Few days back, Prashant wrote a great post on Guerrilla Marketing Tips for Indian Startups, where he covered the unconventional ways startups can reach out to potential users (without burning major ca$h).
And I am surprised to see few startups actually following the super spammy ways to promote their site. Two examples:
1. Got this mail today morning:
“Hi there, I found a great new website where you can meet people and found it to be quite interesting. Do check it out here (http://www.people2meet.com). Have fun and don’t forget to invite your friends too !!”
Sender’s id: no-reply@people2meet.com.
So people2meet (which I have anyways profiled earlier) just heard about itself and found their own product very interesting?
2. tagg.in, a smsgupshup clone (which in itself is a twitter clone) has been spamming the site with comments like these:
“.. www.tagg.in is another startup in the mobile space. Its still in alpha but looks promising.”
Honestly, I have no concerns about startups leveraging this channel/site to market their product – I am all for it (and the entire basis of pluggd.in is to help startups in what’er way I can).
But please market yourself with certain style (and respect), so that all the effort that you have put in to build your product reaches the right audience, in the right manner.
And if you want to reach me, please use this form or simply mail me.
What says?
you know what Ashish ,value of a information is inversely proportional to the number of people have it . so is true for these kind of ideas also.
The moment you put them in public , it becomes a part of “Level Playing Field ” . much like Auto rickshaw campaign of MouthShut .
if everyone began to to think out of box than perhapses its the box which needs fixing . only good thing is that you can hope that someday ,instead of picking up ideas as-it-is someone might pick the line of thought and act on it . that was my purpose .
I believe startups decrease their own value by marketing themselves this way…
Infact, it doesn’t help anybody…and dont think they get any RoI on spamming!
Ashish, thanks for pointing this out. The sender’s email id should have been printed there instead of no-reply@people2meet.com. Will fix that.
Coming to the debate about spamming v/s marketing, I have this to add.
A user choosing to send an email to his address book contacts is different
from someone spamming (say) orkut message boards.! I would call the latte r ‘spamming’. my 2 cents
Anyway, much appreciate the email sender-id issue.
- VIsh
people2meet.com
its not just some small start ups trying to do this,even big corporates like
bigadda do it,so no wonder these first time enterprenuers get their spamming inspiration from them
For that matter, even ibibo has started spamming the TV sets
Lol.. talk about marketing that actually decreases your brand value!
Hi –
Then —
how biggies like Youtube , Myspace etc…
marketed themselves when they were unknowns ??.
I think it is word of mouth ….still, is it sufficient??.
Ashish
I fully agree with Ashish on his belief that when interacting with people through blogs, messageboards and social networks, maintaining a sense of style is important. Ashish, correct me if I am wrong, but when you say ‘style’, I interpret this is as ‘say something if you’ve got something worthwhile to say, otherwise shut up’. ‘Hey nice post, check out our new blog / website http://www.xyz.com‘ demonstrates poor style. ‘Hey, my opinion on your post [insert genuine opinion here]. By the way check out [insert blog / website here] as it has some interesting related content’ demonstrates style.
What say you?
Gautam Kshatriya
gautam.kshatriya@gmail.com
http://www.moneyvidya.com/blog
OK that is …..uh…fuh-get-it!