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DOING THINGS THAT DON’T SCALE
Counter intuitive marketing for startups...

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Who Am I?
Developer, MeteorJS/NodeJS
Founder at Development
Studio Almog Design
Developer / Entrepreneur
Almog Koren
Formerly founder of Scoreoid
(funded startup)
Speak at events & meet-ups
Casual Connect, Mobile Summit, ect..
Active in the community /
Community Evangelist

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Scoreoid
5,000+ Game Developers
Millions of players
Team of 3 / 5
$175K in Funding
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03
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Lesson's learned

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Scoreoid - Customers
$75K in unding
Lesson's learned

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Scoreoid – Teir 1 Games
$75K in unding
Lesson's learned
Super Hexagon
Featured iOS, Android
and part of the indie bundle
LIGA WorldTap
Official Spanish
Liga de Fútbol game
Color Sheep
Featured Android game
by industry professionals Trinket
Studios

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Scoreoid – Developers
Lesson's learned
Our client wanted to create a worldwide online leaderboard for their
app. The Scoreoid API was the best solution out there. It was super
easy to implement and seamlessly worked across all of our target
platforms within the Unity framework. Andrew Thompson, emberlab
I’ve been searching for a proper solution for my leaderboards without
the need of servers or a database, Scoreoid was an instant hit and its
no-API approach made it compatible with any platform!
Kenney Indie Game Developer
Scoreoid is great! It has saved me countless hours of coding and
given me the ability to focus more on creating a great game without
having to worry about how I’m going to handle all the “other stuff”
Scoreoid Rocks! Mark Hemingway Indie Game Developer

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http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
Paul Graham’s Essay
After closing down Scoreoid now having some free time, I enrolled
startup class. Part of the reading was Paul’s Graham’s do things that
don’t scale.
I realized what I did for Scoreoid in the being was exactly this, and it
really works….

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The Goal For This Talk?

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Guest Content
Writing guest content not only works but really helps you get your
message across and bring in new users (signups). While it does take a
lot of time and does not bring a big amount of users (don’t expect
double digits signups but single digits) over time
it makes a big difference.

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Guest Content - Take Aways
• Always follow up on comments
• Always follow up with the website / author
• Send a thank you note to the website / author
• Track everything - Google Analytics is your best friend

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One on One
It’s manual labor intensive but it works. I would each day look at the
top 20 and lower (you want the mid tier first, as your not yet
recognizable and just starting out) on the Android Play store I would
contact each game developer and send them a personal message, I
would also try to play each game and it 100% personalized. This is the
most important thing.

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One on One

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One on One
The message I sent out

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One on One
I also did this for meet ups, uaergroups and anywhere that had game
developers

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One on One
If I developer did you use Scoreoid after a one on one message I would
then post about it on our social networks and interview that
developer.

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One on One - Take Away
• By playing each game or most of the games I was able to give really
feedback and make my email / message personalized
• Making your email / message personalized is the most important
thing
• Don’t send out mass emails and marking emails this does not work,
fact..
• If they use your service make sure to follow up and get their
feedback

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Community SDK’s
I went to GitHub and other game developer communities looking for
developers that have developed SDK’s and components. They just
asked then to develop some for Scoreoid. It was hard to find
developers for this but after 2 components other developers were
doing this on their own without any contact from us. It grew by itself.

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Videos, Videos
For each feature release we upload short videos showing what were
working on, don’t expect viral videos or double digit signups but this
works and over time we received an increase in both social media and
signups.

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Community Partners
On our main website we created a community partners section were
we promoted in our partners in return they listed us and their site and
promoted out services. We were small noting more then a startup but
over time were able to build this into a great tool with partners from
Microsoft to ATT&T increasing signups and our exposure.

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Doing More
We also did developer interviews, spoke at events and anything we
can think of. We did not look for crazy signup numbers or exposure but
just going other there and doing the small stuff.
• Don’t worry about exposure or how long something might take
• Focus on little steps, doing things that are small
• It’s hard work no way to avoid that so go other there and just do it
• Ads when your starting out and bootstrapping is a waste

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The Promotion

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marketing techniques that use pre-existing social
networking services and other technologies to
produce increases in brand awareness or to
achieve other marketing objectives… Wikipedia
The Ultimate Gaming Backend-as-a-Service for Game Developers!
Video clips, images
Games, email
Incentive based
Trendy based
Viral?

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VIRAL = YOUR MARKET REACH
The Ultimate Gaming Backend-as-a-Service for Game Developers!
Market
Segments
Incentive size
Networking potential
Initial impact
Time frame
Viral Reach?

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Social Media
Adding a like button isn't going to get you users
Doing social media isn't marketing it’s part of marketing
Sharing and posting is not social media
Remember your network isn't scalable

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Goals:
• Increase Scoreoid brand awareness and awareness within
the game developers community.
• Increase social traffic and website traffic.
• Increase referrals and SEO?
• Testing the waters out.
• Can it go viral or pick up traction?
The Promotion

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The Ultimate Gaming Backend-as-a-Service for Game Developers!
Outline:
• Gather 6 game designers, sound artists and developers
from the community.
• Provide assets via landing page and “PayWithATweet”.
• Low budget and organic marketing.
The Promotion

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8,159
Unique Views
10,000
Visits
1 MILLION
Impressions (Twitter)
Over 5,500
Tweets
Over 6,000
Social Referral
13,831
Page Views
First 24 to 36 Hours

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18,231
Unique Views
23,000
Visits
1 MILLION+
Impressions (Twitter)
Over 6,500
Tweets
Over 10,000
Social Referral
39,836
Page Views
Within A Week

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The Ultimate Gaming Backend-as-a-Service for Game Developers!
Brand Awareness

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Brand Awareness

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The Ultimate Gaming Backend-as-a-Service for Game Developers!
Brand Awareness

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The Ultimate Gaming Backend-as-a-Service for Game Developers!
Brand Awareness

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The Ultimate Gaming Backend-as-a-Service for Game Developers!
Brand Awareness

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Follow up after initial spike
Target influencers more
Incentive based is key
Update hash tags constantly
Brand awareness is key
Be more prepared to measure
Direct follow up was missed
Closing and wrapping up
What We Learned

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Social engagement
Brand awareness
Segment
WHAT
TO DOSocial research
Find a good incentive
Be genuine
Post, Post, Post
Social mechanics
Use a designer
Your Promotion?

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What can you give away or provide that has value?
What does your target market need or would want?
What can I show to my target market that would interest them?
What platforms can I use?
Brainstorm with everyone
THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX
Ideas

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Examples
Dropbox Michigan Race
Dropbox share for free space

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Examples
Dropbox invite friends for free space
Copy Tweet for extra storage

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Examples
Twitter promotion (in 2009) - "Tweet Seats" sold domestic tickets
through its Twitter account for just nine bucks a pop, selling 1,000
tickets in just three minutes. 33,000 followers to its Twitter
account.

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Grasshopper, The New Dork - bit.ly/bCFPNJ
Dollar Shave Club - bit.ly/x1RILs
Examples
- More than 1.3 million views since March 2010 (Startup,
USA ).
- 2 million views within the first 48 hours, today 5 million. Used video to raise $1
million USD and gain 12,000 new subscriptions within the first two days of
debut.

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Will It Blend? - bit.ly/efO3A
The Blair Witch Project - bit.ly/GWXa
Examples
- 530,000 subscribers and over 220 million views
- budget of just over $500,000, gross almost $250 million at the box office

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Focus Point
Rewards Engagement
Good
segmentation
Wrap Up: Focus

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Wrap Up: Tools that can help

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Almog Design @IsAlmog Almog Design
Website: www.almogdesign.net
Blog: https://medium.com/@IsAlmog
E-Mail: almog@almogdesgign.net
Contact

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THANK YOU