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ColbyG

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I'm starting this thread for a number of reasons.

The first one is to document my progress of building up my business. My business is within the mobile AR world, and still in its very early stages. It's a B2B marketing tool essentially. I personally developed a beta version of my app which I put in the Play Store. Using that concept app I was able to create some videos of it in action which I put on my socials and sent to a few people that I thought might be interested. Luckily, a few people were interested so I decided to pursue it further. My beta app was very rough with almost no backend supporting it, so I've since outsourced that to a very good developer I found on Upwork. Version 1 of the app is almost complete and should go live this Friday as long as all goes to plan. Going forward from here is going to be lots of relationship building and figuring out how to sell, which I've never been good at.

The second is to improve my writing and communication skills and get more comfortable putting my thoughts down on paper. I'm an engineer at heart and have always struggled to appeal to peoples emotions in my writing, as i prefer hitting people with cold hard facts. For me to be able to sell it means being able to communicate both in writing and in person with a more emotional voice.

That's about it for this first post.
 
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D

Deleted50669

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I'm starting this thread for a number of reasons.

The first one is to document my progress of building up my business. My business is within the mobile AR world, and still in its very early stages. It's a B2B marketing tool essentially. I personally developed a beta version of my app which I put in the Play Store. Using that concept app I was able to create some videos of it in action which I put on my socials and sent to a few people that I thought might be interested. Luckily, a few people were interested so I decided to pursue it further. My beta app was very rough with almost no backend supporting it, so I've since outsourced that to a very good developer I found on Upwork. Version 1 of the app is almost complete and should go live this Friday as long as all goes to plan. Going forward from here is going to be lots of relationship building and figuring out how to sell, which I've never been good at.

The second is to improve my writing and communication skills and get more comfortable putting my thoughts down on paper. I'm an engineer at heart and have always struggled to appeal to peoples emotions in my writing, as i prefer hitting people with cold hard facts. For me to be able to sell it means being able to communicate both in writing and in person with a more emotional voice.

That's about it for this first post.
As someone who sits on the emotional side of the table, my best insight to get at that piece is to work on empathy, and taking the customer's / partner's perspective in every exchange. Sales is about seeing the perspective of the prospect and discerning their pain, preferences, biases, fears, etc. Then you write to those elements.
 

ColbyG

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Thanks 404profound, that is exactly the kind of stuff I've been learning about lately. Obviously, the best learning is putting it into practice, but its good to know I'm on the right track.
 

ColbyG

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I've started two businesses previously, and both times the first thing we did was get the business name registered and the bank account set up and all that rubbish that I've now learned means nothing.

This time around I've focused on building a product while already talking to prospective clients, figuring out what features they need and what works best for them. And now that my app is closing in on the finish line, I've just set up my bank account and business name. It's a much better way to do it, with far less action faking.

One aspect of the 4 hour work week that really stuck with me was the 80/20 rule. I'm applying this in the startup stage by only doing the 20% of work that will generate the most results. All the other crap I can figure out along the way. This is my first try at doing business this way so lets hope it works out. Clients happiness >>> setting up accounting software.
 
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ColbyG

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Another lil journal update. The backend of the app is now complete and I'm working on the UI. I didn't realise how much work needs to go into a polished app. Every bug needs to be squished, every image needs to be perfect, every icon at the right scale etc etc. This all takes so much time.

I've also stumbled onto another feature that one of my potential clients wanted included, so I've added that in as a beta feature. At this stage hoping to launch version 1 of the app next Friday.

I feel like it's been a long time coming but I've really only been working on it for about seven weeks now. For my first ever app release I'm really happy with how its coming along.
 

ColbyG

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The last couple of weeks have showed me how hard it is to do everything. I've made barely any progress on the app as I've been super busy with university and real life stuff. Being final year of my engineering degree is unsurprisingly a tonne of work. It's legitimately taking up all my time.

I think I now understand why people that come up with crazy good ideas need to drop out of uni to make them work. When I'm not working on uni stuff, I'm working on my app. It's big days, but it's what needs to be done.
 

ColbyG

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May 19, 2017
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I went to what I thought was a little business event in Newcastle tonight. Well I thought it was gonna be little. Turned out there was about 600 people there to see this Aussie social media marketing guru guy speak. Kerwin Rae is his name. It was free event, hence the numbers. But he actually provided some good insights. I took a few notes which I'll just spam below for future reference.


Mere exposure effect

Familairity principle

15 exposures to trigger familiarity

Negative exposure is bad

Utility marketing is content

No call to action, no link to website

People will come to you for something to buy

Develop all material for mobile

Video is very effective

Clicks from shared content are 5 times more likely to purchase. Need to create shared content

Trusted source is word of mouth

People are on 5 platforms. Hit them with exposures on all platforms.

Instagram photos get 36% more likes and most engagement

More people use ig stories than snapshot

1 in 5 stories generated a message from a follower.

Ig is a more affluent market

Ig click on 2.5 times more ads

4 or 5 hashtags is the best. Ig is less dependant on hashtags.

Mayfair filter has best enagegement

Gotta be quality content


Insta hacks

Search for 30-50 relevant hashtags

Add 5 hashtags to bottom of post caption. Comment has tags aren’t as effective

Spend 5 mins engaging other posts prior to posting. In the hashtags you are targeting.

Once posted, do not edit for 48hrs.

4 times a day is optimal

Replying to comments quickly. Ask a question

When they comment go send them a message. Ask them about themselves. Then ask them for data. And then build a relationship.


Plan out your goals and hit them

Post vertical videos om insta and snapchat



Snapchat

Frequency and recency

Don’t front load. Post regularly. 1 per hour.

Best content is behind the scenes

People want to get to know you

Ask for snap backs

Take the conversation off snapchat



Facebook

6% of small businesses pay for advertising

Shares from your fb page to your personal profile can increase reach. Ask for people’s opinions.

85% of people watch video in silence

Rev for transcription for videos


Hack

Publish native video content. Look for popular content. Maybe only 1 in 20.

Trick - Find good vids. Advertise them. Target them to similar networks as yours with bigger audiences. Hope to hit an influencer who shares it.

Retarget people that have watched your videos. Start general and drill down in funnel until you get to people willing to buy. Then give them something for free to get their data. Then Retarget them in a new funnel to make a sale. Hit that 20 exposures. Get leads for $1

One piece of content can change everything



Purpose life

Mission 10 years

Priorities 12 months

Goals

Tasks daily


Marketing – utility content, article, ebook and video. Process to extract content.

Marketing - fb ads. Retargeting.

3rd is joint ventures and strategic alliances. Identify where you ideal client spends time. Then find others that provide services to them. And join up with them to promote each other.


Communicate purpose etc in an inspiring way. Attract talent. And the right kind of clients.


Prove you’re an expert

Show the value you can give in a monetary term

Emotion

Take away risk. Money back guarantee. Easy to get back.

Create an offer. Easy to pay.

Convince people how good of an offer it really is.

Put a monetary value on their problem

Put a monetary value on the solution.
 
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MarcoSto

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Hey Colby,

we seem to be on a similar path. I'm currently developing a launch version of an app, too (a habit building app), while trying to write stuff for the university. If you want to know more about it, check out my intro and my execution post.

My plan for getting traffic is creating video courses on habit building (I'm a psychologist) and then link to the app within the course. That way, I can get some traffic from people that should match my niche. Udemy was my first thought, but it is easy to upload the course on different platforms and get traffic automatically. Udemy does marketing (facebook ads etc.) for you, but takes a 50% cut of your course price then, which is not so bad if I can get more traffic without having to do marketing myself (hate it, too).

Just wanted to say hi because we are in such a similar situation.

What does your app do and is there an iPhone version out already?

How do you monetize?
 

ColbyG

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May 19, 2017
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Newcastle, Australia
Hey Marco, cheers for the message. Your app sounds cool. That's an interesting funnel idea. If your app is your money maker then it wouldn't be an issue for Udemy to be taking half your money from the course right? Thats assuming the course is purely just a funnel to the app.

I don't want to talk about my app in this thread. Maybe down the track I will. I will say it's in the augmented reality space. iPhone isn't out yet.

It will be monetized by businesses paying to have their stuff put into AR. It's been tough to figure out a pricing schedule without anything to compare it to.
 

ColbyG

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
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May 19, 2017
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75
Newcastle, Australia
Update: I went overseas for 6 weeks studying in Europe. Amazing.
Got a person with huge knowledge of the industry onboard. He has connections with tonnes of useful people.
Going to speak with lawyers soon to sort out copyright and IP.
Android app is done. iPhone app is 95% done.
 
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