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One Startup Tried Every Marketing Ploy From 'Ellen' To Twitter: Here's What Worked

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If you're a startup ready to go to market, there are a lot of options to choose. You can go old-school, working for mentions in established media or television, even putting your face on a highway billboard. Or you can pursue a younger, tech-savvier audience through online marketing over Google , Facebook and Twitter . With so many options, one Silicon Valley startup tried everything. Here's what they learned the hard way.

As a company that provides online backup for your computer, Backblaze was never going to set the world on fire with a viral app or must-have service. Instead, it offers a solid business, protecting all your photos, music and files on the cloud for $5 a month. Still, cofounder and CEO Gleb Budman wanted to make a splash. So Backblaze tried a bit of everything in startup marketing, from social media to a billboard on San Francisco's Highway 101.

The company's biggest coup, or so Budman thought, was to score an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, where DeGeneres demoed the company's backup service and gave each screaming audience member a new iPad, courtesy of Backblaze. For just 400 or so of the devices, the startup was now reaching a highly-engaged audience of 6 million viewers and 11 million Facebook fans.

It didn't work.

What did work, Backblaze found out, was to focus on low-cost options like affiliate links, in-house search engine optimization and a company blog. Of the ad services offered by high-flying web companies, only Google Adwords proved a steal, and even then, only for company-branded searches.

"What we consider tolerable for cost per acquisition would be one year's revenue on that customer," Budman says. In the case of Backblaze, that amounts to $50 per user.

Getting yourself mentioned in media articles can be difficult for entrepreneurs, but it was Budman's first successful way to see a boost from any one tactic. Blogging also proved a grind as few people read the site's average post--but when the company struck gold, it saw all that work immediately pay-off with a massive one-time customer boost.

The company had less success with many of its paid online efforts. Google Adwords was an exception, as Backblaze could pick up ads based on its name for just $3 per acquired customer. But buying off more popular search terms like "online backup"  cost 10x more and brought in users at an unsustainable $200 per acquisition.

"The problem is that Google is an efficient marketplace. If there's money to be made, it's been cultivated," says Budman.

Facebook ads are cheap to buy, but Backblaze found that lots of impressions don't translate to results, at least for utilitarian services like its data backup. Hiring a public relations firm to pitch you to media outlets can also work with a boost from each piece of what that industry calls "earned media," but the pressure is then on to get out there quickly and often. (This story, weeks in the making, would offer the company lower value in that regard.)

Email reminders and social media can also pay off in keeping users converting and mindful of your startup should someone ask a user if they have a recommendation, Budman says.

The strategies above still worked much better than Budman's most ambitious efforts for his startup--including the billboard and the 'Ellen' stunt. Google Adsense, a cheaper option from Google to advertise on other sites at just $0.65 per click, brought the company millions of quick impressions and then hundreds of trial users. "It was stunningly inexpensive. But they don't convert," Budman says.

For a product like Backblaze, the trial to paid-user transition proved brutal. Some traffic the startup even flagged as appearing fraudulent. The company's typical conversion rate from free trials is 70%. From ads, that can drop lower, but typically not below 50%. From thousands of Google Adsense trials, Backblaze saw zero conversions.

The billboard and television appearance both proved mistakes. Budman says that when he met with potential investors for the company's $5 million Series A round in 2012, some said they'd heard of his company through the sign on the main drive from San Francisco down into Silicon Valley. But no customers signed up due to the sign.

Google TV Ads, a now-defunct service the company had hoped would allow it to disrupt television commercial buying, only brought in two customers total.

'Ellen,' meanwhile, gave the company a YouTube clip to show off for all-time but little else. Only a tiny fraction of the show's viewers signed up after seeing the service--not many more than there were audience members for that May taping, meaning many of those who received free iPads took the swag and ran.

"Moms weren't interested in the offer," Budman says. "You can market to them all you want, but they're not the one making a decision to back up the computer. It becomes a two-tiered sell."

Looking back, Budman cautions that marketing can't outweigh strength of product and market for a startup's success. But if you do market, try to get specific with your audience, the CEO says.

"The home runs have really been anything we can do to target our actual users," Budman reflects. "You want to get as narrow as possible. If we can find Mac software developers in the Mission or in Brooklyn, it's awesome."

Budman's last tip? Keep your existing customers happy even as you chase the new. "You want to do anything you can to help your customers. For five years we spent zero dollars on marketing, we relied on word-of-mouth. Then we were willing to try everything and we focus on niches now."

Now stay away from the iPad giveaways.

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