Launching a business may be as easy today as registering a website. But winning a share of the market will remain tricky as long as that business is subject to customer preferences, channel demands, and competitive offerings. To increase their chances of success, both traditional and e-businesses have long relied on market research. In its ideal form, market research is a "learn and confirm&q...

Launching a business may be as easy today as registering a website. But winning a share of the market will remain tricky as long as that business is subject to customer preferences, channel demands, and competitive offerings. To increase their chances of success, both traditional and e-businesses have long relied on market research. In its ideal form, market research is a "learn and confirm" loop, similar to scientific research.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/20...

http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2010/3740/your-launch-strategy-and-bey...

Reddit seeded the initial content on Reddit almost exclusively through the efforts of the Reddit team in the early days. For the first few months of Reddit’s life, Reddit co-founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman scoured the web to find interesting articles to post to Reddit. They were able to create the illusion of more contributors by submitting articles under different user names. As Reddit...

Reddit seeded the initial content on Reddit almost exclusively through the efforts of the Reddit team in the early days. For the first few months of Reddit’s life, Reddit co-founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman scoured the web to find interesting articles to post to Reddit. They were able to create the illusion of more contributors by submitting articles under different user names. As Reddit developed a loyal readership (due to the content hand-selected by the team) other users began to submit links, although the Reddit team was still responsible for 80% of the submitted links for many months.

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/1014300087

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/1014300087

Once the site was ready for users, the Facebook founders blasted e-mails to Harvard students to let people know about the site. The team had access to the e-mail addresses of Harvard students at each dorm. Thus e-mail marketing, viral feature sets, and word of mouth was how Facebook was launched. Given the immediate positive reaction that Facebook received at Harvard, Facebook began rolling out th...

Once the site was ready for users, the Facebook founders blasted e-mails to Harvard students to let people know about the site. The team had access to the e-mail addresses of Harvard students at each dorm. Thus e-mail marketing, viral feature sets, and word of mouth was how Facebook was launched. Given the immediate positive reaction that Facebook received at Harvard, Facebook began rolling out the service to other universities.

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/1753192864

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/1753192864

Much of the ResponseBase team had formerly come from X-drive as well, so they had a background in both online consumer services and direct marketing. After witnessing the initial success of Friendster and having the ResponseBase/Intermix resources at their disposal, they thought they could create a strong competitor. ResponseBase had a database of ~100M e-mail addresses and Intermix had a number o...

Much of the ResponseBase team had formerly come from X-drive as well, so they had a background in both online consumer services and direct marketing. After witnessing the initial success of Friendster and having the ResponseBase/Intermix resources at their disposal, they thought they could create a strong competitor. ResponseBase had a database of ~100M e-mail addresses and Intermix had a number of Internet sites heavy with users in the MySpace target demographic.

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/1268641897

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/1268641897

Most importantly, shoes turned out to be great for SEM for several reasons. For one, people search for shoes by brand. Zappos.com didn’t need to spend advertising dollars to build the Zappos.com brand; they only needed to get a consumer to click on an ad for Rockport or Vans shoes. Zappos.com also didn’t need to educate consumers about their product – people knew shoes. Zappos.com’s initial m...

Most importantly, shoes turned out to be great for SEM for several reasons. For one, people search for shoes by brand. Zappos.com didn’t need to spend advertising dollars to build the Zappos.com brand; they only needed to get a consumer to click on an ad for Rockport or Vans shoes. Zappos.com also didn’t need to educate consumers about their product – people knew shoes. Zappos.com’s initial marketing investment was only partially aimed at consumers; it was more to impress suppliers.

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/4343267

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/4343267

The ability to embed the external player on any web page turned the tide for YouTube.The other key driver to YouTube’s user acquisition was the frequency at which popular video content was distributed in a viral manner...After the VC investment, YouTube started giving away an iPod Nano per day for several months. This promotion was actually very successful and helped to further build the user bas...

The ability to embed the external player on any web page turned the tide for YouTube.The other key driver to YouTube’s user acquisition was the frequency at which popular video content was distributed in a viral manner...After the VC investment, YouTube started giving away an iPod Nano per day for several months. This promotion was actually very successful and helped to further build the user base.

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/894207780

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/894207780

Features that have become synonymous with Web 2.0, like easy blog integration / export and post to Flickr badges on people’s sites were developed early on. As a result of these efforts, nearly 80% of new users found Flickr through the blogs of other Flickr users.Flickr was also the beneficiary of a great amount of mainstream PR, even if they did not instigate it themselves. Flickr did not hire a ...

Features that have become synonymous with Web 2.0, like easy blog integration / export and post to Flickr badges on people’s sites were developed early on. As a result of these efforts, nearly 80% of new users found Flickr through the blogs of other Flickr users.Flickr was also the beneficiary of a great amount of mainstream PR, even if they did not instigate it themselves. Flickr did not hire a PR firm to generate publicity early on, only hiring a firm to help manage PR requests after the initial buzz created by viral marketing.

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/1099190118

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/1099190118

One of the first key decisions that Digg made was to focus its initial product on technology news. The Digg team considered applying the Digg concept to product reviews or other types of news, but recognized that the tech audience made the most sense... As it turned out, the tech enthusiast community was ideal to launch Digg for another reason: natural search ranking, i.e. SEO (search engine optim...

One of the first key decisions that Digg made was to focus its initial product on technology news. The Digg team considered applying the Digg concept to product reviews or other types of news, but recognized that the tech audience made the most sense... As it turned out, the tech enthusiast community was ideal to launch Digg for another reason: natural search ranking, i.e. SEO (search engine optimization) benefits. Because tech enthusiasts tend to be an audience that does a lot of web linking – either via blogs or websites – Digg received a lot of inbound links in a very short period of time.

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/1412978461

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/1412978461

"eHarmony’s first launch strategy was a 90-day grassroots campaign, going door to door to church groups in Texas. This grassroots campaign had limited success. Mr.Warren did everything he could to generate publicity for eHarmony, including several guest appearances on Bill Maher’s HBO show and other radio and TV appearances."

"eHarmony’s first launch strategy was a 90-day grassroots campaign, going door to door to church groups in Texas. This grassroots campaign had limited success. Mr.Warren did everything he could to generate publicity for eHarmony, including several guest appearances on Bill Maher’s HBO show and other radio and TV appearances."

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/578873490

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/578873490

"Craig originally started Craiglsist to tell friends about upcoming tech or art events in SF. Once the number of people on the list grew too large, Craigslist became a formal website."

"Craig originally started Craiglsist to tell friends about upcoming tech or art events in SF. Once the number of people on the list grew too large, Craigslist became a formal website."

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/956090328

http://bagtheweb.com/posts/956090328