Most likely the best way to get funded in this situation is to approach independent investors. It would really depend on your business plan and whether or not you have an attractive business model. You could try to get connected with networks or consultants that have access to independent investors such as chambers of commerce, or consulting firms Global Strategy Consulting Services, LLC www.gscsconsulting.com or you could email gscsconsulting@gmail.com and someone will respond with ideas on how to get you funded.

As a FIFA Intermediary myself, B/R is all over social media. Instagram, Twitter, Snap, you can log in with your Facebook account. So it's fair to argue to have an expansive platform. They like platforms in the same ilk like S/B Nation, have grown from the fringes of sports reporting through using its platform in a reciprocal manner in which they actual engage responders to their comments section. What I think also must be understood is that they like S/B Nation have legitimized themselves by going after not only the freelance reporter but they are now a platform that can bring more established reporters. I would also research The Athletic its a fairly new platform but they are bringing in well established writers. And one more point they giving their writers very defined pieces of their platform. In other words the has a very defined niche...……….i.e. the writer is there to cover soccer in Seattle, or one of the NFL teams in New York. These writers use twitter to promote themselves and their work but it's also an easy promo for platforms like B/R.

Sure, there are all kinds of agencies you can hire. But outsourcing won't help if you're unsure what you're looking for. You say that your biggest difficulty has been to tap into the customer desire. Is that because you're unsure what the customer desires are, or because you don't know what kind of campaign would engage people with those desires? The first would require a market research specialist; the second would require a messaging specialist. While some agencies do both, they're not the same thing. No matter who does it, the most important thing (well, depending on the product) is to focus your messaging on benefits, not features. Let's say you sell a service that helps businesses identify all laws/regulations that pertain to their business, determines whether they're compliant, and, if they're not, guides them through what they need to do to get there. Those are the features. The benefit is that the business owner can sleep at night instead of worrying about losing the business due to a regulatory violation. So, in that case, your messaging might focus on sharing fun, relaxing times with friends and family instead of lying in bed, wide awake, and staring at the ceiling.

You use the title co-founder, which indicates a partnership and mandates that the tech hire (I'm assuming is the CTO) be provided with the perks and benefits of other co-founders. If you are using the term co-founder loosely and there is no formal co-founder designation in place, then wait 6 months to a year. Why? The tech hire was not part of the original team and equity is ownership. If you give equity it is highly expensive to buyout (think divorce settlement without a pre-nup). If you do give equity to this employee be sure to have a solid attorney draft the agreement.

The tool would be a data analytics tool such as google analytics. However, your churn would depend on where the bounce occurs in your funnel, but you have a problem somewhere in your marketing funnel. This can come from a variety of things, from as simple as better copy to less friction in the funnel. I want to help you work through your problem, call me so we can sort it out.

Marketing strategy! During the build of the product you should have been testing how it solves pain points for customers. This would help with clear brand and value alignment. As for acquisition, from the value alignment stage you should have a clear understanding of who your clients are, from their its clear messaging and targeting. Call me for more information.

Just reading this without context would make me say as well you should find another job. However, the truth is, no matter how motivated we are or ambitious, we all go through our ups and downs in the work cycle. No, matter how much you write your goals and tasks, it becomes a possibility. I would tell you before you quit your job, make sure nothing is going on in your personal life, take a vacation, and maybe think out why you don't want to do your work. You could be bored with it; you could not like your boss, perhaps you don't like the work. Either way, call me; I have been there too, I can help you sift through things!

I would need some clarity around this question, the last part of it doesn't make to much sense. However, the name of the game is seamless flow. Why not figure out the top 5 common pos systems and contact the POS manufacturer. Companies like square offer these type of integration. I'd love to help you sift through this more, so call me to help you get this resolved.

That's sales! ahah! I can't count the amount of times I have thought someone was a perfect fit to move forward to learn they are just tire kickers... and some that seemed to be a long shot that closed. If it is not happening frequently then you can stack it up as a anomaly - however that never feels satisfying. What you need to do is look at your sales pipeline and try to understand where things went wrong. Now the best way to find this out is simply ask that lead... Noone really likes to do this, but it works. If you know they have decided to go a different direction then reach out to them with a follow up email to wish them all the best, let them know that if anything changes you will still be there and most importantly use it as an opportunity to ask them why they decided not to move forward with you. Ask what you as a business can do in the future to remedy it! Now if they have fallen off a cliff and you can not get a response you will have to look at your sales pipeline and try to identify similarities between these lost deals that you can improve. This is why it is super important to leverage a CRM.

The answer to this question covers a massive terrain. You can search for generalized answers. For more specific answers, likely best you connect with someone who is successful in your niche + talk with them about how they do lead generation. The gold standard, write a blog about your niche + monetize with Adsense, then after you develop your own products to sell, replace the Adsense Ads with your own Ads.

I get hit by such calls/emails almost daily. How not to, is often easier than how to and I get fed up of the number cold calls that breach new GDPR regulations. Often they are clearly overseas calls, worse are local calls or number withheld. If I do answer the caller often gets into an argument re GDPR - you won't win. Do not under any circumstances send (spam) emails or scraped from new domain registrations from outlook or gmail saying that you do 1. X 2. Y 3. Y using a made up name that sounds as if from the country you are targeting and offering a call/skype. Such calls/emails instantly go into spam and block. So having started with what not to do, try to reverse the what not, into what TO do. Have a local presence, use real domains for email, use real names/people who KNOW what they are talking about and local issues/regulations..... Have a local website, written in native language, not second language, ideally have a local human presence. Make sure you know about the business you are contacting, rather than generic rubbish. Finally, having used several such companies, they often promise more than they deliver, if so you will never get a second engagement. SO do not under any circumstances just say what you think the listener wants to hear, tell them the truth, even if it means you don't get the business this time. Happy to discuss further... Robin

A little more context would be needed to understand this question but I would simply say you are risk mitigation.

When it comes to marketing it really does need to be personal. I think to recommend the correct strategy one would need to learn a bit more about your business, industry, audience / consumers. With that being said - let me start by answering your questions: 1. Pricing is a loaded question without understand things like your profit margins, purchasing cycle etc. With that being said do not under value your product. There are no winners there. It is easier to price high and then reduce than the other way around. However, if you are looking at pushing volume - introducing a reduced "limited time" price to help get a foothold in your market could work.... but beware, those "discount" customers who do buy are typically lower value from a retention standpoint. 2. To help push conversions you need to think of your brand as a community. Target an audience and relate to them. Consumers look for that connection between them and a brand. Continue to build relationships with the right consumers and don't always make it seem like you are pushing only your narrative (ie. sales). 3. Honestly before you go out and hire thousands of dollars in marketing services, first take a look at what you can do in house. There is a lot you can manage on your own from an organic side that can really help build your brand equity and convert it into sales. To start I would invest into people and content. Leverage things like social (fb, insta, youtube), blogging and events to capture an audience. Place those captures into tools like mailchimp or autopilothq to help nurture them into sales. Rinse / repeat. Now this is of course a real macro perspective of things. If you want to dive in a bit more feel free to schedule a call with me.

Essentially, you need to have clearer opt ins and make it very clear what you want to store and collect the users data for. So, as long as you can get people to opt in, you don't have a problem but if you can't it can affect everything dependent on the data you need.

I have to say that from the hundreds of startups I have work with in one or other way, I have never seen someone "hire" a lead generation solution. Most of the work on the early days is done "manually" or "by hand" and the grow is all worth to mouth (or some inventive growth hacking technique with some network effect). Not sure what you are trying to do, but the number #1 focus of a founder/CEO in the early days is to be the lead generator for his/her business. "Focus on business" = generating the lead and closing the customers.

The internet for vendors in your space and then make phone calls. The internet and then LinkedIn for investors in your space.

Number one way is talk to people in your network, they don't have to be in SV. You might be surprised who actually knows who, once you start asking. Outside of that you can try looking on platforms like gust.com and or use https://angel.co/jobs, hope this helps! Call me for more help!

Hi, Andy Jacob here....I haven't heard you mention that people want the product? I would make sure people actually will replace what they are currently using first..

You could start with my APELA framework. Awareness: The first consideration is the size of your target audience. If your product or service is only relevant to a small number of people, it will be more effective to reach them directly by LinkedIn or email. If on the other hand, they are numerous then indirect will be more effective (E.g. paid search and social, partnership marketing and targetted advertising) If the buying cycle for your product or service is long (e.g a car) then you must create awareness and maintain recall. This is best achieved by capturing contact details via inbound content-based marketing (automated ideally) and sending out a regular newsletter. If on the other hand your product or service has a short sales cycle (e.g. coffee)then you need constant visibility. Either way, you need awareness and recall. For more about APELA and the next 5 stages of the customer engagement chorology: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/meet-apela-chronology-customer-engagement-mark-walmsley/ God luck Mark Walmsley mark@markwalmsley.co.uk

The first question you need to answer is who is your audience? Who are you trying to reach with your advertising? If for example, you were promoting a local restaurant, Facebook may be a good choice. If you are trying to reach business owners, LinkedIn may be a good choice (its more expensive though than the other choices listed). Also you need to determine if you want to narrow or segment your advertising. Google does allow you to target your advertising in multiple ways but Facebook targeting is more granular as its users share more details regarding Likes and Share, which is all tracked and packaged for advertisers (although the data is not tied to any particular user). With all that being said, I like AdWords, Facebook, and Bing. AdWords of course is the most popular so if I had to choose between AdWords and Bing I would gravitate to AdWords (although Bing may be worth you conducting a test). You will probably go through your $1000 budget faster on AdWords than on Facebook so that's something to consider also. I would recommend retargeting but you'll probably need a bigger budget to do the campaign justice. I hope all of this helps. Feel free to give me a call if you would like additional information.

Hi there, I think there may be an issue with qualification in your process and these prospects you are targeting may not actually be hot leads but people in a research phase. Any qualification process, even simple ones like BANT could give you a better understanding on which leads are closer to making a decision vs. just looking around. Have these been inbound or outbound leads? How many customers have you closed with the previous 2 month process, and were they inbound or outbound? I may be wrong, but I believe you are trying to close leads that have not been properly qualified. I would need a bit more background to give you a better answer.

There are three main models. Firstly, reciprocity, we recommend clients to your agency to partner with and the agency recommend clients back to buy your service. The value exchange needs to be equal, but when this works it usually forms the strongest of strategic partnerships. Secondly, there is a commission structure. The main challenge for this model is often an agency is developing tens or hundreds of thousands through their sales to clients yet the commissions from products are often only hundreds or thousands and whilst they provides a passive income, by themselves the commissions are not lucrative enough. Also it’s hard to remain front of mind with the Agency account or sales teams. The third model is created by creating a value added partner programme. Where on top of commissions, because the agency, has been trained and certified in your product they can also benefit from an introduction to new clients, from the partner product, where they can sell the their services on top of the commissions they make from integrating the partner. Most CMS, hosting or ecommerce vendors have these types of programs. Happy to pick up more details on these on a call.

Hi, if you are stateside, I recommend a great assurance and tax accounting firm, Elliott Davis. If you need to discuss how to structure your business - call the Greenville,SC office and speak to Charles Duke (this is his wheelhouse). I specialize in identifying new revenue within the categories you have created. I'd appreciate the opportunity to review and strategize on a call. I have worked with several clients in the wedding space successfully.

It sounds like you are on the right track. In today's world, people consume so much content every day that it makes very difficult for businesses to break through that clutter and get their attention. The big takeaway I think you should continue to focus on is making your message more relatable. If you want to get someone's attention you need to perfectly target their interests, pain points, wants, needs, lifestyle etc... and gear the message to where it feels like you are speaking directly to them. Now this isn't always easy when you are dealing with lists because you have to be broad. However, one thing you can try to do is get really niche with your segments. Take that list and try to isolate various groups so that you can hit them with a revised message that is more targeted to them. These "sub" segments could be based off of geographic area, gender, age etc. With a better understanding of your offering and audience I can certainly provide better examples and other tips here if you would like to book a call!

Hi there, My name is Luke, I work for start up and I should be able to give a little more insight from the employee perspective as I am in a similar situation right now! I think what you will find in this particular situation is there is no one right answer. Only you will understand the relationship you have with this individual and how you believe they will want this to be approached. I think the best way to prepare for this it to try and get an idea of their expectations. If you have a rough idea how they see themselves valued, that should help better bridge the gap in your offering. I know from my perspective as an employee I would want to come into that meeting with no bs and have a well though out offer ready for me. For you, I think it is important to base this off not only on what that person has done / their role now but also identify what you expect from them moving forward and give him the opportunity to communicate the same things back! If you have any more questions for me from a "employee perspective", feel free to book a followup call.