Last week, Frédéric Montagnon was at Le Camping to give a mentor session about User and Customer Acquisition. Story.
An international grou
p
Firstly, Frédéric Montagnon was passionate about music (cc Jelly Note!)
When he started up his first business, around ten years ago, he hadn’t really counted on becoming a Web entrepreneur…
And now he is Director of Strategy at Ebuzzing, an international group born out of the fusion of 10 or so social media companies (Overblog, Nomeo), attracting 35M individual visitors every month.
What question are they answering? “How can we create, then monetize, an audience?” To respond to that, the group counts on large investments in R&D. Want proof? Of the 30 people in their team, 27 are engineers.
“I evolved from a mixing table to a blog platform!”
Frédéric tells us his story.
“Originally, we created a mixing table to help musicians to recreate, in their own home, the studio experience. With an unknown brand and a brand new product, we had our work cut out for us! Even if you’re sure that the need is there, no one’s gonna be looking out for you!”
“What’s worse is that the situation was complicated,” he adds, “There was no pre-existing distribution network to speak of and, in 2002, we couldn’t have hoped for any fund-raising opportunities.“
Necessity is, however, the mother of all invention… “We decided to sell our product over the internet, do our own publicity… So we got going on a discussion forum where people would talk about mixing and home studios in order to attract potential users! It worked out really well and soon we were sold out!”
And that’s how the story of Overblog got started… from a mixing table to a blog platform!
Lesson learned?
Keep your options open on your flight path, grab opportunities as they come!
Once Overblog got going, communication was what was needed. For that you need to make up your story, try to work out what people want to hear, what floats their boat. “You have very little time to convince them!”
“Through your pitch, you are going to be able to sound out the actual needs of your users,” Frédéric reminds us, in true Lean Startup thinking. “Doing that will avoid any wrong turns.”
Then, in terms of communication and User Acquisition, start with a small user community who will carry your product, prescribe it. “It is much more effective than the Press, who will only cover you occasionally, whenever there’s a product launch for example.”
So that no one forgets about you, you have to create a sustainable attachment to your product… or to yourself. “For example, it is important that a CEO not only stands out but speaks out on a regular basis.”
Then you’ve got to follow your users, use analytical questionnaires everywhere to find out how they respond to your platform. Your decisions must be based on figures, on real data, not just your intuition. Be as rational as you can in your decision making.”