- One of the first start ups that I ever created
and I raised tons of money, well over $10 million bucks for
was Kissmetrics.
And guess what?
It didn't do well financially,
especially in the early stages.
We burned over $4 million before we even saw
our first dollar in revenue.
Hi, everyone I'm Neil Patel
and today I'm gonna share with you
three marketing mistakes that you ought to avoid.
(upbeat music)
the first tip I have for you is don't spend too much time
building out your product without marketing it.
At Kissmetrics, what we would do, oh my god,
we wanna create this best analytics tool and software
and then we're gonna market it
and then we're gonna make a ton of money.
Spent years building it and then when we market it,
and you know what we found out?
People were like, Neil, I don't understand why I need this.
That was a huge mistake.
Not just a huge mistake on my end,
that was a huge financial mistake.
You're talking about $4 million, that's a lot of money.
The point I'm trying to make is,
if you're gonna create a product or a service,
go out there and test the market.
There's nothing wrong with spending a few hundred dollars
or a few thousand dollars or even just picking up the phone
and talking to people like, "Hey John," "Hey, what's up?"
"This is my idea, what do you think about this?
"Would you pay for it?"
And try to even collect money,
even if you don't have your product or service.
And if people give you their money,
you can refund them right away,
I'm not even saying you have to deliver the product,
just refund them say, "I'm sorry."
Get on the phone with them, apologize,
maybe give them a free Starbucks gift card.
And what you'll find is, if what you're doing is gonna make
you money or not.
So don't go out there spending a ton of time and energy
building something without marketing it.
If you don't market whatever you're planning on building
and knowing if people are willing to pay for it,
you could be making a huge mistake.
Don't do what I used to do.
The second tip, I have for you is don't market to everyone.
I don't care if you think everyone in the world
would love your product, that's not the case.
Pick one audience.
That's why you see detergent companies out there,
you know laundry detergent marketing to moms,
or for babies or kids, or saying this the organic one.
They're picking a niche,
even a product that everyone needs out there,
they're still picking a really specific segment of a market
to market to.
And you should be doing the same thing too.
In which you shouldn't be marketing to everyone.
So pick the audience that you want to market too
and just focus on them.
Good example of this is ConvertKit.
They built a marketing software
that helps you with email marketing.
They tried competing with MailChimp,
but everyone being like, this is better email marketing,
they didn't do well.
Once they picked a marketing software
that was specifically focused on marketing
just to people who have a blog,
they started hitting $10 million in revenue with two years.
That's right, $10 million a year in two years,
by just picking a specific segment.
And that's what you need to do.
So pick a niche, go after it, just market to them,
and then later on you can expand and market to more people,
but you need to first dominate that niche.
And the third tip I have for you,
is caring for branding over customer acquisition,
especially at the beginning.
And on a side note, there's rain right now in LA
so if you're hearing the rain, on this video,
I do apology, never really expected this in sunny LA.
If you're a new start up or a new company
and you want to focus on branding,
that's fine you can, but why would you focus on building
a brand when you don't hardly have any customers.
Go out there and acquire the customers.
Go test Facebook ads, go test Google Adwords,
go test SEO, go test Content Marketing,
and podcast advertising.
Go do it all, it's like spaghetti,
go throw it on the wall, see what sticks
and if there's a good ROY, keep doing more of it.
But that's the whole purpose of marketing.
Why would you go out there and try to build a big brand,
be like I want to be the next Uber or McDonald's,
I want to be the next Coco-Cola.
If you don't have any customers,
go acquire the customers first,
once you do, you'll be able to build your brand over time.
What most people don't tell you about branding is,
when you acquire more and more customers
and people use your product or service,
you're building a brand.
So don't think about a brand as like,
I need to get my logo everywhere.
That's not brand building, the best brand building
is people using your product or service,
them loving it and them telling their family and friends
about it and be like, "oh my god, you gotta buy Snuggles
"or you gotta buy this toilet paper it's really soft
"on your tushy."
You gotta be really picky about your customers
and making sure the right ones love your product
and that's why it relates to tip number two,
which I already discussed, market to a specific niche.
So if you get people to love what you're doing,
you're acquire these customers and they're using it
and they love it, they're much more likely
to keep telling other people about your product or service,
and that's what builds a brand.
You don't see Amazon doing a ton of TV advertising
back in the day.
But yet they're a multi-billion dollar company.
Same with Google.
But how did they build this huge brand?
Everyone was using their products,
their services, having amazing experience
and being like, "oh my god, this Google is so much
"better than Yahoo!, you have to use it."
Yahoo! What?
Right no one's talking about Yahoo! these days.
Same with Bing or MSN.
And the same goes with your company.
You'll build your brand by acquiring users,
getting them to use your product or service
and providing an amazing experience.
The key is to knock their socks their off.
If you knock their socks off and delight them,
you'll create an amazing brand over time.
So those are the three tips that you need to follow
if you don't want to fail.
Avoid making the mistakes that I was making
and you should be good to go.
If you like this content,
make sure you subscribe to the channel,
join the community, I'm gonna be here every single week
helping you grow with your marketing and your business.
And of course leave a comment if you have any questions,
I'm here to help you out.