- Quicksprout

Neil Patel (Quicksprout) tells the sad story of Roger. Roger had great aspirations for his design career straight out of college, but failed when he started his own business because he forgot about the whole marketing thing.

I don’t think a lot of people realize how time consuming marketing is when they decide to go it alone. You think to yourself- hey, I can handle this. After all, it’s my skills that are going to make me money. And that might be true… eventually. But your audience has to know you exist, and what’s more- they have to like you.

That’s why I think marketing works best on a personal level. Don’t have a lot of money to spend on print ads, web ads and other promotions? There’s an easier way. Start conversations with people. Networking is the best thing you can do that doesn’t cost any money- and I think it’s the most profitable over time. You never know who can point you in the right direction. We do it ourselves- when we come across a project that isn’t a good fit for us, we’ll recommend someone we think is. Those kinds of personal relationships have, in turn, brought us some really cool projects- and recurring business.

We’re not experts on social networking, but in the age of Twitter, you have no excuse not to reach out. Start talking. Even if your forte is programming or design (read: not marketing!), you can still let your voice be heard. What’s even better is that people will see you for who you are. Personal touches don’t get more genuine than that.

Another problem is that you will expend all your energy and creative talent on other people’s projects. And what will you have to show for it? At best, a great portfolio, client list, and testimonials. But if you want to keep eating, you’ll need to keep working.”

Great point. We all know the dangers of getting caught up in too much work. It’s a slippery slope and you don’t want to find yourself apologizing for the three month content break on your blog. It can feel selfish to want to put your business first, but when clients see the care and devotion you give your own brand, it’s a positive reinforcement of the quality work you’ll turn out for them.

Everybody wins.

- Via 99%

• Coming up with cool interface mocks
• Making really cool code, and trying to push some limits
• Maybe writing a few blog articles about what we do

Turns out, that’s a pretty small part of what we do now… Of course we’re still actively developing out apps (as you can tell from the new Jumpchart) but the needle shifts with each new user we add, and new ambition we have. Here’s a list that reflects the reality of what we do day to day:

• Answering support emails
• Managing account related questions
• Promoting our apps
• Managing advertising
• Writing support articles
• Interacting with the web community
• ...and a bunch of other businessy stuff

So, the list grows. Daily. And the blunt truth is, we’re doing a lot less than we ought to be doing. We’re not trying to be the next Microsoft, but we are really passionate about our apps: We want people to try them, and if that’s going to happen, we need to do a lot better job of getting the word out. An amazing amount of time has gone into building our apps, and we didn’t do that just because we needed a hobby or needed money. We believed that we had a serious contribution to make to this space and it’s important to us that we expose people to our ideas and apps.

We’re guessing a lot of you are in the same boat. The things that get your company to a beginning level are mostly related to passion, execution, and ideas. We’ll buy you a beer sometime and tell you about how far those things have gotten us (it’s been a pretty fun and amazing ride so far). But the things we believe will take us to the next level are from a slightly different tool set. It’s time to grow in our thinking.

Our company has its roots in design and advertising, so its ironic how little of our own advice we’ve taken. Small things. Big things. They all fell to the bottom of the list behind the stuff that seemed, well, funner. It’s too bad really. We’ve probably missed out on a lot of momentum.

So as we’ve been talking about growing, and getting organized we decided we needed one of those things, what do you call them? Oh yeah, a plan. A list really. Just something to get our thoughts organized, and recorded. Call it an exercise in purposeful growth.

So we filled a Jumpchart full of ideas, and plans — a roadmap of sorts. Nothing with dates, and nothing that feels too rigid. (btw. Jumpchart makes a pretty good spot to organize this type of info. We find a new way to use that app every week!) It’s what you might call a cathartic process. Planning your future rather than just letting it happen to you. Maybe it’s not very zen, but then again Lao Tzu never built a web app or had to answer support emails…

The important thing to realize is that it’s o.k. to give yourself permission to plan. Stupid point, but it’s one of the main mental hurdles we had to get over (and it’s really the point of this whole article). We had cultivated a mental resistance to planning because we felt that it was a waste of time. Our business was creating its own plan. Our days were filled up with putting out the fires that were created in our path. Any time spent making a plan today would be wasted when the first email came in the morning.

But it was garbage thinking. Procrastination in the disguise of proactivity. It was just us counting mile markers on a highway in a random direction. Analogies aside, it was dumb, and we knew better. We needed an over-arching direction, some destination in mind as we make the hundreds and thousands of decisions that we make on a daily basis.

So one afternoon we took some time, and we talked about that direction. Not that we had never talked about where Paste was headed before, but we had never discussed it in such an organized fashion. Using our list in Jumpchart as a starting point, we started to think about things like:

• Changes to the sales sites
• A prioritization of new feature development for the current apps
• Handling support better
• Handling promotions smarter, and monitoring the success of individual efforts and campaigns
• Company attitude. (No, we didn’t write a “mission statement.” But we did talk a bit about defining our passions more concretely)

Nothing too shocking on the list. You’re probably not reeling in amazement at our brilliance in talking about these things. But we might ask you: What’s not being talked about in your business? What are you taking for granted? Where do you see your company in a year? And maybe you don’t have any of those high level questions that are unanswered, if so, congratulations… But many of them were unanswered here at Paste. Our apps haven’t grown by accident, but the process has been somewhat more evolutionary than purposeful.

An interesting thing has happened since making the list. We’re actually doing more. Same number of people. Same number of hours in the day. But more somehow gets done. What a weird, and wonderful effect this thing we call a “list” has had. Apologies to David Allen for not heeding the advice earlier.

When there’s a path, even a tentative one, your next step is easier to take. Uncertainty is the enemy of productivity. Having over-riding concepts and a sense of direction increases fulfillment, and the overall pulse of your company.

So as we’ve been thinking about purposeful growth, and the future of Paste. We’ve had this major revelation that we think you all should know about: You get a lot more done when you have a plan.

Though it’s almost impossible to fathom now, these companies faced the same daunting task that you face now: Convincing consumers that their product was necessary and desirable. Even thought we think of each of these companies’ products as impossible to live without, the early sales of each was hard – just imagine how frightening an electric light bulb would be if you had never seen one before.

So each company turned to a vast force of salesmen that they sent out on the road; their purpose was to make face-to-face contact with potential customers, to explain benefits, answer questions and dispel myths. These salesmen were so numerous and so ubiquitous that they became an identifying characteristic of the American culture. While these new corporations relied on this army of salesmen to make sales and bring in new business they also relied on them to act as the human face of the company. Remember, the radio had just been conceived and the invention of the television was still two and a half decades off. Yes, the salesmen were there to make sales; but, in the long-run they served a much more important function. They were to embed the name and the story and the brand in the minds of everyone they met. They weren’t just out there to sell light bulbs or cameras, they were there to sell the story of convenient light at any time and the preservation of memories on paper. The really good salesmen were the ones that perfectly aligned the story of their company to the story of the person sitting in front of them.

The story
To effectively communicate your message, you have to have a story. And not only that, but your story has be genuine. Meaning that your story is the truth: Who you are, why you are doing what you’re doing. Each of these companies told their own story using a genuine voice. They slowly built up a following of people through the face-to-face contact afforded them by their salesmen.

At the beginning, no one else knows what your web app is because they’ve never come into contact with it before. But you know what it is and what it does ( or, at least you should) and you know what went into bringing it to life. This is your story. You can spout features and you can tell people that it will change XYZ about how they work or play or live but without a context most people will just gloss over and move on. Your story and the genuine telling of that story is the context that will help to create a following.

Thankfully, we’re now blessed with the internet. You aren’t required to employ a small army of salesmen to take your story out into the world anymore. All you need is some self-honesty and a willingness to participate in the discussion, with people on both sides of the issue. Remember, your product and your story will not strike a chord with everyone out there and that is ok. Address the nay-sayers politely and then move on, focusing on the people that are listening.

The Promise
Ok, you’ve got your story down pat. You’ve begun to attract a conversation about what it is that you do. Congratulations, you’ve now begun to build a brand. Ahh, a brand – that is a word you’re familiar with, but what does it mean? No really, what is a brand? If you’re like most people out there the concept of a brand is ephemeral and abstract. Oh sure, you know what branding is, that’s logos and stuff right? But defining whats behind that logo is what I’m aiming for here.

A brand is nothing more than a promise. It is the implicit promise from the company to provide something to the consumer. Coca-cola’s brand is all about refreshment. They promise to provide refreshment if you buy Coke products. The brand is built as a direct result of your story – once people understand where you came from and what you’re offering, they slowly build a sense of what it is that you are promising to deliver.

Nurturing
Marketing a web app isn’t about getting the big tech blogs to write you up, and it isn’t about posting to your blog repeatedly and tweeting constantly. Those are tactical decisions that come and go. Marketing your web app, in the long-run, is about building a story people can identify with and discuss. You brand builds slowly over time and is fundamentally based on constant communication back and forth. Keep the faith and keep the lines of communication open, whatever they may be: Your blog, Twitter or whatever the next big service out there is. Genuine marketing that makes a lasting impression isn’t based on PR and quick hit advertising, it’s based on you and the consumer forming a lasting relationship.

It’s ok, that scaling plan will still be there on the shelf when you need it.