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 145

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

Last week one of our mentors abruptly resigned from coaching one of the Lean LaunchPad student teams after claiming the students were ignoring his practical advice and years of expertise in the field. A match made in heaven? Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Vertical 334

Vertical Agile Customer Development Lean 334

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

Last week one of our mentors abruptly resigned from coaching one of the Lean LaunchPad student teams after claiming the students were ignoring his practical advice and years of expertise in the field. A match made in heaven? Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching. Customer Development Teaching' Not exactly.

Customer Development 225

Customer Development Vertical Agile Lean 225

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

If you are an entrepreneur seeking funding, try our free Funding Recommendation Engine to identify a list of angels, venture capital and state grant programs that best match your business. Not close enough to the customer. Think of it as 7 bonus post-mortems on the house. It’s free. Get started here. Too much PR, too early.

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

If you want to serve enterprise customers,NET is one of the best ways to do that and do it well. The tools which you find restrictive I consider a huge timesaver (which paying customers tend to appreciate)… they allow me to rapidly prototype and get solutions to customers. March 25, 2011 at 2:16 pm. William Pearson.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

Such is the power of being able to proactively identify which of your competitor's strategies are working well, where their current customers come from, and what specific tactics you should experiment with to create and advantage for yourself. Competitive intelligence data will never match your site's analytics tool.

Metrics 60

Metrics Analytics Non-Compete Search 60