Marketing on Afroleft

We used Intercom to add £100,000s of marketplace investments at Fruitful—here’s how

Fri, 20 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Onboarding customers to your new product is tricky.

Onboarding customers to a new financial product is really tricky.

For a mountain of security and regulatory reasons you’re required to collect and validate a towering number of data points.

Of course, for each additional data point that we had to collect = additional cost to the customer = increased risk that they might drop-off and watch videos of otters eating lettuce instead.

Fruitful’s onboarding steps

In Fruitful 1.0 (more about the pivot here ) these were the steps for onboarding new users:

This is how you package consumer goods

Sun, 11 Oct 2015 10:52:45 +0000

Yesterday I was in the market for some plughole unblocker. We’ve moved places recently and I forgot to put this useful little thing in our shower.

So I head into Tesco and — eventually — I find the section for bleaches and plughole unblockers.

I know that Mr. Muscle is a popular brand for this product, so I look for the logo.

Bingo. I find the Mr Muscle.

Just as I’m about to pick up a bottle, I notice the bottle next to it. It’s called Buster — a brand I’ve never heard of.

Same Same. But Different.

Fri, 01 May 2015 08:57:00 +0000

It’s Sunday, late morning, and I’m right in the middle of cleaning the bathroom. In the other room I hear a frustrated girlfriend struggling to find accommodation on - lets say - website X, for our trip to the Amalfi Coast.

Complaints flying left, right and centre, vented in a tone that kind of suggests that this is all my fault:

“Why won’t this?”
“It won’t let me!”
“I keep loosing my tab when I go to trip advisor for reviews!”
“I hate this”
“Why can’t it show me what’s available on the dates that we’re going”
“Oh FFS!”

…

How to Pitch Your Product to the Press

Sat, 04 Apr 2015 08:55:00 +0000

Last Tuesday I popped in to DoES Liverpool to see Matthew Hughes give a talk on how to pitch your product to the press. He’s a tech journalist at MakeUseOf — so he had some lessons to share from the other side of the table.

In no real order:

Be as concise as possible - journos receive mountains of product pitches each week.
Sounds stupid but: There’s a difference between product pitches and press releases. The former is an anchor to entice the journo to sign-up for your product, check it out and write a review.
If you have notable investors > name drop them. This adds validation.
You need to entice the journo - lead with the problems you’re solving.
Personalisation is important. Do your research on the journo. What have they written in the past that might make them want to write about your product?
Gifts are cool, but not bribes $$$. UPDATE from Matthew: “Should probably clarify I meant gifts with no monetary value though, and after an article has been published. ;)”
Obvz grammar is super important.
Journos like phone numbers for follow up - so share yours.
Don’t talk about yourself (founders) - especially if it’s a product pitch.

Bookmarks:

press.farm find journalists to write about your product.
blonde20.com good PR agency. Do retainers from around £4,000 a month — much more competitive that London agencies we’ve spoken to.
uber.com/presskit Uber’s press kit is a good example.

Shortcuts You Can’t Take

Mon, 16 Dec 2013 10:50:00 +0000

Last month Sage approached me asking if I could write an article on marketing for their small business community.

To narrow the context a bit, I concentrated on marketing websites. The outcome of which I’m really pleased with. The short post offers an insight into my past 5 years of researching, designing, building and iterating marketing websites for clients. What works / what doesn’t; all brought to life with three tiny case studies from a few of my longstanding clients.

This is How You Automate

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 08:39:00 +0000

Just received a wonderfully engaging / automated / interesting / human / polite / funny / direct / personal upgrade message (there’s an oxymoron there, I know) from the folk at TeuxDeux. This is how automated marketing should be:

Dearest Tom,

It’s been six months since the launch of the new TeuxDeux and we very much hope you’ve enjoyed it. Given how much you’ve been using it, it’s our guess that you have. In fact, with 1846 items done since you’ve been with us, you are certainly among the most productive people on the planet!

Can Simon Manchipp Help my Start-Up?

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 21:28:00 +0000

A few weeks back I was lucky enough to see Simon Manchipp speak at the Liverpool based design conference Designival. If you haven’t been to one before, I’d recommend you do.

The thing I found most engaging about Simon’s talk was his position on logos and branding. For personal reference, I made a few notes thinking about how the the themes could be applied to my new project, Beanbag.