Tag: business growth

IDEA to PRODUCT for PROFIT Webinar

by jcafesin, posted in business, careers, Developers, Engineers, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, growth hacking, lean startup, marketing, Silicon Valley, Small Business Marketing, startups, STEM, Venture Capital

Eventbright Webinar: https://lnkd.in/gETT2C_S

Have a biz IDEA you think will SELL?

PROVE IT…BEFORE YOU BUILD IT, with the Productization process.

Over 500,000 startups launch in the U.S. annually. More than 90% fail from bad to no marketing.

Marketing is NOT advertising! Marketing any product or service BEGINS (or should) in product development of the IDEA. Running ads through Google or on Insta, to print and viral campaigns only happens after your IDEA has been validated—productized—as a marketable offering of value.

“IDEA to PRODUCT for PROFIT,” is a 50 minute presentation exposing a distinct pattern that leads to business failure time and again, then introduces a unique marketing paradigm to build, brand, and grow a successful business. Originally developed for the Stanford entrepreneurial community, the RAF Marketing Method is a proprietary marketing model that makes effectively marketing a business doable, in sequential, actionable steps.

This webinar is Lean Business Marketing PROCESS, a step-by-step marketing template that delivers a clear and specific path, a roadmap for consistently creating (or directing those you hired to produce) digital, print and viral campaigns that build your brand image and motivate sales. Attendees will learn how to set up a solid foundation for marketing their offerings, and branding their venture into a sustainable business.

This presentation empowers entrepreneurs, engineers to CEOs with a proven method of effectively marketing an idea, or a new or existing offering, step-by-step, into a thriving company.

Attendees will learn:

  • MBA to Marketing novice, learn Marketing PROCESS, like never before.
  • The RAF Marketing Method to avoid the three primary points of business failure.
  • Productization of your product, service, or nonprofit, into a marketable offering of value.
  • How to effectively build Brand awareness of your offerings and company.
  • Effective Multichannel marketing for branding and conversion.

10 minute Q & A follows the presentation.

Speaker Bio

Creative/Art Director Jeri Cafesin, inspired by over two decades marketing seed startups to Fortune 500s, brings practical, doable, lean Marketing PRACTICE to Silicon Valley. A MarCom specialist for over two decades, and founder of IPPglobal.org—Lean Marketing Workshops for Entrepreneurs—her marketing strategies and campaigns have helped build thriving companies that realize sustained business growth.

On Networking

by jcafesin, posted in Marketing, Small Business Marketing, sociology, stanford, startup, startups, technology, UC Berkeley, Uncategorized, writers

My second job out of college I was the Art Director for 1928 Jewelry Co. The company is still alive and vital today, quite a monument to startup lore. My boss, Fred Burglass, was the best boss I’ve ever had. Funny. Kind. Patient. Smart. I really loved that man. He was like a father to me, taught me many things about marketing, business, and people. Yet I still struggle to adhere to possibly his greatest lesson.

I’d been working there over a year and had neglected to attend any of the executive parties the company threw in their beach house in Malibu. Fred called me into his office one afternoon and insisted I come to the upcoming holiday party, as it was part of my job to schmooze with our current and potential new buyers, and my executive co-workers.

The Friday night before the Saturday party I called my assistant into my office. She’d wanted to go to the party, so I suggested she pretend that she’d come with me. I asked her if anyone was looking for me there, like our boss, Fred, to tell them she just saw me on the beach, or on the deck, or downstairs talking with the Macy’s buyer. I thought I was being clever, outsmarting Fred by telling him I’d be there, and then setting up my assistant to lie for me so he’d never know I wasn’t. The Malibu property was an estate home and easy to get lost in. My assistant was charming and smart and would have no problem pulling it off.

Monday morning Fred called me in his office. I know you weren’t there on Saturday night, he began. But the truth is, you’re just screwing yourself. You want to build your career, maybe your own company down the line, or even write novels full time? Business success, in whatever you choose to do, requires networking, he assured me.

Sadly, I’d pretty much tuned him out. Network. Network. Network. Building relationships is the only way you’ll propel your career forward, Fred consistently preached, so I’d heard all this before.

Problem was, I’ve always been a recluse. An artist by nature and trade, I likely landed in the arts because I have a hard time being with people. I suck at small talk. And I’ve learned getting too personal with questions or opinions is a fast way to shut down dialog. It’s exhausting walking the line of popular decorum, putting on that public face and pretending I believe the guy, or am even interested in how successful he thinks his startup is going to be when he doesn’t even know the SaaS he’s built is already being done by someone else. Ever hear of Competitive Analysis? I want to ask him, but don’t. I used to, but it wasn’t received well.

I give myself all kinds of excuses for not networking. I’m just not good with people. I’m better at creating than chatting. I’m an empath—get too much input around people so I need to limit my contact. But I know it’s all bullshit. You are a brilliant creator, Fred used to tell me. But no one will know that if you don’t meet the right people who recognize your talent and connect you with others to help you exploit it. You must network!

He was right, of course. Digital advertising—Facebook to Google to TikTok—has a very low ROI, generally between .05 – 1.5%. Print is usually higher, but not by a lot, assuming the targeting and messaging are equally tight. Building relationships in-person or online can yield far greater ROI, if done right. Amazon built an empire on exceptional customer service, eliminating the risk of online purchasing by making returns easy, garnering staunch brand advocates. Shark Tank candidates aren’t on the show just for VC money. They’re there for Lori Greiner’s connection to the shopping channel, QVC. The tech entrepreneurs want Mark Cuban’s contacts in the Silicon Valley community.

While networking ROI may seem harder to quantify than digital ads or even direct mail, consistently talking with people in your industry [and related industries] at meetups, SIG meetings, trade shows, webinars, conferences, biz and tech talks, and even office parties, over time will yield better ROI—broader brand recognition and more sales—than any other form of marketing/advertising.

Starting a startup, or finding a job or getting clients, the more you network with your industry and target markets, the greater your odds of building a thriving business. After all, it’s not what you know, but who you know that will help you pave your path to success.

Copywriting “Test”

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Had an interview for a Copywriting contract that required a ‘test.’

Here’s the ‘test:’

Create five (5) YouTube Channels that can “go viral,” which, according to this ‘digital marketing agency’ was “20 million views in one week,” with these prompts:

  • Create a “Seek and Find” YouTube channel.
  • Create a “Mouse Maze” YouTube channel.
  • Create a [tween] YouTube channel: “Imagine you are 13 and develop a superpower…”.

I stopped reading the “Test Deliverables” after that because this agency asked for a total of 5 unique YouTube channel ideas, their only instruction to create channels to “go viral, with 20M views weekly.” I hope the absurdity of this request is not lost on you, since about .03% of all YouTube Channels get 1M+ views on any given video.

And remember, this is a Copywriting ‘test,’ not a product development gig, which, seemingly, this marketing agency does not know a BRANDED YouTube channel actually is a product offering, and should be developed and marketed accordingly.

Five, free, viable YouTube channel ideas requiring little copy—this agency did stress an ‘attention-grabbing’ visual—including thumbnail layouts and storyboard drawings. Oh, and they required I sign an NDA saying that whatever I came up with on their ‘test’ was theirs to keep. Five (5). Free Channel ideas. Per applicant.

Their ‘test’ gave no OBJECTIVE for creating these channels—no sales goals for any company, or the channel itself to realize profitability. No reason for asking applicants to create these brain dead types of channels, other than the unmentionable of making the user the PRODUCT by selling their data, then slamming those same users with pay-per-click ads on every webpage visited forward.

The prompts in their ‘test’ were pulled from the latest trending crap on YouTube. The agency asked applicants to pile on more intellectually void baseline garbage to these senseless trending channels, following the Fire, Aim, Ready marketing method of business failure. Clearly this ‘marketing’ agency doesn’t really understand, well, marketing, assuming they were really looking for a copywriter, and not just garnering free content ideas. There are three business MARKETING reasons (not personal, ego-building social sharing) for a YouTube Channel:

  1. As a marketing/branding channel for a business.
  2. As a data collection tool for tightly targeting future marketing campaigns.
  3. Selling collected data to Affliate Marketing brokers.

Applicants for this copywriting gig were not asked to market an offering of value, nor to build a marketing campaign (or YouTube channel) for any specific targets, nor did they instruct applicants to actually create and MARKET (i.e. BRAND) a YouTube channel for any specific business. They are under the delusion if they just get “views,” they’ll get sales, which data shows is a lie (https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/), promoted by these very ‘digital marketing’ agencies to get clients. (https://www.ippglobal.org/post/truth-about-data-science)

Of course, after reading their ‘test,’ I turned down the prospect of consulting for them. I felt angry though, that they were not only asking for free, unique IP, but also the IP they were asking for was truly thoughtless, flat out bad marketing, sure to put more ‘digital’ garbage on the ever mounting pile of crap already on YouTube. To quell my anger, with my rejection of consulting for their agency, I included an answer to their first prompt:

Create a “Hide & Seek” YouTube Channel:

A Year of Free Beer for Finding NAME OF FAMOUS IPA BEER.

AR (augmented reality) game to find the bottle of famous IPA BEER (or any other idiotic thing that’s trending). Everyone 21 or older with mobile can play. AR has NAME OF FAMOUS IPA BEER bottles in places around each major cities, but also standard beer bottles, and area sports team logos, (even cross-sell with image placements) that ‘lead’ you to the ‘right IPA.’ First to find NAME OF FAMOUS IPA BEER (in any given round, which may be a week or more per round) to collect all that global data, (which then can be sold to screw us all further), wins the free beer for a year, every month getting new IPA flavors.

The TARGET USERS of this YouTube Channel will be:

  1. Lowest hanging target is the sudo-intellectual, over-educated ivy-league crowd, mostly White men; Christians, Jews, Agnostics—higher education levels; MMORPG, FPS, and MOD gamer; Software, Marketing, Admin, Finance; STEAM; democrats; mid – upper income; 21 – 60.
  2. Lazy, generally fat, FPS gamers, beer and sports-loving men. White mostly. Conservatives. Apatheist, Christians; low – mid income; blue-collar job; pensions; 18 – 65.