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Khuram Malik

Digital and Marketing Strategist

Bio

I've helped over 150 Founders and Leaders around the globe with strategies for improving sales and marketing, hiring and retaining talent and attracting investment. I've helped start-ups raise millions in investment, businesses grow get clarity about their brand and organisations get efficient for profit.

Recent Answers

CRM software

What are some of your favorite services to stay in touch with contacts?? I use contactually but I feel like there is a lot room for improvement.


Khuram Malik

Digital and Marketing Strategist

I'm using Contactually as well and I agree that it could do with improvement. Have you had a look at RelateIQ, Pipedrive and Close.io . Close.io has a decent mobile app as far as I know and I believe you can get it to operate in much the same way as Contactually. In all honesty, I don't think anyone has solved this problem well enough and this market is ripe for the taking.

Social Media Marketing

How does my startup hire an affordable marketing expert?


Khuram Malik

Digital and Marketing Strategist

Could you please tell me the nature of the social cause? I, along with a network of other specialists provide marketing expertise to non-profits on a probono basis. I, myself am a marketing strategy expert but have consultants with me that can handle other areas. We dedicate around 50% of our time on probono work so depending on the social cause and our schedule, we may be able to help you. Please feel free to inbox me. Thanks.

Software Development

What would be a good approach for marketing a software development businesses?


Khuram Malik

Digital and Marketing Strategist

Agree with all the answers posted by the others. Additionally the relationship marketing approach may help as well. Here is a live recording of a guest lecture I did for a university to give you some ideas. Happy to answer any questions thereafter. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0m7eC3KppY

Mastermind Groups

Are there any strategies or technique to make the most of a mastermind group?


Khuram Malik

Digital and Marketing Strategist

Here's a system a masterminded with Joel of Buffer (pun intended). General rules: Break the session into 3 parts and set time limits. Stick to one mastermind group partner for each session. Take it in turns for each part of the session. Prep: Have your achievements and challenges list ready before the meeting 1. Spend 10mins celebrating "achievements" from the previous week. Can be big achievements or small. doesn't matter as long as they're meaningful to you. 2. Spend 5 mins doing "reflections". These are your reflections on the challenges you had last week. 3. Challenges: 25mins. Express your "challenge" and let the other person lead you to a resolution through a series of guided questions as part of a discovery. Note: It is imperative that your partner never gives you an answer but only asks guiding questions. Joel's company uses this system amongst all his staff and the company just got valued at $60m. You can read about it on techcrunch or on his blog. If you want more detail on how to run a successful MMG or want to hear the story of how he and I spent a year doing this every week for a whole year. You know where to find me. :)

Customer Service

What are the internet companies doing the best customer service? And is Zappos still top 10?


Khuram Malik

Digital and Marketing Strategist

I don't have any quantifiable data on this matter, so please do take this with somewhat a pinch of salt. Buffer is well known for it's customer service. They often release reports of their response times and customer satisfaction rates to the public. Here's a post from one of its co-founders: http://blog.bufferapp.com/customer-support-on-twitter Response time is one thing, but of course, that doesn't cover the quality of support. I've found "Pocket" do have great quality of customer support and when I first started using Optimizely I was blown away about how willing they were to help their customers. These are just some of the brands that come to my own mind based on a combination of my personal experience and general market observations.

Start-ups

How do I do the right Market Research for a Product or App?


Khuram Malik

Digital and Marketing Strategist

Here's what I always advise the start-ups that I mentor. Define your system on paper and run it manually in the real world with people that experience the problem you're hoping to solve. To clarify what that would mean in your case, or how I would run it, would be the following way. Either in my own offline or online social network (really doesn't matter which network you tap into) I would ask if anyone was fired today, or has recently had a major social stress situation. I'd then ask them to inbox me to say I have a "solution" for them. I would then wait for 2 people to contact me and then pair them up and run the "situation" in the way I had intended. If you find that this whole thing falls flat on its face, you then have a good idea of how hard it will be to get people to "buy in" to your idea. If you find people approach you, then you know there is some merit. Ultimately, it all comes down to doing all the "thinking" upfront and then applying it in the real world in a manual fashion. That's your validation. Feel free to call me if you want me to talk you through it in an exact step by step fashion.

Marketing Strategy

Suppose today you started with no money in your pocket because you spent it all on product development. How would you market it with zero budget?


Khuram Malik

Digital and Marketing Strategist

Easy. Assuming you have product to market fit, all you need to do is figure out where the people for whom your product solves a problem are 'hanging out'. You then need to come up with a simple plan to get them used to the idea that you or your product can solve their problem and then introduce them to the product. None of this costs any money. In fact, even with companies that *have* money, I encourage them to use these routes over things like advertising because it's far more potent. Hope that helps you understand better, and gives you some clarity (no pun intended). If you need any further advice, feel free to call me. I should be able to help clarify everything in less than 30mins.

Survey Design

What are examples of great questions to ask when surveying your customers?


Khuram Malik

Digital and Marketing Strategist

The question is a little broad so hard to answer with something very specific, but as a general rule you really want to identify their objections and constraints. You really want to identify criticisms and negative feedback so you can make the product better. I had a marketing course which was originally rated 1 and 2 stars by most customers. I went back and asked them what it would take for them to give me 5 stars. I got my answers. Also, I asked them what it would take for them to tell their friends and they told me, it'd have to be a 5-star course for them to share with friends. I know this isn't as helpful as could be given I don't know the product, but it should give you food for thought.

Growth Hacking

Do I need to hire a "growth hacker" or "growth marketer?" What's the difference?


Khuram Malik

Digital and Marketing Strategist

I haven't heard of the term 'Growth Marketer'. Silicon Valley seems to be full of buzz words, but essentially it's the difference between macro and micro perspective. A growth marketer likely works more strategically where as *generally* growth hackers work on specific pain points and challenges. This is a gross generalisation because pure growth hacking should be a very strategic thing but the term is often mis-used. What you should always start with is macro perspective i.e. Strategy. This is my area of expertise so feel free to give me a call and I can work through the whole thing with you. If you inbox me, i'll send you a link for a free call.

Lean Startups

Have you ever funded future developments by pre-selling to current users?


Khuram Malik

Digital and Marketing Strategist

I haven't done it personally but I know of a few that have. I think it's a brilliant way of doing things though. Check out some campaigns on kickstarter and indiegogo to see what works well. Look for Pebble on kickstarter or space monkey. It's also worth doing some customer development with your audience to see what would work. It's difficult to be specific but I would think about the following in relation to your questions. 1. Give them something of tangible value. e.g access to the app, delivery of the product 2. Give them something that people can only get if they pay e.g early access to an invite only beta 3. Give them an incentive to tell their friends. Reward them for doing so. As I say, most of the ideas of what will work will come from your target audience.

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MarketingGrowth HackingStart-upsLean StartupsMarketing StrategyLeadershipDigital Marketing StrategyGrowth StrategiesBusiness GrowthMastermind Groups