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A comment on Where Are All The Internet Sales Guys? (CarWoo YC S09).

Re:Where Are All The Internet Sales Guys? (CarWoo YC S09) by AmericanOP on Tuesday November 30, 2010 @04:53PM (#1955730)
As an internet sales guy, I would preface this by saying most startups should put more of their marketing budget into improving the product experience. I don't think you're communicating your benefits to me the right way in your tagline, your CG video feels like a commercial and shouldn't dominate your splash page (splash tutorial videos are a cop-out and turn off users), I wasn't nearly invested in your site to go through the email signup barrier, and your car selection process isn't fun and provides very little feedback (almost useless if I don't know exactly what I want). Your pricing model turns me off- the only real difference I can see from the descriptors is that you contact 1-3 more dealers. Maybe have one option be fixed pris and the other a % of the savings on MSRP?

Second, I take Bart to work every day. I was pissed I got a yellow envelope on my car on labor day (free parking day), pissed when I complained to Bart employees about getting a parking ticket and they had no idea what I was talking about, and pissed when I finally opened the envelope and saw "This is a PR stunt by CarWoo, let us find your next car and we'll pay your next parking ticket." Now, because I'm in the industry and know who you are I had a laugh about it, and because I'm in PR I get it, but you caused me too much inconvenience for me to "like" the brand, and you failed to communicate your benefits so I didn't even bother going to your site even though I am currently in the market for a car. Okay, I "get" the internet, hopefully you got some buzz, but is this what you mean by hack-centric marketing? Was it so successful you want to hire someone to do this ad infinitum?

I don't really think PR is something you can usefully hack as an outsider, especially if your market positioning and messaging is weak. The reason why you can't find an Internet Sales Guy like you can a Technical Product Building Guy is because you're really talking about successfully coordinating your channel strategy, marketing strategy, PR strategy, SEM/SEO, everything that goes into customer acquisition. You need to be doing these things better, but you're not going to find someone to magically do it for you unless your paying for experts.

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Re:Where Are All The Internet Sales Guys? (CarWoo YC S09) by tommy_mcclung on Tuesday November 30, 2010 @06:36PM (#1956065)
Apologize about the parking ticket thing. We actually did NOT do that PR stunt in a large scale. A couple people tested it at the train station and we had several complaints so we decided not to go through with it. Sorry for the inconvenience and that you were parked at that train station that day. My takeaway from the test is exactly what you said, it wasn't good for our brand and I told the team not to move forward with it in a large scale. Crazy because we only handed out a handful of those... small world. Send me an email and if you're really looking for a car, I'll comp your CarWoo! fee if you're willing to give us a second look. [email protected]
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