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Lessons Learned: SEM on five dollars a day

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? SEM is a simple idea. Trying to answer that question at IMVU led me to discover Google AdWords and the world of search engine marketing.

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Your Product Needs to be 10x Better than the Competition to Win. Here’s Why:

Both Sides of the Table

Not because they didn’t want to do Pay-per-click (they are huge buyers of SEM) but because they didn’t want other people to know what they paid for clicks! In 1995 Netscape IPO’d and browsers started to become more prevalent. Google was clear that they WOULD NOT go into this business.

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Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc. For example, its always nice to have someone constantly optimizing your SEM accounts, driving down your CPA. But its not really viral growth, even when its exponential.

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Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

Startup Lessons Learned

Dont worry about selecting particularly good keywords, if youre new to SEM. SEM only gets at one segment of users, and for a brand new product, you presumably need some skill at marketing in general and adsense in particular to get any useful info. Just put in your credit card. Just load them all in and choose a low cost-per-click.

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Lessons Learned: Just-In-Time Scalability

Startup Lessons Learned

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

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Cracking The Code: Getting the most of your online marketing: the In.

Cracking the Code

Getting the most of your online marketing: the In & Out of SEM/SEO. on a scale of 1-4). on a scale of 1-4). The videos can be watched at Bessemer Online Marketing Portal (the other materials are not public).

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Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now

Startup Lessons Learned

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.