{"id":13000,"date":"2016-10-25T00:16:58","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T08:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/?p=13000"},"modified":"2021-05-12T18:24:45","modified_gmt":"2021-05-12T23:24:45","slug":"creative-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/creative-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Creative Marketing Strategies That Launched These 3 Major Tech Startups"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intro-txt\"> In this post, we take a look at the creative marketing strategies behind the successful launch of 3 huge tech startups.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<p>If you\u2019re a regular reader of the Ahrefs blog, then you\u2019ll know that we usually keep our focus pretty tightly on <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/seo-tips\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SEO<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But since the goal of SEO is to grow your business, we feel it\u2019s important that we take a step back and look at a broader set of <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/marketing-strategy-examples\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">marketing strategies<\/a> and tactics every once in a&nbsp;while.<\/p>\n<p>This time we\u2019re looking at three well known companies:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Salesforce<\/li>\n<li>Airbnb<\/li>\n<li>AdGrok<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And the marketing strategies that got them&nbsp;their earliest successes.<\/p>\n<p>Their methods were not directly SEO-focused. But each is a good example of how great marketing decisions can result in press coverage, referral traffic and organic links. Which of course leads to better rankings and search traffic.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s get started with the first business \u2014 Salesforce.<\/p>\n<h2>Salesforce and the Guerrilla Marketing War<\/h2>\n<p>The SaaS industry has a reputation of being boring and \u201csuited up.\u201d But one of the earliest SaaS companies, Salesforce, was anything but boring. Especially when it came to marketing.<\/p>\n<p>The key to their success was the fact that&nbsp;founder and CEO Marc Benioff would&nbsp;do anything and everything to get Salesforce\u2019s name out&nbsp;there.<\/p>\n<p>Above all, Benioff had a knack for knowing what the media wanted to&nbsp;see.<\/p>\n<p>In 1999, while there were protests against the World Trade Organization in cities like Seattle (the home of Salesforce competitor Microsoft), he staged a protest of his own \u2014 outside a Siebel user conference:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_13009\" style=\"width: 690px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13009\" class=\"size-large wp-image-13009\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/salesforcewto-680x240.jpg\" alt=\"On the right, radicals protesting the old order. On the left, a demonstration against the World Trade Organization. Seattle was crazy in '99.\" width=\"680\" height=\"240\"><p id=\"caption-attachment-13009\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">On the right, radicals protesting the old order. On the left, a demonstration against the World Trade Organization. Seattle was crazy in&nbsp;\u201999.<\/p><\/div>\n<h3>How Salesforce started to&nbsp;grow<\/h3>\n<p>Benioff\u2019s protest was followed by a military-themed \u201cEnd of Software\u201d party. To get in, guests had to bring in a piece of \u201cold software\u201d to put in a set of \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.holmesreport.com\/latest\/article\/the-launch-of-salesforce-com-and-the-end-of-software#sthash.eLM3P6am.dpuf\">overflowing software trash bins.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There were different themed areas at the party including \u201cSoftware-Free Zones,\u201d a \u201cPrisoners of Software\u201d area, and even a game area with a \u201cThrow the Disk in the Toilet\u201d game for anyone to play. The B52s played along with two other&nbsp;bands.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, the event represented Salesforce\u2019s value proposition from top to bottom:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>we were entering a world without software<\/li>\n<li>Salesforce was going to lead&nbsp;it<\/li>\n<li>it was going to be&nbsp;cool.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This huge party didn\u2019t just get San Francisco\u2019s tech scene excited. Tons of media outlets were already in town for the Siebel conference. Salesforce reached out to them and got the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and The New York Times all to attend the \u201cEnd of Software\u201d party. All of them wrote afterward about this brand-new startup willing to do anything to be noticed.<\/p>\n<p>Business Insider, who also covered the event, referred to Salesforce as the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.holmesreport.com\/latest\/article\/the-launch-of-salesforce-com-and-the-end-of-software#sthash.eLM3P6am.dpuf\">ant at [Siebel\u2019s] picnic<\/a>.\u201d Today, that ant has a market cap of nearly $50 billion.<\/p>\n<h3>How not to do&nbsp;it<\/h3>\n<p>Things didn\u2019t go so well for Benioff when he put up a controversial poster featuring the Dalai Lama.&nbsp;\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/marc-benioff-salesforcecom-chief-has-pulled-some-crazy-stunts-2012-3#but-he-went-too-far-when-he-messed-with-the-dalai-lama-6\">There is no software on the path to enlightenment<\/a>,\u201d it read. The spiritual leader had been&nbsp;slated to speak at the&nbsp;Himalayan Foundation in San Francisco. He ended&nbsp;up publicly rejecting Benioff and his appropriation of his&nbsp;image.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"big\"><div class=\"quote-content\">We had no right to suggest that ht8qBxGtx&amp;2r0QJs\n<p>the American Himalayan Foundation or His Holiness support us. We made a mistake<\/p><\/div><div class=\"quote-info clearfix\"><div class=\"quote-photo\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Marc Benioff\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/marc-benioff.jpg\"><\/div><div class=\"extra-box\"><span class=\"quote-author\">Marc Benioff,<\/span> <span class=\"quote-author-job\">CEO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\" target=\"_blank\">Salesforce<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n<p>No one will mind a little fun if you keep it corporate. But keep people\u2019s idols out of&nbsp;it.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13029\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/dalai_lama_poster_still_tmp.jpeg\" alt=\"dalai_lama_poster_still_tmp\" width=\"574\" height=\"734\"><\/p>\n<h3>Takeaways:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Guerrilla marketing is all about punching up. <\/b>No one makes a name for themselves attacking other small startups. People (media included) love a David and Goliath story. Find your Goliath and show how you\u2019re different from&nbsp;them.<\/li>\n<li><b>Give media outlets a story that they want to cover.<\/b> So many startups try to land PR spots early on when they have nothing&nbsp;to present beyond their product. The tech press likes scandals, conflict, and controversy. Give them something interesting or forget about PR, because it will often be a total waste of your&nbsp;time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"further-reading\"><div class=\"reading-title\">Further reading<\/div><div class=\"reading-content\">\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trust_Me,_I%27m_Lying\"><strong>Trust Me, I\u2019m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator<\/strong><\/a> by Ryan Holiday: Ryan Holiday was Director of Marketing for American Apparel and did publicity for Tucker Max. Needless to say, his book is a master class on the modern media system. Even the reported $500,000 advance Holiday received was <a href=\"http:\/\/observer.com\/2011\/11\/the-tell-all-of-dov-charney-and-tucker-max-all-part-of-ryan-holidays-media-strategy\/\">said by some<\/a> to be another media stunt designed to engineer hype for the&nbsp;book!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<h2>Airbnb and the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs<\/h2>\n<p>By coincidence, Airbnb also got its start at a conference. The story goes something like&nbsp;this:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Three friends could not&nbsp;make rent on their apartment.<\/li>\n<li>A design conference was coming to San Francisco.<\/li>\n<li>They put two and two together and realized they could rent out some&nbsp;airbeds on their&nbsp;floor.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The plan worked, a company was born in the process.<\/p>\n<p>As they wrote up their listing, the soon-to-be-founders discovered that Craigslist (the standard for apartment sublets at the time) was just not the best way. Craigslist was impersonal. Craigslist was already a little creepy. Their instincts told them to build something different.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_13033\" style=\"width: 541px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13033\" class=\"size-large wp-image-13033\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/original-Airbnb-531x425.png\" alt=\"The early Airbnb team working from the co-founders' 3BR apartment complete with lofted ceilings, a bay window, hardwood floors, and a skylight. It's the giant world map that really makes it, though. Wonder how much it costs to rent it today?\" width=\"531\" height=\"425\"><p id=\"caption-attachment-13033\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The early Airbnb team working from the co-founders\u2019 3BR apartment complete with lofted ceilings, a bay window, hardwood floors, and a skylight. Wonder how much it costs to rent it&nbsp;today?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>What became known as the \u201ceBay of space\u201d started to grow. But its founders didn\u2019t lose sight of the fact that Craigslist was still the king. Craigslist was still where you went if you wanted to rent someone\u2019s house or offer your own up. They had to find some way to access that massive market of potential Airbnb users.<\/p>\n<h3>How Airbnb started to&nbsp;grow<\/h3>\n<p>Sometime in 2010, Airbnb\u2019s explosive growth began in earnest.<\/p>\n<p>It all started from a \u201cre-envisioning\u201d of the guidelines in Craigslist\u2019s terms of service. They hacked together an integration that let <a href=\"http:\/\/andrewchen.co\/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study\/\">any listing on Airbnb<\/a> be cross-posted to Craigslist. With its&nbsp;tens of thousands of users, it was a crucial market for the young startup:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_13008\" style=\"width: 690px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13008\" class=\"size-large wp-image-13008\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/main-qimg-be336dbc84df7df05497632ffcb439b7-680x340.png\" alt=\"Craigslist listings never looked so good.\" width=\"680\" height=\"340\"><p id=\"caption-attachment-13008\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Craigslist listings never looked so&nbsp;good.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>With this technique, the Airbnb team short circuited the Law of Sh**ty Clickthroughs. In other words, the fact that \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/andrewchen.co\/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs\/\">over time, all marketing strategies result in sh**ty clickthrough rates<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs is why HotWired got a 78% click-through rate with the brand-new technique of banner ads in 1994. It\u2019s why Facebook only got a 0.05% clickthrough rate in&nbsp;2011.<\/p>\n<p>To make your marketing stand out, you either need to do something novel or you need to deliver real value to your audience. And that\u2019s what Airbnb did by giving their members access to a wider marketplace:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13007\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/airbnb-craigslist-email-1.png\" alt=\"airbnb-craigslist-email-1\" width=\"472\" height=\"252\"><\/p>\n<p>Airbnb emailed&nbsp;their users about cross-posting to Craigslist. They emailed Craigslist users about cross-posting to Airbnb.<\/p>\n<p>In doing so, Airbnb could give something of value to both sides of the market. They were able to grow rapidly&nbsp;because of the additional exposure.<\/p>\n<p>And because Airbnb was the first to truly take advantage of the Craigslist platform in this way, they got a huge novelty boost.<\/p>\n<p>Finding this kind of edge is like catnip for growing startups. Having a product \u201cthat people want\u201d is not enough. Even having a small audience of fans is not enough. You need to find what Justin Jackson calls \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/product-people\/how-to-get-more-customers-54f64220e430#.6q25llu49\">the fastest engine possible<\/a>\u201d and hook your product up to&nbsp;it.<\/p>\n<p>Surfing on a bigger platform\u2019s wave, as Airbnb did with Craigslist, is one of the best ways to do that \u2014 just remember that when it stops working you have to paddle out and catch another!<\/p>\n<h3>How not to do&nbsp;it<\/h3>\n<p>When you try to ride a competitor\u2019s wave and wipe out, we call it <b>sharecropping.&nbsp;<\/b>You rented out a plot of land that someone else owned, you tried to farm it for personal gain, and then the landlord decided to evict&nbsp;you.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s exactly what happened to the YC-backed Zen99, which was formed to help freelancers figure out their taxes and find insurance.<\/p>\n<p>Every user acquisition method the Zen99 team had tried failed. They finally decided that they should partner with a company with a huge presence in the tax space \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@tmzier\/why-zen99-shut-down-a368371eb9dd#.ek7t5kifg\">Intuit<\/a> \u2014 and try to grow that&nbsp;way.<\/p>\n<p>Intuit processed hundreds of millions of tax returns every year, so riding that wave could be incredibly profitable.<\/p>\n<p>Not long after, Intuit released QuickBooks - their own product that did exactly what Zen99 did. This made their partnership with Zen99 redundant.<\/p>\n<p>Did Intuit just sign onto the partnership to learn what they could before turning around and building their own thing? Were there issues with the product? Doesn\u2019t matter, in the end\u2014the partnership ending was the last straw, and soon Zen99 put out a blog post called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@tmzier\/why-zen99-shut-down-a368371eb9dd#.ek7t5kifg\">Why Zen99 Shut Down.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"big\"><div class=\"quote-content\">It\u2019s not ideal when your best user acquisition strategy is partnering with a company who has a competing product<\/div><div class=\"quote-info clearfix\"><div class=\"quote-photo\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Tristan Zier\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Tristan-Zier.jpg\"><\/div><div class=\"extra-box\"><span class=\"quote-author\">Tristan Zier,<\/span> <span class=\"quote-author-job\">CEO and Co-Founder<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n<p>The lesson to take away is that sharecropping like Zen99 and, to a lesser extent, Airbnb, can be very dangerous. If the larger platform you\u2019re using to get users to your product decides to pull the plug, you could be dead in the&nbsp;water.<\/p>\n<p>Airbnb eventually did get shut out of Craigslist, but by then they\u2019d already achieved a massive amount of growth using Craigslist\u2019s platform. Intuit never let things get that&nbsp;far.<\/p>\n<h3>Takeaways:<\/h3>\n<div class=\"letters-list\">\n<ul>\n<li>When you start a startup in a space that has a major player in it already (think Airbnb with Craigslist) tapping into that competitor\u2019s market is a powerful way to kickstart your growth.<\/li>\n<li><b>Avoid sharecropping.<\/b> You want to capitalize on another company\u2019s market or model, not rely on it entirely. Better yet, give the company you\u2019re piggybacking off of something of value. Airbnb helped increase Craigslist\u2019s traffic even as they sought to use Craigslist to build out their own platform. Zen99 partnered with Intuit to offer a service that could be replicated too easily.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"further-reading\"><div class=\"reading-title\">Further reading<\/div><div class=\"reading-content\">\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/web.stanford.edu\/group\/e145\/cgi-bin\/winter\/drupal\/upload\/handouts\/Four_Steps.pdf\">The Four Steps to the Epiphany<\/a><\/strong> by Steven Blank: One of the classic startup books. His model of growth and acquisition was battle-tested through decades of building and growing startups. This is required reading for startup people.<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer\/dp\/1591848369\/ref=pd_sim_14_23?ie=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=1591848369&amp;pd_rd_r=XAST83H597BC2SN3EVWE&amp;pd_rd_w=KwD1D&amp;pd_rd_wg=22ON9&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=XAST83H597BC2SN3EVWE\">Traction<\/a><\/strong> by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares: Few startup books have as much enthusiastic support from the founder\/VC community as \u201cTraction\u201d. Mares and Weinberg take you through 19 different channels that successful entrepreneurs have used to kickstart growth.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<h2>AdGrok and the Blog Post as Firecracker<\/h2>\n<p>Before his company AdGrok was acquired by Twitter, Antonio Garcia-Martinez (author of the recent memoir <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antoniogarciamartinez.com\/\">Chaos Monkeys<\/a>), was a physicist at Berkeley and a quant at Goldman Sachs.<\/p>\n<p>But AdGrok\u2019s first entree into the startup world didn\u2019t come as a result of his team\u2019s qualifications or even their product \u2014 it came through Garcia-Martinez\u2019s writing on the AdGrok blog.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-13005\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screenshot-2016-10-03-at-12.56.51-PM-680x314.png\" alt=\"Grandiose Propositions is right!\" width=\"680\" height=\"314\"><\/p>\n<p>With the controversial and punchy \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20110101183059\/http:\/\/adgrok.com\/new-york-will-always-be-a-tech-backwater-i-dont-care-what-chris-dixon-or-ron-conway-or-paul-graham-say\">New York will always be a tech backwater, I don\u2019t care what Chris Dixon or Ron Conway or Paul Graham say<\/a>,\u201d AdGrok began its ascent.<\/p>\n<p>Garnering 180+ comments on <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=1572075\">Hacker News<\/a> and driving 30,000 unique visitors to the AdGrok site, the post was a massive success.<\/p>\n<h3>How AdGrok started to&nbsp;grow<\/h3>\n<p>What made the post so relevant was that Hacker News, where the post was first submitted, was the domain of Y Combinator and its President and founder, Paul Graham. And Garcia-Martinez was attacking him head-on, explaining the \u201cimpossibility\u201d of a true NYC startup scene by talking about the everyday social interactions he had in his life as a Goldman quant:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"small\"><div class=\"quote-content\">At cocktail parties with these people, the \u2018ambitious ass-kickers\u2019 Paul Graham thinks will save the New York tech scene, the second question you\u2019re asked is inevitably \u201cWhat do you do?\u201d And so begins the not-so-subtle binning of you into your social echelon, more ritualistic and damning than any Japanese business card exchange ceremony.<\/div><div class=\"quote-info clearfix\"><div class=\"quote-photo\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Antonio Garcia-Martinez\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screenshot-2016-10-18-at-8.49.06-AM.png\"><\/div><div class=\"extra-box\"><span class=\"quote-author\">Antonio Garcia-Martinez,<\/span> <span class=\"quote-author-job\">Author, ex-Product Manager at Facebook<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n<p>Garcia-Martinez, like Benioff, knew that the way to get attention was to <i>punch up<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>By <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20101221105618\/http:\/\/cdixon.org\/2010\/02\/01\/the-nyc-tech-scene-is-exploding\/\">taking on a well-known VC<\/a>, he knew he could get exposure. But to really capitalize on that exposure it couldn\u2019t just be a controversial viewpoint he was taking \u2014 the content actually had to be&nbsp;good.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately for him, he was a good enough writer to make all those page views&nbsp;count.<\/p>\n<h3>How not to do&nbsp;it<\/h3>\n<p>So you wrote a piece you think is good and you want some help getting it on the front page of Hacker News.<\/p>\n<p>That can work, but don\u2019t make the mistake that Groove made and rely only on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groovehq.com\/blog\/hacker-news\">upvotes of your friends and your colleagues<\/a> to be enough in getting it to the front page of Hacker News.<\/p>\n<p>The truth is that you have to actually have an interesting article that people would want to talk about. And for that readers have to be able to disagree with your point of&nbsp;view.<\/p>\n<p>But don\u2019t start talking religion or politics \u2014 create \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gregoryciotti.com\/controversial-content\/\">strategic controversy<\/a>,\u201d an idea that Greg Ciotti illustrates by pointing to the very active internet debates over <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Toilet_paper_orientation\">which way your toilet paper should hang<\/a> off its&nbsp;roll.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_13003\" style=\"width: 690px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13003\" class=\"size-large wp-image-13003\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screenshot-2016-10-05-at-11.32.06-AM-680x394.png\" alt=\"Are you an \u201cover\u201d or an \u201cunder\u201d? \" width=\"680\" height=\"394\"><p id=\"caption-attachment-13003\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Are you an \u201cover\u201d or an \u201cunder\u201d? <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Toilet_paper_orientation\">(Yes, this is seriously a&nbsp;thing.)<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>You can find niche controversies like this everywhere:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Native advertising vs. content marketing<\/li>\n<li>Slack makes you productive vs. Slack is distracting<\/li>\n<li>Put two spaces after each period vs. put one space after each period<\/li>\n<li>Front-end Javascript framework #1 vs. Front-end Javascript framework #2<\/li>\n<li>New York City\u2019s startup scene is working vs. New York City\u2019s startup scene will never&nbsp;work<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You get the idea. These are topics that have been written about a lot, but for very good reason \u2014 they\u2019re debates and arguments that are never resolved.<\/p>\n<p>If you have something compelling to say about a divisive topic, then people are going to pay attention.<\/p>\n<h3>Takeaway:<\/h3>\n<div class=\"letters-list\">\n<ul>\n<li>If you want to make a statement about something in your field and generate some buzz - it\u2019s not enough to be a competent writer and have the qualifications to back up what you say. Those are important, but if <b>people are able to disagree with what you say<\/b>, that will 10x the&nbsp;buzz.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"further-reading\"><div class=\"reading-title\">Further reading<\/div><div class=\"reading-content\">\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0060891548\/\">On Writing Well<\/a><\/strong> by William Zinsser: The classic writing guide. Zinsser isn\u2019t writing for poets, playwrights, or essayists \u2014 \u201cOn Writing Well\u201d is for anyone who needs to use and communicate with language in their work. Everyone can get some kind of use out of this book, whether it\u2019s reducing their usage of clunky metaphors or simply writing with more clarity.<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others\/dp\/1400064287\">Made to Stick<\/a><\/strong> by Chip and Dan Heath: this book answers a simple, but tricky question: \u201cWhat makes certain ideas resonate with people?\u201d Whether you\u2019re building a product or writing a blog post, \u201cMade to Stick\u201d contains some useful nuggets of wisdom into how you can make what you\u2019re doing more effective and more memorable.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<h2>Have some fun with your marketing<\/h2>\n<p>Let\u2019s be honest, most of our marketing work is pretty repetitive and tedious:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>churning out new content every&nbsp;week;<\/li>\n<li>reaching out to hundreds of people;<\/li>\n<li>setting up advertising campaigns;<\/li>\n<li>writing newsletter updates;<\/li>\n<li>setting up new funnels, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Moreover, the above-mentioned \u201cconventional marketing strategies\u201d are not as effective as we would like them to be - mainly because nearly exactly all of your competitors are doing pretty much the same&nbsp;stuff.<\/p>\n<p>So wouldn\u2019t it make sense to step out of the box from time to time and apply some creativity to your marketing? Obviously audacity doesn\u2019t always work in your favour and it may as well backfire at&nbsp;you.<\/p>\n<p>But do you think Marc Benioff would have managed to take Saleforce to $50 billion market cap without doing all these crazy things?<\/p>\n<p>Let me know in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re a regular reader of the Ahrefs blog, then you\u2019ll know that we usually keep our focus pretty tightly on SEO. But since the goal of SEO is to grow your business, we feel it\u2019s important that we take<span class=\"ellipsis\">\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\">Read more \u203a<\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":13218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[390],"tags":[],"coauthors":[356],"class_list":["post-13000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing","odd"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Creative Marketing Strategies That Launched 3 Major Tech Startups<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Need marketing inspiration? 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