How I’m Utilizing Lean Startup For Garious

So it’s been just over 2 months since I went to Lean Startup Machine San Francisco and I thought it would be a good idea to document how I’m putting what I learned into practice. (Un)fortunately I learned pretty quick after launching http://www.Garious.com that it is a great tool that small businesses aren’t willing to pay for. I had found a pain in need of aspirin rather than morphine. Additionally, most of the people I was talking to were requiring education about social media beforehand which would have increased support requests and made the business fail.

After a bit of soul searching and a lot of reading, I decided that I needed to pick a different target market and use Customer Development techniques to prove or disprove the new market. I immediately started documenting all of the assumptions and questions I had about social media marketers to get myself started. I was off to start booking meetings and learning. The only problem was that after looking at my LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts I realized that I was only connected to about 2 social media marketers. How in the world was I going to learn from social media marketers when I didn’t have any to talk to?

I decided to give LinkedIn a shot for trying to make some new connections. I started by posting some of my initial questions directly into the Answers system. This turned out to be a GREAT way to get started. Within a few short hours I had a BUNCH of answers from social media marketers and was making some new connections. I replied back to the folks that fit my target market with more follow-up questions and in some cases was even able to get them on the phone. I was amazed at how helpful everyone was and how quickly I was able to start learning about my new target market.

I’m about 2 weeks in to the process and I’ve talked to about 30 social media marketers.  I thought it might be useful to others to share the answers to some of the questions I had.

1. What benefits to social media marketers receive from scheduling posts today?
   Time savings, expanded reach, increased visibility.
2. How much time do they spend scheduling messages today?
   Most tend to spend less than an hour per week scheduling messages.
3. What would they do if they had more time available?
   Handle / grow their own personal accounts (business getting in the way of business).
4. How do they measure success of their social media campaigns?
   This varies from campaign to campaign. Best is for the client to track this and share it with the marketer, but it typically does not happen. By putting a good social CRM system in place you can track leads just like any other marketing campaign.
5. What tools are they utilizing for scheduling today?
   Hootsuite & TweetDeck primarily.  A few using other more advanced tools, but most are happy with manual tools.

I have a few more interviews to do in the coming week where I plan to learn more about what tools they recommend to clients, affiliate network relationships and client acquisition.  In the meantime I have made some adjustments to the Garious home page to better reflect the benefits for social media marketers.  I’m considering launching a Google Adwords campaign to test it out a bit.

What do you think?

What is Innovators Mix?

I’m sure that lots of my readers out there are wondering what all of this noise is about Innovators Mix over the last month or so.  Well, this is my attempt at explaining it. 

• Learn more about innovation and creativity – As with all things, the more you learn about something the more you realize that you don’t know much!  I would really like to be able to get to the point where I can call myself an expert in the field.
• Teach Others – This podcast allows me to not only learn, but teach others at the same time.
• Build my personal brand – By surrounding myself with experts in the field I will slowly build my personal brand through them.
• Network - I’ve read in many places that you should always surround yourself with people that are better at something than yourself.  What better way to accomplish this than to sit down and talk with those experts directly!
• Write a Book – Eventually, I would like to be able to take all of these things and write a book.  While today I don’t think that I have the right skills, I think that lots of practice and the right mentors would definitely get me there in the future.
• Take it to the schools – My long term vision with this project is to be able to put together content that can be utilized in elementary schools.  By teaching children creativity, brainstorming and ideation techniques they will be setup for success in the future.

I hope this helps clarify what I’m trying to accomplish, please leave me your thoughts and feedback below!

How to develop your warm market list

Pretty much everywhere you look in sales there are people trying to come up with a list of "warm leads" for various marketing purposes.  Whether you're in the mortgage, web development, consulting or home based business industries having a solid warm leads list can be invaluable for your business. 

When getting started in my latest venture I found this process was actually more difficult than it first appeared.  I was asked to come up with a list of 100 names.  Even though I feel like I know quite a few people I still had a hard time getting my list to even half that length.  After days of racking my brain I finally made it, but only with a lot of prompting.  I'm hoping that by providing you with a list of ideas it will help your brainstorming and save you some time.Here are some memory joggers to help you with expanding your list:

• Go through your cell phone numbers
• Look at your check register for people you've given money to
• Go through old photo albums, family
• Look at your resume and think about each job you've held.  Use a service like http://www.linkedin.com to reconnect with these people.
• Think about awards you've received and the folks that gave them to you
• Use sites like http://www.Classmates.com or http://www.Facebook.com to remind you of peers and teachers
• Pull out church directories or go to your church web site 
• Add old co-workers who are privy to your hard work ethic
• What clubs or organizations have you been a part of? PTA, rotary club, toastmasters, etc.
• Note all of the homes / apartments you've lived in and your neighbors at those times as well as the landlords, managers and owners
• Who have you bought cars from in the past?  How about your home?
• Look at your e-mail sent items
• Do you have a landscaper, house cleaner or other service person at your home regularly?
• Who does your significant other / spouse know? 
• Who babysits your kids?
• What sports / league teams have you been a part of?
• Who are your doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, and mechanics?
• Do your children take lessons with anyone?
• What business owners do you know?
• Who goes to the gym you exercise at?
• What are your favorite restaurants?
• Who delivers pizzas or other food to your house?
• Who do you know involved in Avon, Mary Kay or other multi-level marketing companies?
• Who do you know in the military?

Now that you have developed a long list of warm market contacts, how do you go about informing them of your new business?  Some of them you may not have seen or talked to in many years.  Depending on who they are it might be good to call them and catch up first before discussing your venture.  It will be natural for them to ask about what you are doing and you can simply give them a little information to pique their interest.  Don't spend the entire call talking about your new business as this will annoy them and they will probably not be interested. Once you’re contacting folks be sure to ask them to think about friends or family that might be interested as well.  If they aren’t interested in coming over to review your new business make sure to talk to them about helping you by being your customer.  

You can’t sell a steak to a vegetarian

I was just watching a small video from Mike Dillard on how important it is to find your target market and I thought this quote was right on.  Most people involved in network marketing incorrectly assume (or are told) that EVERYONE is in their target market, but this is not the case.  Mike mentions that most leaders in network marketing teach the "shotgun approach" to marketing because most people involved in network marketing have no prior business experience.  I agree with this completely, and from my prior business experience know that it is very difficult to identify a target market.

As humans we tend to assume that we know what other humans will like.  Unfortunately, this is not always the case and we should do a little more research before jumping into anything. Here are a few ideas to help you with defining your target market:

1. Who is typically going to buy your product (age, gender, qualifications, interests)?
2. Why are they going to buy it (what functional, financial and emotional needs are they looking to meet)?
3. How many customers are there?
4. What's special about your solution (is it better, easier, faster or cheaper than the competition)?
5. How could you talk to them (what associations, conferences, magazines, websites)?
6. What are the customers currently using and how much effort would it be for them to change?
7. Are they aware of your product and, if so, what do they think of it?
8. How can you gather this data?

Because of the nature of network marketing you should be able to get the answers to some of these questions directly from your company or upline.  Once you have it I would recommend that you work to refine it so that you have a good feel for the types of customers you should be targeting.

Keep in mind that this is intended to help you define a solid starting point and you will most likely encounter potential customers outside your core audience.  You should devote the majority of time marketing to your core audience and any remaining time to folks outside the core.