PR, Sales Demos, and Facebook Ads
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How should you think about PR? How do you run an effective sales demo? How should you architect Facebook ads?
PR with Dmitry Dragilev of JustReachOut.io
Thanks, Indie Hackers podcast!
Rob’s Notes: PR and SEO industries are the homeopathy of the growth world: Tons of people shouting about what works. Hawking expensive tools to achieve low-probability, long-lead-time results. I was surprised to like Dmitry’s approach to PR and SEO in his recent Indie Hackers podcast. I’ll explore this further but still not willing to invest a ton of effort into PR.
How most people do PR wrong
Trying to go for big PR wins early (e.g., NYT, CNN, TechCrunch)
Expecting big PR wins -> sustained traffic and high conversion rates
Cold-emailing journalists, “Hey check out my cool company”
Stunts and things unrelated to your business
How Dmitry thinks about PR
PR can create sustained traffic if you approach it right: Start small, iterate, and focus on improving your page’s ranking for niche, high-intent search terms.
Figure out what your would-be customers are searching for. Ideally start with high-intent, low-to-mid-volume, low-competition search terms. Why? Early wins.
Build webpages & resources that you want to show up in these rankings.
Get press mentions that link to these pages - start niche & get small wins (e.g., blogs or small industry magazines), then move to medium & large publications.
Convert traffic to customers (obviously)
How to get press mentions without wasting a ton of time
Don’t just start pitching blogs and journalists on your product, they don’t care.
Ideal: Find journalists who are actively looking for expertise on a topic that’s relevant to your business. Use resources like #journorequest, Help A Reporter Out, etc.
Less ideal, still good: Find journalists who have previously written about a topic that’s relevant to your business.
Make brief pitches with clear asks & value. E.g., “I saw you’re looking for X. I have research on X that shows X% do Y interesting thing. Want to know more?”
Dmitry suggests to do journalist outreach to smoke test for interest before wasting time and money on research or asset-building. So, you’d make the pitch above, and if a journalist is interested you’d then go and do the research. Interesting.
Sales Demos with Dave Kennett of Replayz
Thanks, Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast!
Rob’s Notes: I used to be terrible at demos - I trained potential customers how to use the software instead of selling the software to them. My team and I use a lot of what we’ve learned from this podcast in our demos.
How most people do demos wrong
Bad prep: Just show up with a few minutes of pre-call planning
Bad discovery: No standardized list of discovery questions by persona, not enough time on discovery
Bad product demos: 1-sided, spend time training vs. selling
Bad next steps: Only leaving 1-2 mins for next steps, not getting next meeting on the calendar before everyone hangs up
Bad structure: Too many slides, sales rep spends >50% of time talking
Structure of an awesome sales demo
Note - depending on deal size this may happen in one 30-45-min meeting (<$6k ARR) or multiple meetings.
Pre-call prep: Review CRM notes, research the prospect (LinkedIn), review company news, think of what case studies or white papers you can point them to.
Intro: Build rapport - determine whether the prospect wants to get into the details or chat.
Agenda, mutual action plan: Less than a min. "I’m really looking forward to giving you the demo today, but I want to tailor it to your needs, don't want to give you the standard presentation. If it's OK with you, probably for 15-20 minutes want to ask a few questions to really understand your business better, that way I can tailor it to your needs. Then we'll dive in. How does that sound?"
First questions: What caused you to join the call today? How much do you know about our company?
Discovery: ⚠️This makes the difference between good and great demos!! ⚠️ A series of questions that help you understand the organizational context of what they want solved, why they want it solved, and personal reasons for the prospect to get it done. Add customer story soundbites (1 min stories of customers, usually ), plus check ins (“Alright, thanks for bearing with me, almost done with these questions”)
Actual demo: Tailored to what you learn in discovery. Meaningful check-ins every 1.5-2 mins: "Based on what you told area, sounds like this would help your VP. Do you agree, what do you think?"
Pricing / next steps: Pretend you're leading post-call huddle, last 10 mins - "Let's go around the room, right now if you were making a decision, would you buy us?" Get next meeting on the books DURING the call! "Our customers find it super useful as they're going through the buying process to just have a placeholder on the books. You mentioned you're talking to X decisionmaker tomorrow, what if we just put a placeholder on te calendar for a 30-min check-in tomorrow afternoon, even if you're not able to keep it just let me know in advance, that way we're not going back and forth via email on questions that arise. How's 2pm work?"
Facebook Ads with Rachel Barge & Kevin Okie of Leap Grow
Thanks, Growth by Drift!
Rob’s Notes: I’ve dabbled in Facebook ads. This podcast is a masterclass in how to architect Facebook campaigns to achieve results over time and build levers for incremental improvement. They call their approach “Granular” - and it is. If you’re not incredibly organized, this would approach would be a nightmare to manage.
How most people do Facebook Ads wrong
Too concentrated in very few campaigns, letting Facebook’s algorithms automatically decide spend. This gives you no levers for improvement
Too dispersed & disorganized. Tons of ads but no real structure behind them which makes it hard to know what’s really working & continuously improve.
Both lead to costs continuing to rise over time
The “Granular” approach: Architect effective Facebook campaigns
Segment potential audiences in interesting, deliberate ways. Test different ads against each group to see what works. Double down on the ads and audiences that perform best. Continually experiment and re-balance your spend for continuous improvement.
Here’s how I visualized the Granular approach:
Segments for retargeting
Segment by recency (e.g., visited your website within last 3 days) and by intent (e.g., added to cart), by persona
Test different advertisements within each box
Segments for prospecting
Type 1: Segment by lookalike %, by persona
Type 2: Segment by audience characteristics (e.g., your standard Facebook Demographics)