Today’s issue combines two interviews: one with an ecommerce veteran and the other with an ecommerce star-rookie. Both have unique ecommerce strategies, and reading about their methods for success will help your bottom line.
Keith Borman, CEO of Qarbon, shares his company’s strategies for finding new customers, as well as the decisions that brought his company back from the ruins of a faulty business model. Mitchell Harper, lead developer of devArticles.com and Socket6.com, explains the unexpected method he used for starting his company, and why his previous boss is now one of his employees.
And now, without further ado, the conversations:
eCommerce Veteran: Qarbon
Mission Statement:
We strive to create powerful, easy to use presentation software within a “work hard/play hard” company environment. >Location:
We have a San Jose, CA headquarters, with support based in Boise, ID, and a development arm in Paris, France.
Number of Employees:
12 (not including contractors, part-time helpers, consultants) We outsource everything we can that is not a core part of our business.
Years in Business:
Product development started in 1998 with angel funding, we received a formal VC round in late 1999. We’ve sold products commercially since 1998. I joined in September 1999 employee #7), as VP Bus Dev, and was appointed President/CEO in November 2000. Current Client Acquisition Strategies:
We are currently focusing on three avenues:
1) Our flagship product ViewletBuilder creates animated online demonstrations of how software works that we call “Viewlets”. They’re perfect for training, support and marketing. Hundreds of thousands of Viewlets spread throughout the Internet act as traveling business cards for our company – a powerful marketing device. We promote downloads of the freeware version of our tool (and have received over half a million in the last year!), which in turn proliferates even more freeware Viewlets. People see these Viewlets, become curious and download the freeware version, so visibility feeds upon itself- a wonderful proliferation engine.
We capture the email names from those downloading the freeware version, enabling us to see patterns of usage spreading throughout companies and business segments. We pay attention, and mine this info for marketing data, and potential new customers.
Viewlet visibility and freeware downloads have almost single handedly created our current traction in the marketplace. Of course it doesn’t hurt to have an innovative “disruptive” technology within a business segment that is already experiencing immense growth… 😉
2) We work closely with clients, work insanely hard to make them very happy, and create “customer stories” (mini white papers) that can be leveraged to convince new clients that customers similar to them have had a good experience working with us. It gives new customers confidence that we are credible, have real experience with account management, and can do the job.
3) We are now beginning to dip our toes into more traditional marketing formats (advertising in magazines, trade e-zines, exhibiting at relevant tradeshows, etc). We’ve found that even with the amount of visibility we get through Viewlets, decision makers and vertical marketplaces will need to be addressed head-on in order to take us to the next level.
Garrett French is the editor of murdok’s eBusiness channel. You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness Community Forum.
