Pop-ups are generally pretty obtrusive to the user experience and may actually have a negative impact on your conversion rates. I'd recommend refining and testing your calls-to-action (including offer, copy, image, & placement) to make sure those are as optimized as possible. I'd also recommend setting up your calls-to-action as "smart content" -- in other words, show different CTAs to your subscribers, leads, and customers so you're asking each visitor to take the next step that's most appropriate for them. Happy to discuss leveraging smart content in more detail if you're interested -- it's helped us tremendously in increasing our blog conversion rates.

OF COURSE IT'S STRESSFUL TO BE A PARENT!!! It's the hardest damn job in the world. Not sure you can have balance though. You just need to have a dream, execute your plan, and fix what is broken at the time. It's about priorities... Use tools to keep you scheduled and accountable. You'll be OK.

I would say travel industry experts first. Based on what you have described, it sounds like you need to figure out what the market segment within the packaged travel/tourism industry that can benefit from your product. Then look at your competition in that market segment and see how they sell their product. Once you have a good understanding of these, you should then be able to figure out whether licensing is the right way to go or if there are other alternate models. All the best.

You should make the name that the donor sees on their credit card match the brand name as close as possible. Structurally though, your npo should be collecting the money directly. Having built Canada's first - and at the time it was operational - largest crowdfunding platform for charities, I'd be happy so share my experiences with you in a call.

Marketing to large companies is a team sport. You cannot expect to just target the decision maker and convert them. You need to really understand how enterprises make purchase decisions and also that you have diverse groups of stakeholders, from the end users, to IT, to Finance to Purchasing to the Decision Maker, to market and convince. So if your marketing strategy is just to target the decision maker, you will fail. What you need is to have a credible story for each of the constituents and reach out to them and help them build a business case as to why they should go with your product/service. Only then would you be successful in reaching the decision makers.

It sounds like you're off to a good start with your lead generation. While it is important to keep lead volume strong, it's even more important to have a way to follow up with these leads and continue pushing them through your sales funnel until you can convert them into revenue. Without that follow-up, especially if you're generating leads through PPC, you're likely wasting the budget and energy you're putting toward your marketing efforts in the first place. The first thing I'd recommend you do is create an automatic "kick-back" email that triggers as soon as a lead downloads your ebook. Be sure to thank them for downloading, give them a link to access the ebook, and then (most importantly) include your call-to-action for the next step you want them to take. Second, figure out how you're going to handle these leads from a sales perspective. If you're stretched for bandwidth, I'd recommend a system where you assign dollar values to different types of leads, and only have a sales rep follow up with your highest value leads. How much is an ebook lead worth to your business? How much is a demo lead? What about someone who actively requests to be contacted? You'll find that as you get these systems and processes underway, it'll be extremely useful to have a CRM system both for integrating with your marketing efforts and for helping your sales team to be able to sort and prioritize the leads they're reaching out to. Lead conversion is a daily focus of mine in my role at HubSpot, and I'd be happy to chat further about how to get a strong marketing/sales funnel set up so you're better equipped to manage the leads you generate and better able to convert them into dollars. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help!

Ries owns 'Lean Startup' trademark. I doubt 'lean' by itself is trademark-able, and isn't claimed by Eric. Someone else may claim 'lean career development,' so might be worth a trademark search.

Practice. Practice. Practice. You will improve. Do you have people to practice with who can give you feedback?

This is an important question that I am often asked as my clients prepare to make the most of their time at large events. Remember, your primary purpose for attending is to establish meaningful connections. Sure, you might hear and exciting speaker or two, but the most important reason to go is to connect with others with whom you can exchange "value." To make the most of your time there, be sure to do some pre-conference prep and outreach. Find out who is going to be there -- everyone from speakers to attendees to vendors to organizers. Research them and connect in advance to express your interest in meeting them at the event. And, once you are on the scene -- be present. Engage, ask questions, stay focused on the person or group with whom you are interacting at the moment. Your attentive curiosity will help to forge the relationship. For more details, check out http://www.coffeelunchcoffee.com/2013/04/i-need-your-help-2/. Happy to discuss further, as necessary. Good luck!

This is a good one. I'd recommend reading The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen. It provides a lot of insight into how companies get so invested into what they've built that they have a tough time identifying if/when to adapt to emerging technologies, behaviors, and helps identify how organization can better identify those opportunities.

Silicon Valley Bank. Tell them I sent you and they'll take care of you ;-)

Agreed. Pownce and FriendFeed were both hailed as Twitter competitors in the early days. In 2008 Twitter was consistently plagued by downtime as they had trouble scaling. However, the service was simple and easy to use and they did a great job getting early digital influencers and celebs onboard evangelizing the platform. When Twitter first got started they also had a suggested user list and recommended lots of famous people and digital influencers to follow. This created a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy - those on the list would evangelize twitter helping to funnel even more people in and boosting their own popularity, etc.

There's never a substitute for building your product and talking to customers. If you're not well versed in growth hacking, let's talk. Depending on your market, there's a variety of algorithmic ways to pursue customers and hundreds of API's to power the pursuit. The one insight I have here that isn't often mentioned is the number of high fidelity backlinks per an hour that you're able to produce. If you use http://ahrefs.com you'll notice that the highest growth ventures have a strong correlation with backlinks. (Causality is difficult to identify, but correlation isn't. ) The internet was built for land-grab tactics.

Below is a link to a resource I provide my investors. The 50 questions are specific to product design/development but the 15 categories are questions that apply to any industry. If you can answer these questions about your deal you will have gone a long way to avoiding the common pitfalls in the product commercialization process. http://www.jaredjoyce.com/freetreats/50questions.pdf Once you have answered the questions for your deal if you'd like to call me I can evaluate your answers, educate you on what strategies are available that would be the best fit for you, and then help you execute your strategy.

Dilip was very kind in his response. My answer might be a bit on the "tough love" side. But that's for you to decide. My intention, just for the record, is to help you (and those like you) on your path to success. And that starts with having a viable philosophy about entrepreneurial-ism and business. And I'm going to answer this because I get asked some form / version of this question very frequently from newcomers to entrepreneurial-ism. The scenario goes something like this: "I have a great idea. It's amazing, I love it, and I just KNOW it's gonna make me a ton of money. But I have no money right now so I can't afford to (fill in the blank with things like "to build it / create it / market it / etc" or "to hire the required staff needed to work in my business to sell it / develop it / etc"). And I don't want to tell anyone about my great idea because I'm worried someone will steal it and make MY million / billion dollars. But I can't afford to legally protect it either... So how do I launch without the skills to personally create the product AND no money to hire anyone else to do that either??" The answer is ... You don't. Look - let's be honest. All you have is an idea. Big deal. Really. I'm not saying it's not a good idea. I'm not saying that if properly executed it couldn't make you a million / billion dollars... But an idea is NOT a business. Nor is it an asset. Until you do some (very important) initial work - like creating a business model, doing customer development, creating a MVP, etc - all you really have is a dream. Right now your choices are: 1. Find someone with the skills or the money to develop your idea and sell them on WHY they should invest in you. And yes, this will mean giving up either a portion of the "ownership" or of future income or equity. And the more risk they have to take - the more equity they will want (and quite frankly be entitled to). 2. Learn how to code and build it yourself. MANY entrepreneurs without financial resources are still resourceful. They develop the skills needed to create what they don't have the money to pay someone else to do. 3. Get some cash so you can pay someone to do the coding. You'll probably have to have some knowledge of coding to direct the architecture of your idea. So you will likely still have to become knowledgeable even if its not you personally doing the coding. (This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of options... And I'm sure some of the other experts here on Clarity have others to add - and I hope they do) To wrap up - Here's my final tip to you that I hope you "get"... It's FAR more valuable to have an idea that a very specific hungry crowd is clamoring for right now - One that THEY would love and pay you for right now - Maybe even one they'd pre-order because they just have to have it - Versus YOU being in love with your own idea. [Notice I didn't say "an idea that some as-of-yet-undetermined market would probably love"] I wish you the best of luck moving forward.

There's a reason that most CEOs and M.D.s are hard to get to and why their gatekeepers won't let you through... They WANT it that way. They are constantly being bombarded by people trying to sell them something! My best advice is to discover ways to put the target on YOUR back. Position your business/product/service in a way that compels them (or more likely someone from their office) to contact YOU. Tip: Make sure you develop and maintain an very high level of integrity - because even if you get through to one and make a sale - if your product/service is of poor quality then word will spread and your reputation will get destroyed. Best of luck!

Trade shows are excellent for: 1. Exposure - getting your name out there to the industry. If you are looking to get established (i.e. you are just starting out) attending let's others "discover" you. If you are established it let's others know you are still in the game. 2. Recon - you get a chance to literally MEET some of your competition. Grab their marketing materials and even take time to meet them (sometimes strategic alliances are possible!). You may also discover some trends in the industry that you can integrate into your strategy. As well trade shows can be great networking events. Be sure to collect as many business cards as you hand out.TIP: make notes on the back of the card to remind you why you took it so you'll remember the conversation when you get back home! Then take the initiative and follow up IMMEDIATELY. 3. Lead Generation (this seems to be specific to what you are asking) - gathering contact info from those that expressed interest and getting them into your funnel. I have developed some excellent ways to do this - to get them into the booth (or over to your table) and to engage them. 4. Sales - if you have product on-hand (which I HIGHLY recommend) or a way for people to "sign up" then and there you can actually generate pretty good income for the day. My goal for every trade show is to generate AT LEAST as much income from the booth as I spent to get there (so I AT LEAST break even for the event). If you are interested in discovering more about how to do these things - give me a call. Have fun... And best of luck to you!

B2C apps typically use a freemium model to make money off of in-app purchases and ad revenue. You could also make a paid monthly subscription model work in several categories, such as Newsstand. The challenge is finding the balance between giving enough functionality away for free so that your app can attract and retain users. Only if user retention is high does your app stand to monetize well over time. A word of caution though related to free-to-play apps: http://m.ign.com/articles/2014/04/10/two-thirds-of-mobile-free-to-play-gamers-quit-after-24-hours. Basically, the only safe bet in mobile development in particular (and business in general) is to create something beautiful, unique, and entertaining (or helpful), and then to market, market, market it and build a tribe of fans. Hope this helps, Austin

Well, hopefully you have analytics embedded in your app. That should also give you an idea of how many users are real vs spammers. Also, what sections of your apps are being used more often. It is not too late to add the analytics to your app.

As much as you need to build out the product and raise at a 3-4x increased valuation. Typically that's 500K-1.5M and gives you 1.5-2 years of runway to build product, customers and team.

First, get a sense for what kind of design you like by looking on Dribbble.com. If you have any more q's, feel free to call me here on Clarity.

To answer your questions: 1) Mobile companies at your stage usually raise angel funding at a valuation equivalent of $5,000,000 for US based companies and $4,000,000 to $4,500,000 for Canadian companies. 2) The valuation is a function of how much you raise against that valuation. For instance, selling $50,000 at $5,000,000 means you are selling debt that will convert into shares equal to roughly 1% of your company. 3) I would encourage you to check out my other answers that I've recently written that talk in detail about what to raise and when to raise. Given that you've now launched and your launch is "quiet", most seed investors are going to want to see substantial traction before investing. It's best for you to raise this money on a convertible note instead of actually selling equity, especially if you are intending on raising $50,000 - $100,000. Happy to schedule a call with you to provide more specifics and encourage you to read through the answers I've provided re fundraising advice to early-stage companies as well.

Hey there Without knowing the specific industry you're targeting I can only provide general advice. However, my background is in the technology sector with primarily specific experience in the Telco & Transport sectors. So if I draw on my own experience I would work through the following steps. 1 - Brainstorm the top 3 topics you feel you are confident to speak about and could mould around a specific engagement. 2 - Identify the regular speaking opportunities locally and regionally that you could attend without too much trouble. 3 - Reach out to your network. Let people know you are looking for this kind of opportunity 4 - Be totally willing to speak for free to build up experience as well as a name for yourself. Everyone would love to walk straight into a paid speaking gig. The reality is that you have to build up a reputation first and only then will people be willing to pay for your services. Some events, once convinced of your value add, will be willing to pay for your travel costs but not your time. If you can start by getting those you are doing well. Go to the event. Smash it out of the park. Network like crazy. Build a list of other opportunities to pitch for. Once you have done a few 'free' engagements you can use those as a springboard in your marketing to help draw in paid work. Obviously having a strong social media presence with videos of you speaking at events and details of where you have spoken in the past and are due to in the future greatly help. Also look at local business support groups where you can build up a following as a 'go to' guy for your sector. There are a number of approaches you can take and will vary by your background and target audience. I hope that gives you a little bit of a pointer in how to get started. Feel free to schedule a call if you would like to discuss further. Wishing the best for you Regards Saif www.saifsiddiqui.com

When you go with Cloudflare you will have the ability to use or not use the CDN. The great thing here is you can see if your site has problems quickly. Make sure your QA team goes through your site to ensure you find any issues.

I work extensively in the healthcare market. In particular I have quite a bit of experience marketing to MDs and other healthcare providers. And in my experience - that audience is not likely to be reached via social media. Medical professionals (particularly MDs) are mainly offline. Online business related activity is generally limited to reading journals and correspondence with other medical professionals. In fact - they have such a huge "target" painted on their back that they are very challenging to market TO at all. This is not to say that you can't be successful in working with them. Only that if you "target" them you're likely to get stonewalled. I'm curious why you are intent on reaching them in this manner (i.e. social media)? One of the main tenets I teach my coaching students is to find out where your market is... Not to choose a form of media (i.e. twitter, FB, etc) and hope to reach them there. You may have greater success (and waste less time/money) re-thinking your business model. I can certainly help with this if you decide to go in that direction. In any case - Best of luck!