Hi,
I am working on a new startup - eCompuCloud.com and I can't really determine how much should I spend on marketing?<p>For example, if I will spend $1000/mo on operating the business, and expect $1000 net profit - which means we must generate $2000 revenue.. how much to spend equal to the cost of operating the startup? Is it vague a little bit?
Test test test.<p>Here's my experience (by YMMV):<p>SEO FTW. It's incredibly sustainable once you set it up as you have some high fixed costs but close to zero marginal cost to acquire a new customer.<p>Blogs. Write your own blog of tutorials on HOW to set up smaller websites. Make it as easy as possible to follow (check out ScreenSteps - <a href="http://www.bluemangolearning.com/screensteps/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bluemangolearning.com/screensteps/</a>). Share this knowledge for free. Cover systems other than yours. These will provide you with a large bump in traffic of people looking for help. You'll convert about 1% of them (or slightly more if your pitch is really good).<p>Experiment with AdWords and Facebook. Both will give you $50 to $100 to start ads with. See what works. Find keywords that represent your target customer and see which ones work. If you have a quality score below 7, drop the keyword. See if it's driving customer and what your cost of acquisition is. Adjust accordingly.<p>Email newsletter. (See also: blog). Offer a free guide to setting up your website to anyone that signs up for your newsletter. Email out tips and tricks on websites (CSS, JS, plugins, or even just cool designs, etc) once every two weeks. Have a small pitch at the bottom about your company. It's not about the marketing here - it's about engaging your audience and building trust with your brand.<p>Just my two cents.<p>Traditional PR (newspapers) can provide big boosts in traffic (or hardly a blip) and are difficult to track.
<i>I am not a marketer</i><p>I would think you should first determine the ROI for different types of marketing and using those figures, come up with a game plan for how much to spend where. To some degree your marketing spend should drive your revenue.<p>I think it would be definitely worth is to study common growth hacks as well.<p>What exactly is your product? I work on OpenStack (more technical and knowledgable than your target market) and reading your homepage, I don't understand what exactly you provide.