Simone Lovati Life Stream [English]

Marketing strategies from Italy 



February 6, 2010

What do start-ups need to think about when rolling out a freemium model?

Freemium still seems like a tough model. What do start-ups need to think about when rolling out a freemium model?

Here are three things the CEO of Evernote thinks about:

  1. Make a product that a billion people will fall in love with and use for the rest of their lives.
  2. Make it easy for a single-digit percentage of them to pay you a few bucks a month once in a while.
  3. Make sure your variable costs are low enough that you can make a mountain of profit if you get #1 and #2 right.
via toddsattersten.com

If you can't see how you'll do all three things, go with another business model.

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February 6, 2010

[Startup strategy] What do you have to think about first

The gross margin is the single most important factor, but the other stuff that you have to worry about are fixed costs (which can be huge in a high-tech startup), fundraising, team building, product development, marketing, execution, lunch, etc.

The general recipe I try to follow is:

  1. Invest heavily in the product; focusing on things that will make your customers love you and things that will keep your variable costs low when you scale. Make your product free so that you don't have to pay for traditional marketing.
  2. Raise a little bit of money and put all of it back into the product.
  3. Slowly introduce paid features but always keep the "main" product free. Get to positive gross margins.
  4. Raise a lot more money and put it all back into the product.
  5. Grow until your gross margin makes you fully profitable.
  6. Put all the profit back into the product.

Phil Libin
CEO
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See the full interview here

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February 1, 2010

3 tips to create sale incentives programs that sell

  1. See the big picture, not only your today objective. Think about every new incentive in a complex eco-system, not separately 
  2. Be super simple, incentives are like medicins: More incentives, More risks to have adverse reactions not predictable
  3. Be honest with yourself. The sales incentives can push people in a direction, don't solve problems. 

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January 27, 2010

The Apple digital Hub strategy does another step ahead...

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January 24, 2010

Thanks to Google, your reputation precedes you...

Which means that companies are more careful than ever about the way they treat consumers, right?
(via NYT http://s.nyt.com/u/tCO)

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January 24, 2010

Social media are changing adv strategy from broadcasting interruptions to real time deep conversations

"Social Media alters the playing field for everyone within the
enterprise; formerly successful strategies and tactics are being
challenged, while old and tired methodologies are getting new legs and
as we see, Pepsi is using Social Media to give new energy to cause
marketing"

via http://jeffbullas.com/2010/01/04/pepsi-forgets-super-bowl-advertising-and-goes-super-social-media-marketing/

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January 10, 2010

Avoid hard-sell tactics: focus on building relationships

"Don’t be afraid to take full advantage of Twitter (or web in general)
and gather information about what customers, competitors and others
are saying about your business..."
That is the best way to have leads and launch new product today!

via http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-innovative-ways-to-use-twitter-for-business/

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December 16, 2009

Twitter is the 2010 copy-machine... but still remains the place where conversation begins

Harvard Business research found this year that over 90% of content on Twitter is created by only 10% of Twitter users

These are incredible numbers, but I don't think Twitter can be named a broadcast media 

That's true, Marketers and Advertisers have to figure out the real influencers... but twitter is a tool to conversate, not only a way to spread contents...

As says the NYT, Twitter is: "Where the Conversation Begins"  (I love this pay-off)

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December 2, 2009

10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010: Real-time Product Launch and Tracking services

I absolutely agree with the guys of Trendwatching: Real-Time Reviews and Alerting services will be a strong trend in 2010. If you will launch a product, your results and market effects will be live in real time, 24/7

Contents are in overloading always more and more.

You have to identify the right thing, in the right place as soon as possible...

...so you can't pull informations from the web, informations must come to you, the web must push them with alert services in real-time.

The future of brands will be always more based on capability to take part in the conversation with people in real time.

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December 1, 2009

Desperate Metaphors for Desperate Revenue Models...

Information is hardly the same thing as a product that can only be consumed once by a single person. If you consume a news story, you might be one of millions. If you consume a beer, no one else can consume it.

So it's a false metaphor. And if you start from a false premise, you will inevitably be led to a false conclusion. Or, to put it another way, if you chug-a-lug too many of old media's metaphoric beers, you will end up staggering down the street of illogical thinking and banging into the lamp post of wrong revenue models.

via huffingtonpost.com

 

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