Dev Basu

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• How do you get more clients (advertising agencies/other business owners/independent producers & directors/production companies) to use your animation/video services?

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    1. Advertise via Linkedin, Facebook, Google Adwords and offer a white-paper or demo/free trial of some sort.

    2. Meet these agencies at mixers and networking sessions.

    3. Become an authority in the space of animation and video and why it’s important in the overall marketing/advertising mix. This can be done via a blog, video blog, podcast etc.

• How much should a website with 2000 hits a month be making in advertising revenue? Thanks

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    Your earnings will largely be influenced by your eCPM (see http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/02/ecpm-what-exactly-is-that.html). Your eCPM is a function of what type of niche you’re in as a publisher and can range wildly from a couple of cents per 1000 impressions to hundreds of dollars.

• I just started a small business selling carpet spot remover that my family carpet cleaning business made. What's the best way to advertise? What are some target market ideas?

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    One of the cheapest ways to identify your target market is to use Google Adwords to get direct response leads and Facebook Ads to mine demographic information about your ideal audience. Is there an angle to your product that makes it stand out? Perhaps it’s eco-friendly and you could write a guest-blog post on a high traffic blog targeting ‘mommy bloggers’.

• I just launched a shopify site selling coffee, how do i direct traffic to it and get the word out?

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    You’ve got a long road ahead of you as marketing your site will be a process rather than a project. For a 6 month plan read and internalize this article http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/

• We are currently building an online platform which will enable private carowners to rent out their cars to other people. How would recommend us to handling our advertising with two such different costumers? (owners and renters)

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    First off if you are doing any sort of Display or Paid Search campaigns, make sure they are distinct and separate. Make sure ‘owner’ keywords are added as a negative audience to your ‘renter’ campaign and vice-versa. Additionally tag your users appropriately with a custom variable in Google Analytics and then use Retargeting to keep your brand top of mind.

• How do you determine your pricing strategy?

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    Your pricing strategy is a largely a function of what you’re delivering (product or service) and what your market will bear. Also refer to Dan Martell’s post on the topic http://sprouter.com/questions/7548-what-s-the-best-way-to-test-pricing-strategy-on-a-product-that-s-already-launched-and-has-customers

• I am about to launch a new updated website. What is the best way to get the word out?

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    The easiest and lowest effort is via an SEO optimized press release via a newswire site such as www.prweb.com. Your web marketing plan doesn’t stop at your website launch as web marketing is a process, not a project. I suggest you read http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/ for a complete 6 month plan.

• I am working on an idea for a new internet based venture. I am in the process of getting developers involved to help with the coding aspects. I am looking for the best or at least industry standard way of protecting my idea in all forms when it comes to bringing more people on board. Where and/or how to I get started with writing agreements such as confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-competing, etc?

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    I’m not sure whether you’re in Canada or the States but I would suggest reading http://startuplawyer.com/ for the legal portion of things and http://sivers.org/how2hire for wisdom on making sure your ideas come to fruition via your developers. There is however no substitute for a good intellectual property lawyer. In Toronto, I recommend http://www.robhyndman.com/

• I deserately need a tip. I'm a 21 year old college student and I cannot find ANYONE over the past 2 years to be my technical cofounder. Nobody wants to work for free or for future promises. Any suggestions? I'm stuck with great ideas and no time or means to do it myself !

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    You are in the same place many a great startup CEO has found themselves in the past. I would advise subscribing to curated startup news such as http://startupdigest.com/, attending monthly meetups in your city, and frequenting the offices of accelerators and incubators to find like minded individuals such as yourself.

• After watching @garryvee on several videos he makes the point that marketing is changing from push to pull. Actually engaging on social media, listening to and responding to your customers in the places they like to hang out online. Since there are so many places that people hang out online, would a service that aggregates these people and lets you search for individuals and pockets of people that would be interested in your product be a worthwhile problem to solve?

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    I think it’s a problem that many social media ‘intelligence’ tools are already well on the way to solving. Tools like Sproutsocial, Ubervu, Syncapse, and Radian6 are built to separate signal from noise found on many different social media channels and platforms. There is still tons of opportunity to come in and capture your own niche in this space. Think about specializing in specific industry verticals (eg: Social Media for Hotels) vs trying to capture a generic market.