No Budget, No Problem! Learn how to get to millions without a marketing budget.

> About me – founder @ Akosha.

> Today’s agenda: Top level thoughtsWhat worked for AkoshaTools and suggested readingsQ&A

Top level thoughts on marketing for internet startups

> Reality check - not possible.

> Budget – means founder salary, tech team, content team etc. salaries in making the great product and real marketing cash. Usually to scale to the “millions” you will need a budget.

> Virality – works when the fundamental use case of your product needs other people for realization of the full benefit (email, social networks).

> Growth hacking – definitely helps but you need the keep testing and getting growth from other sources as well.

> Indian context – adoption is becoming faster but nowhere close to the pace in US.

> At early stage startups – better to be in a high intention market and get conversions to prove product market fit.

> Use Google Keyword Search /Google Trends tool to look for high intention

> If intention is not there in the form of Google Searches, this should totally change your marketing strategy.

> High intention market – focus on Google AdWords, Emails and other high intention based methods.

> Low intention / impulse based / luxury goods etc. – Focus on Facebook, other branding exercises.

What worked for Akosha at different points of time

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• On-page and off-page (latter’s efficacy has really reduced in the last 2 years).

• On-page = content (shitloads of it)• Competitor Analysis• Challenge for us - Creating decent SEO

traffic without making the complaints public– Created useful pages for customers (customer

care pages, brand pages, got content written)– Identified events to push to the page to keep

content fresh (e.g. different updates)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

• Persistence is key. Need to get your hands dirty.

• Outsourcing it not a great idea.• For us the challenge was to get the

conversion rate high that we could get maximum number of leads:– A/B Testing: Operating a limited budgets, we

created multiple landing pages and tested them.

– Keywords and Ad Copy Testing: Multiple keywords and ad copies & did custom copy analysis.

Social Media - Facebook

• Creativity is important (esp. if you are not about cricket, Bollywood, parochialism, and/or sex)

• Good for branding, not for conversion.• Very useful in the initial days: Akosha

Tagline contest worked for us.

Social Media - Facebook

• We got some 3.5K fans along with an audience which had to understand what Akosha did by virtue of the competition.

• Total spend Rs.2500.

Social Media - Twitter

• Has worked out better.• Finding customers directly on Twitter. • Scheduling content like tips (200 tips

of the day at one go).• Good for branding, okay for

conversion.• Growth hacks like auto-tweeting any

resolution, asking the customer to tweet whenever he is filing a complaint.

Youtube channel

• You Tube: We created a video channel indiaakosha with purpose of educating people about consumer complaints.

• Created a single branding video for Akosha which emphasized on the message.

• Works only for long term ROI.

Email marketing

• Email newsletters• Email notifications (easy login, need

the backend to manage notification replies)

• Email remarketing (GetVero, Userfox etc.)

PR

• First coverage is the toughest• Usually inbound works best• You should start with blogs first (like

Nextbigwhat, yourstory etc.)• Offer to write guest blogs etc. (everyone is

hungry for free content)• Make sure you have a good story / angle

for journalists• One coverage will lead to another. No

other way of scaling this (PR firms have low ROI).

Tools and Readings

Tools• Small list of essential tools (after trying out 10s

of products)– Google Keyword Search (SEO), – Traffic Travis (SEO), – Alexa (Competitor Analysis), – Google Webmaster (Admin), – Google AdWords (SEM), – Google Adwords Editor (SEM), – SendGrid (Email), – GetVero (Email remarketing), – Mailchimp (Email), – VWO (A/B testing), – Google Website Optimizer (A/B testing)– Hootsuite (Social)

Readings• Some suggested which helped us think

better about distribution/marketing:– Andrew Chen blog on growth hacking– Peter Thiel on Startups CS 183– Avinash Kaushik on Google Analytics– Don’t Make Me Think (on design)– Hubspot blog and older e-books– Google forums on SEM, SEO etc.– From Zero to Million Users (by Drew

Houston, Dropbox)–Mark Suster blogposts on PR

Thank you. Q&A.