Tomorrow Facebook goes public.

At $38 per share, Facebook’s valuation is over $100 billion and is set to be the largest tech IPO in US history. Initially, many experts anticipate Facebook’s market cap to skyrocket, allowing for substantial short-term investor profits. However, many industry leaders warn that they see Facebook’s true market value to be around $24 to $27 per share, highlighting weaknesses such as: a large percentage of users never click on ads, Facebook lacks a public company culture, and Facebook is unable to effectively monetize a large majority of their mobile user base.

Many of the current warnings and weaknesses I read about Facebook make a lot of sense. As a marketer who has spent a lot of time creating and optimizing Facebook campaigns, there are so many things I wish Facebook would do differently so that I could better serve my clients. To be honest, it is not easy to hit it out of the park with Facebook ads, as it requires careful due diligence, creativity, and constant optimization. Recently, General Motors publically announced their plan to stop spending $10 million on Facebook advertising because in short, Facebook ads didn’t help them sell cars.

However, as Facebook goes public tomorrow, I can’t help but think back to Google going public in 2004. Google shares opened for $85 with a $23 billion market cap, and today Google shares are trading at $628 with a $205 billion market capitalization.

Whether Facebook’s share price rises or falls, it is simply amazing to think that just nine years ago, a kid in his dorm room coded a website that is now quickly approaching 1 billion unique users and is worth over $100 billion dollars.

As long as Facebook continues to innovate and prioritize their users’ experience over everything else, I don’t see Facebook slowing down anytime soon.

Do you think Facebook is a good investment?

Be sure to “share” this tonight because tomorrow your Facebook “shares” will cost you $38 each!

Best,

Cameron Ripley

Associate Consultant

Every year there seems to be a few buzzwords that are echoed throughout the marketing community. Last year, words like freemium, green, socialsphere, and actionable dominated entrepreneurial and executive conversations. This year, I’ve noticed a trend toward trimming the fat. This year, it’s about being lean. Whether you’re literally cutting weight, bootstrapping your startup, or evaluating potential business ideas, you can’t escape the lean methodology.
Without much background on the concept, I decided to see what the lean craze was all about. Last week I attended The Lean Startup Machine workshop, held at Comerge, an open workspace in downtown San Diego. The event was designed to be a three-day immersive workshop, which delved into the lean startup methodology and its application for product, customer, and business development.
“The lean startup is a term/process coined by Eric Reis, which involves rapid, iterative prototyping to test assumptions to develop a product that customers actually desire.”
The event kicked off with a series of product pitches that helped attendees organize into their teams. Each team then developed their problem hypothesis, solution hypothesis and a series of assumptions which could affect the success of the business. After defining a problem, solution and assumptions, each team created a MVP, or “Minimum Viable Product” to test expectations. The goal of the MVP test was to #GetOutOfTheBuilding, speak with real customers and to collect cash or non-cash currency which served as validation or invalidation of those assumptions.
“Non-cash currency: a behavior that demonstrate intent to use product or features. Non-cash currency can range from verbal validation, to email submission or letters of intent to use the product.”
The process promotes a problem-centric approach to business ideation. By continuously validating or invalidating assumptions, teams were forced to pivot their solution (and even problem identification) toward a true customer pain; rather than creating a solution and seeking customers with the problem.
The event culminated with each team pitching their new solutions and their experience using the process. In this competition the winning team was not selected based on who had the best idea, but instead on which team had honored the process and gained the most insights through their pivots.
All in all, I can truly say that this event has been one of the most exciting business related workshops I have attended. By completely immersing myself in the process, my understanding of “lean methodology” is far greater than if I had merely read the The Lean Startup book. I highly recommend this event to anyone who is interested in exploring their entrepreneurial spirit or thinking about starting a business, and I am looking forward to attending more events like this in the future.
For a more in-depth look at my team’s process, stay tuned for May’s webinar where I will go through a detailed overview of the methodology and my group’s experience developing our business idea.

-Matt Riley

Have you ever marveled at how presenters such as Guy Kawasaki and Larry Lessig are able to pitch business ideas so effectively in just a few minutes? What is it that makes their presentations so moving? How are they able to tell you about an idea in a way that makes you want to be a part of their team, buy their product or service, or even invest millions in the idea?

Two of eBoost Consulting’s very own Rockstars are attempting to answer these questions and more at San Diego State University today. Presenting to the Lavin VentureStart competitors,

Associates Matt Reilly and Allison Heinrich will be outlining how to best craft the message, enhance with visuals and present with impact.

While SDSU students will be learning about this art and science for the specific purpose of pitching to a panel of judges for the entrepreneurial-based competition, there are so many more instances in life where “pitching” is necessary. For example, if you are at a networking event and someone asks “What is it that you do?” you need to be able to sell them on your role, your company and the value you offer. Or, if you are in an elevator and suddenly find yourself next to a potential partner you need to be able to pitch them in a swift and concise manner.

What are some other instances wherein pitching is the most effective tool?
Be sure to contact either Matt (matt.reilly@eboostconsulting.com) or Allison (Allison@eboostconsulting.com) for more information on pitchology and how you can learn to communicate your ideas in impactful and moving ways.

Situation

TicketKick.com^®, a legal e-service company developed in 2010, had pioneered a cost-effective, simple way for drivers to contest their traffic tickets in California, but was struggling to get its message out to the masses. They were running a Google AdWords campaign in-house, but were missing out on a variety of other online marketing opportunities and overpaying for their ads.

Challenge

While the idea of fighting traffic tickets certainly wasn’t anything novel, TicketKick’s process was. The issue at hand was convincing potential website visitors that TicketKick offered a legitimate, credible service. The problem was two-fold; TicketKick had to convince people to visit their website, and once there, entice them to call. TicketKick’s employees were extremely knowledgeable, friendly, and engaging, which kept phone conversions high, but the team still needed to get more people calling in.

eBoost Solution

eBoost Consulting started by analyzing TicketKick’s current revenue generation, general strategy, and trajectory to ensure that any marketing initiatives would be aligned with the needs and wants of TicketKick. eBoost worked hand-in-hand with TicketKick to not only increase traffic, but more importantly, to increase their bottom line.

From August 2010 to April 2011, eBoost Consulting continuously optimized the campaigns using geographic targeting, advanced ad scheduling, complex bidding techniques, and proven match type strategy, for the Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Bing platforms. eBoost worked extensively with TicketKick to increase quality score through organization of the account, relevancy of keywords, quality ad copy and landing page recommendations. eBoost further helped TicketKick gain online exposure by utilizing forms of paid online advertising other than Google search network , including Google content network, interest based audience advertising, click to call ad extensions, and a full display remarketing/retargeting campaign.

The Results

After analyzing TicketKick’s previous campaigns and making some important improvements, we saw paid website traffic from multiple sources increase by 247%. Moreover, by monitoring and constantly tweaking the campaign, cost-per-click was reduced from $1.65 to $1.16. Most importantly, TicketKick’s bottom line increased as overall sales doubled. TicketKick reinvested in its web storefront, and is now able to offer their services online at www.ticketkick.com/getstarted/

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Learn more about eBoost Consulting’s PPC approach here.