I'm skeptical. The phrase "marketing channel" does not appear verbatim on the article. I'd say it either has really good NLP or there's a human somewhere.
I expect they manually write the summary, then let the "bot" calculate wordcount and post, i.e. like a command: "tldr Company did not find a marketing channel. Company relies on word of mouth."
How about: company discovered that having a good product your customers really use and recommend helps to sell the product.
I enjoyed the post. Nothing ground breaking, but a nice reminder that no amount of marketing will help you if your customers are not satisfied with what they get. Good luck to OP!
"While our first customers came from the above mentioned sources, including press articles, presentations, etc., almost 80% of our first 100 customers came through referrals. Another interesting point at this stage: hardly any user or customer recommended us due to cash benefits or discounts. We offer a 10% discount to our users when they invite new customers. However, when we looked at the number of actual referrals, we realized this program had little response."
I'm glad you found a strategy that got you your first 100 paying clients. But now you're unable to determine your CAC or CLV and have no idea how to scale acquisition. Or at the very least, your CAC is through the roof because your employees are the ones hustling (social, support, visibility, etc). That's difficult to scale and/or measure properly.
Have you completely abandoned the traditional methods?
I don't know why you've been downvoted, you're absolutely right: there's still a cost of acquisition here, and it's likely one that's pretty difficult to track down.
It must be a lot more satisfying to have new customers that were recommended by people that trust your product rather than some dumb/probabilistic marketing channel.
In a VC-backed world, that is hard to come by because everybody is so focused on hypergrowth, but if the company can afford to organically grow the business based on timeless good features (your product delivers value and you care about your users) than it should feel much better.
I operate a SaaS that is based around Google Analytics Dashboarding (http://www.embeddedanalytics.com). I have never had success with Google Adwords, very low conversion rate to signups (<2%). Traffic coming from referral sites (mostly stackoverflow.com) is much better.
Interesting PPC numbers. If they don't like the figures they were seeing
> Whether it is “project management” (€ 6.00 per click), “social collaboration” (€ 4.40 per click) or other similar keywords, the costs are in high ranges.
They would absolutely hate my industry. HR software, the number one keyword for people looking for our app http://www.staffsquared.com, is currently about £30 per click! It's symptomatic of this particular niche being occupied by incumbents who can afford not to optimise their Adwords campaign.
I should probably write a blog post at some point about how we got around using Adwords to grow.
Yeah. Took me a while to see the error in that sentence, it's a good example. In german we write that with a . and not with a , which explain this one.
"My own view is that there are contexts where it’s okay to treat data as a plural, but none in which you can’t treat it as a singular—and that contrary to what many “reasonable” usage writers counsel, this isn't simply a matter of “style and personal preference.” "
"More luck" in what sense? All enterprise companies will have plenty of obstacles thrown in the way of new suppliers. The most classic: if you are not on the suppliers' list, i cannot buy from you; and you cannot get on the suppliers' list unless I buy from you. Catch-22.
Joel Spolsky recommends to figure out the average limit for single-item purchases on corporate credit-cards, and stay under that. This may or may not work in your particular segment.
function DecryptOrganisationByMaster(e, a) {
if (e === undefined || e.MyOrgRoleId === 3) {
return false
}
var b = e.EncryptionCode,
c = e.EncryptedCode;
if (b === undefined || c === undefined || b === "" || c === "") {
return false
}
if (OrganisationPasswords[e.OrgId] !== undefined) {
return true
}
var d = Aes.Ctr.decrypt(c, a, 256);
if (d === b) {
OrganisationPasswords[e.OrgId] = a;
return true
}
return false
}
This really should have been reviewed by a cryptographer before being branded so heavily as an "encryption" solution.
EDIT: Also, their Aes.Ctr.encrypt() function doesn't accept a nonce:
37 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] threadBut very nice site
But anyway, please keep posting :)
I enjoyed the post. Nothing ground breaking, but a nice reminder that no amount of marketing will help you if your customers are not satisfied with what they get. Good luck to OP!
"While our first customers came from the above mentioned sources, including press articles, presentations, etc., almost 80% of our first 100 customers came through referrals. Another interesting point at this stage: hardly any user or customer recommended us due to cash benefits or discounts. We offer a 10% discount to our users when they invite new customers. However, when we looked at the number of actual referrals, we realized this program had little response."
Have you completely abandoned the traditional methods?
In a VC-backed world, that is hard to come by because everybody is so focused on hypergrowth, but if the company can afford to organically grow the business based on timeless good features (your product delivers value and you care about your users) than it should feel much better.
I'd be interested how they would now perform if they returned to PPC...
> Whether it is “project management” (€ 6.00 per click), “social collaboration” (€ 4.40 per click) or other similar keywords, the costs are in high ranges.
They would absolutely hate my industry. HR software, the number one keyword for people looking for our app http://www.staffsquared.com, is currently about £30 per click! It's symptomatic of this particular niche being occupied by incumbents who can afford not to optimise their Adwords campaign.
I should probably write a blog post at some point about how we got around using Adwords to grow.
dayly (should be daily)
the data are encrypted
Over 10.000 companies joined Stackfield
Keep your information, that are not intended for the public,
It looks like they're a German company, so it would definitely be valuable to get a native English speaker to review the site.
Yeah. Took me a while to see the error in that sentence, it's a good example. In german we write that with a . and not with a , which explain this one.
The convention seems to be the data is these days. Like agenda, which took the same road in the past.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4396
I quote:
"My own view is that there are contexts where it’s okay to treat data as a plural, but none in which you can’t treat it as a singular—and that contrary to what many “reasonable” usage writers counsel, this isn't simply a matter of “style and personal preference.” "
Other, shorter, humorous, posts about data:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4401
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=14970
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=20635
Joel Spolsky recommends to figure out the average limit for single-item purchases on corporate credit-cards, and stay under that. This may or may not work in your particular segment.
"Stackfield offers you a selection of tools that every team needs to get the dayly work done."
Dayly should be daily.
Also cool post!
https://www.stackfield.com/security
This page indicates they're using RSA-2048 and AES-256. Wow, that's so vague. So I signed up.
It's using Javascript Cryptography, which is never a good sign: https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and-events/b...
Their RSA implementation is vulnerable to a padding oracle attack (Bleichenbacher's 1998 attack):
https://www.stackfield.com/Scripts/Plugins/rsa.2016012205415...
https://www.stackfield.com/Scripts/Plugins/rsa2.201601220541...
They're using AES-CTR, but they're not authenticating the ciphertext.
https://www.stackfield.com/Scripts/sf.wssecurity.20160122054...
(JSBeautifier comes to the rescue:)
This really should have been reviewed by a cryptographer before being branded so heavily as an "encryption" solution.EDIT: Also, their Aes.Ctr.encrypt() function doesn't accept a nonce:
https://www.stackfield.com/Scripts/Plugins/jquery.aes.201601...
See https://gist.github.com/paragonie-scott/53428f0947337d66a786