The key to understanding if you are going in the right direction from a product standpoint is to get it in front of users - so if you haven't let some of your potential end users spend time with the product, or at least put the concept in front of them to solicit feedback - that would be priority one if I'm in your shoes. As for auditing the other aspects you've referenced - Clarity has experts that can provide feedback on these across the board. In fact, you're likely to find experts in each area that also have experience with a concept or product similar to yours - which allows for a higher degree of specificity and context. I'd suggest searching keywords related to the topic area as well as your industry / product category. This is an extremely common use case for conducting Clarity calls. Good luck with your pending launch! Happy to help you identify experts as well as a plan for engaging them in a way that will help you achieve your objectives.

Based on my own experience building indie games I'd recommend these Reddit and Slack channels for beta testing: Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AlphaAndBetaUsers https://www.reddit.com/r/playmygame https://www.reddit.com/r/indiegameswap/ https://www.reddit.com/r/freegames Slack: https://www.hamsterpad.com/chat/hashtaggaming https://www.hamsterpad.com/chat/gamedevelopment https://www.hamsterpad.com/chat/indie-game-devs Also, just give it to your friends and family and you can record their interactions with it using something like: https://www.lookback.io/ Finally, some paid options include: https://www.usertesting.com http://ubertesters.com/ https://betafamily.com/ If you want to discuss how best to design customer interviews / questionnaires for your specific app, to assess what you need to change, what to keep, etc. feel free to send me a message, best, Lee

Unfortunately, there is no best way. It all varies by your goals, the funnel required to get people to the conversion and the value of each attribution. This type of modeling takes time to establish and generally will only come through experience of analyzing the data of visitors going through the website.

The reality is "reputable" growth hackers - aren't sitting around on freelance sites waiting for you to hire them. If they are good, they are either (very) gainfully employed at a reputable company making very good salaries or more likely using our super powers to create multimillion dollar companies. So the bad news is there is no platform where you can hire reputable growth hackers BUT here is what you can do: You can borrow some of their time on here for just a few dollars a minute and learn what you need to learn to do it yourself (or at least get started) or find courses to learn "growth hacking" yourself. Get the tips, learn the techniques, tons of free resources and sites too. Unfortunately there are no silver bullets and very seldom magic hires that will suddenly get you growth. It's a painful, iterative long process. And the term growth hacker is very broad. Some of us can help you with SEO/SEM, email list building, partnerships and PR (I'm heavily specialized in PR). TL:DR Talk to specialized growth hackers, learn, and apply the techniques yourself.

If you are flipping real estate, an S corp may be better than an LLC. Flipping income can easily be categorized by the IRS as “earned income” and thus subject to self employment tax through an LLC, particularly if it is single member. An S corp will shield part your income from this tax. Always speak with an accountant to review the tax issues before choosing an entity to form, because most attorneys are not tax savvy.

Sounds like you don't have your tracking code set up correctly. I suggesting hiring someone who can spend an hour and take a look to see if you can get the tracking working properly and go from there.

In order to build a bigger fanbase start by creating some anticipation post on social media as well as your blog. You can even release parts of the e-book an an opt-in to email them when it's complete. In the anticipation stage however, I would not recommend going with pay per click or Facebook advertising. Also, share your project on LinkedIn and ask for feedback and suggestions from experts. This is another great way to generate buzz for your upcoming content. Please let me know if you need any help as to how you can execute the following steps.

You need someone with hardware prototyping skills. You can either get an unpaid cofounder, or pay someone to do it (and worry about getting a hardware cofounder later). For either of those options, you'll need someone local. Look in local hackerspaces (https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces), electronics / robotics meetups (Meetup.com), or contact relevant departments at local universities. If you're in NYC send me a message and I'll hook you up. Once you've got a working, proven prototype and want to get investment and get ready for larger scale manufacturing, I'd recommend these guys that combine the two nicely: https://www.bolt.io/pitch If you'd like to discuss next steps more specifically related to your particular idea let me know, best, Lee

There are a couple possible reasons why your emails are being caught in filters: 1) The behavior towards your emails of most of your recipients is indicating to spam filters that it's spam. This could mean actively marking them as spam, or even just deleting them without reading them. 2) The text content is algorithmically associable with spam. This could mean you have a word or collection of words in your emails that is correlated with spam emails, or that you don't have certain words, like the person's name, in the email. Regardless of which problem it is, creating a new domain will at best only temporarily get more emails through. You have to address the two possibilities by doing the following: 1A) Make sure you have an easily accessible 'unsubscribe' link in your emails, and that clicking on that link either directly unsubscribes them, or takes them to a very very simple interface to unsubscribe with. 1B) Make sure you aren't sending your emails too frequently, causing people to get annoyed to the extent of not bothering to click 'unsubscribe', and clicking 'mark as spam' instead. 1C) Make your email content actually be something that recipients want/are interested in. You want as many people as possible to actually be opening it instead of deleting it unread. 2A) Go through your email content and making sure you don't have too many words or phrases associated with spam. For instance, "As seen on", "Earn $", etc. 2B) Personalize your emails to the degree possible (if you have names, put the first name in the subject line). Note: your IP address may have been marked as a spam source, so even if you do the corrections above, it may take time before they start un-marking you, so if possible, see if you can start sending from another IP address when you're ready to implement your changes. best of luck, Lee

Full disclosure, I used to work there but Axial provides a great platform for identifying relevant m&a advisors. With their platform, you can view a number of qualified bankers/advisors, see their prior experience and determine who would be the best fit for your business. My recommendation would be to develop a list of 5-10 bankers, interview them and decide who you feel most comfortable with. The process you choose to find the right partner is almost as important as the m&a process itself.

It depends on your business/industry. Do you collect, maintain health information on behalf of your company or another company (health care provider or plan)? If not, HIPAA does not apply to you.

AFAIK Moodstocks rocks!

If you are operating on a small budget the best way is to find the workers yourself. Any company or agency will have slightly higher rates. In return you usually get more reliability. Its a trade off. I am an outsourcing expert, feel free to reach out to me if needed.

Typically just moving from one server to the next has no issues at all so long as you're not making any other changes to the site, such as changing URLs in a re-design process. Just make sure its a quality, respected server. If the server has issues then, yeah, you'll inherit them. But otherwise you'll be fine.

There is a tremendous amount of buzz surrounding content marketing and its need within a brand’s overall marketing strategy. Doing content marketing is much more than publishing on your blog occasionally and posting your thoughts on social media. “Do stuff and maybe it will work” is not a strategy, it is a gamble. A risky and expensive one, at that. Even so, many brands have yet to create an effective content marketing strategy. What does such a strategy look like? Where are the examples of brands doing it well? Here, I will show you examples of an effective content marketing strategy and offer ways for you to craft your own for your business. WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it. This generation of customers are taking drastic steps to avoid marketing messages. As consumers, we use DVRs to skip television ads, pay internet radio subscription fees to avoid commercials, mentally block out — or use plug-ins to avoid — internet click ads, and gloss over road-side billboards, rendering them useless and ineffective. So how are marketers supposed to combat this shift? Education. Consumers are still buying and making purchases, but the way they go about making a decision has changed. With all of the world’s information at their finger tips, savvy consumers are doing enormous amounts of learning and self-education before stepping into a showroom or talking to a salesperson. Knowing this is a huge opportunity for brands. If you know consumers are looking for information, be the source of that information. Not with sales-y content that puts your priorities before theirs, but information that the buyer really wants and needs. The Marketing and Sales Departments must align to create a buying path for this new era of consumers that provides authentic and transparent information about a product or service (the mission of Marketing) and closing the sale (the mission of Sales). Content marketing closes this gap by using brand-created educational content to satisfy the prospective buyer while helping the sales team convert anonymous visitors into buyers. Thought leaders and marketing experts from around the world, including the likes of Seth Godin and hundreds of the leading thinkers in marketing have concluded that content marketing isn’t just the future, it’s the present (see the video below on the history of content marketing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OHgMMpGLzk The key ingredient to using content to attract new customers is in the advanced planning. The strategy. WHAT IS A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY A content marketing strategy is a roadmap; a “User’s Guide” to how your brand will do the following: - Meet the customer at their specific point within their buying cycle - Align the customer’s needs with your knowledge and expertise - Use your brand’s assets to meet these objectives Business-to-Business marketers who have a documented content marketing strategy are 66% more likely to consider themselves effective compared to only 11% of those without a documented strategy. A content marketing plan helps you see the end-game before you have even started. Further, it gives a clear, articulable vision for your entire team and keeps you on track throughout the campaign. Just like New Years resolutions often fade into a foggy memory, our intentions are good – but we allow resolutions to fail. To be successful in any strategy, we need to be intentional. For proper sales and marketing alignment, and for the success of your bottom line, you must have a plan in place. HOW TO START A CONTENT STRATEGY The framework of a content marketing strategy is fairly straight forward: - Who are you targeting? What are their needs? - How are you going to reach them? (Attract new and nurture existing) - What content do you have now to get started? - What is your plan to develop and share more - How will you measure your efforts 1. Personas Take some time to consider who you are targeting. Are they male or female? Does it matter? Do they have a career? Children? Are they affluent? Coupon cutters? What are their goals? What happens if they do not reach them? Is their a monetary penalty for them? Will meeting this goal further their career? Will it make them happy? Clearly defining your targeted personas will save you a lot of time, energy, and money as you continue your business. With this person in mind, your content marketing strategy will begin to fall into place and you will feel that you are having a conversation with this “person”, rather than blindly throwing stuff out there. 2. Outreach Content marketing and social media are often used synonymously. This is a mistake. Content marketing is a broad method of marketing whereas social media is a tool that complements getting your content seen. Imagine your website as your online hub, where all of your brand-controlled content resides, your social media profiles are spokes that lead back to your home base. Social media has the power to reach incredible numbers of potential customers, influencers, existing customers, and even the opportunity to convert customers from competitors. Social media, in and of itself, is not content marketing. It is one of your outreach tools. 3. Available Content Next, take stock of materials you have on hand already. Many of us sit in offices filled with brochures, flyers, handouts, manuals, and documents loaded with helpful information, but we do little to extend that information to potential customers on the web. Make a list of the content available to you immediately and start identifying which persona is most aligned, where they are within their sales process, and what pain point they are currently facing. Getting started, you can use what you have on hand. But I recommend expecting this low-hanging fruit to run out. You should plan on developing your own, unique content. For a number of reasons, search engines reward fresh, unique content. Further, your prospective customers will be looking for information that is not available everywhere. Your unique perspective and “voice” (the tone in which you talk, the way you communicate, and what you share) may be the first experience a prospective customer has with you. This is the beginning of a long business relationship. 4. Schedule and Share Your Content After you have compiled your educational materials, grab a calendar. I recommend looking out 3-4 months to start. Mark holidays, special events, and milestones. Working backwards, prepare your marketing message for these campaigns. For example, one client of ours hosts 4-5 annual sales. They all surround major US holidays (New Years, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving/Black Friday). By knowing this, it is easy for us to prepare everything from banner ads, Pinterest images, blog posts, Facebook Status, videos, and even newspaper ads (don’t shoot the messenger). Once you have those events marked, consider a “theme” of the week for those 3-4 months. With that theme, and your personas in mind, write out the following for each week: - 2 Blog Posts - 8-10 Facebook updates - 20-30 Twitter updates - 4-5 product photos for Pinterest - 3-4 Instagram ideas - 1 Video By no means is this list all-inclusive. It is a starting point to get you thinking about how to plan content. To get a specific content marketing plan designed for your brand, I need to interview you and understand your goals, personas, and timeline. 5. Analytics Finally, how are you going to measure your work? Remember when we set up our goals earlier? Were you specific in identifying how many leads you want to generate? “Get more leads” is a horrible strategy, better is “Gain 50 new leads by September 1st” or “increase from 6% conversion rate to 12% conversion rate” These types of goals are easily measured and tracked. Do you have a mechanism in place to measure, monitor, and gauge your efforts? Further, do you have the right people on your team to help you know what is working and what is not? Can you explain why certain marketing dollars are generating a return on your investment while others fall flat? Final Thoughts Just like runners know the course of the race before they start, your brand should know the route you will take to your finish line. Having a strong content marketing strategy in place will ensure your team is setup for success. I'm happy to help and provide more specifics. All the best, -Shaun

This is one of the core reasons agencies are a service-centric model vs product-centric: quick to monetize and a function of human labor/ effort to scale (unlike products that are usually slower to monetize, require high initial investment but scale really well). So the answer is either you need to outsource sales and lead generation to an external firm, use a platform like Clozer or inhouse the sales folk. When inhousing sales: #1 recommendation: don't make the sales people find their own leads. They hate that. You need a lead generator (could be outsourced) and a sales person. The leadgen should be supplemented with inbound marketing for the best effect. The function of a dedicated "leadgen" person is set up meetings and should be rewarded on successful meetings. First thing you ask the sales person: WHERE'S YOUR BOOK? ie:who are you going to bring with you today (clients) that we can close quick based on existing relationships. Good sales teams and systems are costly - so chose a path that monetizes quick.

I really like: Think Like Your Customer http://www.amazon.com/Think-Like-Your-Customer-Understanding/dp/0071441883 Conceptual Selling http://www.amazon.com/New-Conceptual-Selling-Face---Face/dp/0446695181/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1459434489&sr=1-1&keywords=conceptual+selling You can learn how to craft your messages from books, but the real answer to your question is to ditch the books and go to your existing customers and ask them: - Why did you buy? - What value do you get from what you bought? When you have the answers to those questions you can then craft a script that goes to solving someone's problem, not pitching a product.

Hi, Great question and one many people struggle with and part of the reason people get frustrated or afraid to invest in online marketing. They have a great product or service but (a) don't know how to find their exact target audience who has money and (b) how to monetize it or generate leads to then monetize it. Funnels are the best way to do so, automate the process and weed out people who have no interest in your product. There are several softwares out there that work quite well, lead pages is a popular one, I prefer Click Funnels for the amount of freedom and ease of creativity / integration capability along with support. I am generating all my traffic from highly targeted FB ads and also LinkdeIn by directing them to my funnel which is converting around 10% right now which is quite good To answer your question more specifically I would have to know more about your industry, however you may want more than 2 steps in your funnel depending on your goal. Giving away value first could be a step to capture contact info, then possibly a detailed question page, then sale page, then schedule a call page etc depends on what you are trying to accomplish Or perhaps, opt in , sale page, up sell, down sell, checkout, thank you page to increase profits Quite easy to do, just need to fully understand your audience and your end goal I also have a bit of a secret source to see the best converting funnels in almost any industry you can get ideas from, happy to share if you like. Saves a ton of time and see the ones that are making money which can give you ideas regards to copy for your funnel Facebook and Linkdein are both great tools if you know how to use the advanced features and not waste time, I could easily go into more detail based on who you are trying to reach what the best method to do so. We are helping a client right now and generated about 50 sales last week via FB I also have this offer: I will reveal your top 2-3 competitors and their best marketing strategies for free. So you can see the people in your niche, how and where they are spending money on advertising and use that to your advantage and can also incorporate content you know that is already converting into your funnel page Let's setup a call for some follow up questions and answers. Thank you for your time and great question Take Care Jarred Bonica

I would set up a simple referral fee agreement. This could be 15% on the overall billing paid out the moment the client pays the market entry consultancy. You may want to include a clause that all recurring business should also attract a referral fee. Consulting assignments with new clients normally start small and then grow bigger over time.

Provide more detail in your question. Specifically, your target goal. Likely having this information, someone can assist you.

It sounds like you are going after high value targets who have layers and layers of insulation between your company and decision makers. If it were me, I would find someone either on here or on Linkedin who have existing relationships in your core industries and work out compensation deals with them directly. Everyone is different with how they want to be compensated, however, since you have self-funded, any revenue is good revenue at this point. I have some ideas for you if you want to contact me directly.

You can make it entity based. For example , brand it for an elite group usage. You can also make it server based, where entities , like universities, clubs or companies, can use it for their internal network to reach each others.

Identifying user personas is critical to your agenda. I originally come from South Africa, where the best "tech" startups are fundamentally copies of successful businesses in the USA or EU. The advantage, of course, is that they can copy many of the aspects of the original market leader: UX, UI, user acquisition strategies, growth tactics, business models etc. They also have a great use-case for raising capital and a potential exit to a local player, PE firm or the original company they copied when the company expands to their shores. So the key piece of advice: research who their ideal customer is. Read all the articles interviewing the team and watch videos where they discuss these issues. Want to be really sneaky? Get someone to interview them for you. Stalk them on social. There are a variety of other tools you could be using to analyze their followers on different social media channels to discover who the ideal persona is as well. EG: Sprout Social. Another thing to do: join their boards and see if you can get some business for yourself to see if you can get a handle on what the interactions are like.

Essentially you want to create a tech blog with more embedded purchasing options. Tech blogs work, so if done right there's no reason this idea would not work.

Yes, you can. However, the success is highly depended on the information architecture. You need to plan in creating and arranging the categories & subcategories in such a way that it gives the best user experience. You can also cloud powered instant search tools like Algolia to make the product finding easier via search box.