How Visual Website Optimizer got to 2,500+ paid customers through great content and rigorous A/B tests

April 29, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Last month, I promised to bring you stories of how Indian startups took their products to the world and got the inside scoop on how WebEngage used educational content and live demos to get to 7,000 users in less than 15 months. While I have been slow in bringing more stories to you, this one should more than make up for it.

In this post, I bring you the story of Visual Website Optimizer in conversation with its founder and CEO Paras Chopra. Visual Website Optimizer is an easy-to-use A/B testing tool that allows marketing professionals to create different A/B tests using a point-and-click editor (without needing any HTML knowledge). It is one of India’s fastest growing startups and has got to 2,500+ paid customers including the likes of Microsoft, AMD, Groupon & Airbnb using great content and rigorous A/B tests.

Let’s get started.
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How educational content and live demos got 7,000 websites using WebEngage in 15 months

March 14, 2013 By 5 Comments

I believe one of the best ways to learn marketing and business in general is to learn from other people’s successes. And in a bid to do that, I am going to bring to you interviews of Indian startups that have taken their products to the world. We will talk about how they got the initial buzz going, where they got their first set of customers from, how did they scale that up, what marketing metrics they measured, the mediums they used, the stories they went to press with, the biggest mistakes they made, how they handled criticism and more.

Here I am in conversation with Avlesh Singh, co-founder and CEO of Webklipper, the company behind WebEngage. WebEngage is a powerful customer engagement suite for your website that lets you collect feedback, gather customer insights and ultimately drive sales and conversions. They have gone from nothing to 7,000 customers (both free and paid) in less than 15 months and have done it all with a very lean team. Let’s get started.
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My top secret marketing tactic

March 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I see this happening all the time. Tech startups launch their product and then hope coverage on tech news sites and blogs, content marketing and social media will take their product to the target audience at large. Sometimes it does, mostly it doesn’t. They keep at it, hoping their persistence will pay off and they will wake up covered in gold one morning. Now persistence is not a bad thing at all, but then if something is not working at all, then sticking to it just hoping it will work out is kind of dumb. So as a tech startup, what do you do?
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Two marketing conversations and one important lesson

February 25, 2013 By 4 Comments

Picture this email thread.

(Monday morning)
Here’s the copy for the new banners you asked for.
Thanks. I will get back to you by evening.

(later in the evening)
So I took a look at your copy and while the examples are good, they don’t feel right on the whole. Something’s missing.
What’s missing?
Umm hard to point out but the tone doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t have that fun geeky touch to it that the rest of our communication has. Check out the banners we had earlier to know what I am talking about.
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Marketing Man #2: Tech startups, bring it on!

February 14, 2013 By 2 Comments

The second edition of Marketing Man is here. I introduced Marketing Man a month back to help one tech startup every month with their marketing. And I quite liked the response I got. 9 tech startups wrote to me with their marketing challenges, 7 of which were really exciting. Finally I picked HackerEarth, which is solving a problem I have seen enough and more of, as the winner of Marketing Man #1.
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Building for the world? Then take it to the world.

February 6, 2013 By 6 Comments

[This post is written for Indian startups. If you are not one, you will not find much value in it. But don't take my word for it. Read through the post to know for yourself.]

I have been noticing an interesting trend in the Indian startup landscape over the last 12-15 months. Or something like that. Indians are building good solid products that they intend to take to the world, only to end up becoming world-famous in India. Indulge me, will you?
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Don’t end the conversation with a thank you

January 29, 2013 By 2 Comments

A visitor to your website is mighty impressed with your product and wants to talk money with a sales rep. You say, why not, and ask him to fill up a form. Name, email, role, phone, company size, revenue, books he has read, movies he likes, places he has been to, he enters them all. And when he clicks Submit, you yell “My previous” and thank him for filling up the form. And then you tell him that a sales rep would be in touch soon. And?
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Get them while they’re young

January 23, 2013 By 1 Comment

Whenever companies think marketing, they look at ways prospects can find them — the search terms they will use, the people they will ask for recommendations and the places they will go to for reviews. From there on, they lure these prospects to their website, tell them how they are the best thing since sliced bread, how the world over has changed using their product and finally get them to sign up for a free trial.

Just the way it should be, isn’t it?

Well, not really.
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Introducing Marketing Man

January 14, 2013 By 5 Comments

Tech startups, I want to help you with your marketing. For real.

From the time I started Poke And Bite, I have been getting occasional emails from startups who want to know how I did a particular something at FusionCharts (where I headed Marketing and Sales before becoming a marketing “consultant”), my thoughts on the future of marketing and whether life exists on Mars. Okay mostly the FusionCharts bit.
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Provoke or solve?

January 7, 2013 By Leave a Comment

What do you aim to do with your blog post? Tell your audience how Google reinvented the world of search while all they have done is changed the color of the bar chart in the dashboard for their latest release? Or how Zappos redefined customer service by encouraging customers to call them and having real conversations with them while all they have done is reduced the ticket turnaround time from 36 hours to 34.
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