from Hacker News

Show HN: Unlimited marketing advice and consulting from $89

by marketingadvice on 3/4/15, 1:20 PM with 27 comments

• by gk1 on 3/4/15, 2:22 PM

  The reason I make a living from marketing consulting is _not_ because marketing advice is hard to come by, but because it's difficult to separate the good advice (0.01%) from the crap advice (99.99%).

  If you actually do deliver "some of the best marketing consulting in the world," then where are the examples, case studies, influential articles, and testimonials?

  Forgive me for being skeptical but a lowball price with vague promises doesn't instill confidence.

• by ssharp on 3/4/15, 2:36 PM

  There are six listed examples of tasks you could do. None of those could be effectively done in the 30 minutes you wish for a task to take. Marketing evaluations even on small companies with a low number of pages, landing pages, emails, and conversion funnels should take several hours. In 30 minutes you could provide heuristics/best-practices which could be effective, but could be a waste of everyone's time. I doubt you're going to be able to implement anything in 30 minutes, so you're just giving advice on what to do, which will then take someone else many hours to implement, which is very wasteful if they're implementing the wrong thing. Planning is extremely important.

• by qeorge on 3/4/15, 2:19 PM

  I'm having trouble getting my head around the pricing. 1x for one task, 2x for unlimited. Can you expound a bit?

  Specifically, what do you mean by unlimited? Could I schedule you every day for a 30 minute consultation?

  Also, I'm one shop but we have several properties. Correct to assume I need an account for each one? (roughly 4 accounts)

  Very interested!

  Edit: I see now that you have one business day turnaround, and allow one order in the queue. Each task is about ~30 minutes, so effectively up to 10 hours of marketing consultation a month for $175. That's very compelling! Cool!

• by mcdoug on 3/4/15, 2:32 PM

  So, first off, unlimited advice starts at $175. At $89 you get one task, not unlimited. That's like saying "the brand new 2015 Toyota Camry starting at $300". Yes, you can buy a Camry for $300 from a junk yard, and you can buy a brand new 2015 Camry, but you can't buy a brand new 2015 Camry for $300.

  What types of tasks are you talking about and can you actually acomplish anything useful in 30 minutes. Examples please. Are you talking about setting up AdWords campaigns? Reviewing the <meta> tags on my website? Helping me refine my headline? Or will you help me set up a marketing strategy and research my customers? The latter can take days or weeks. Can I have you do that under the unlimited plan, 30 minutes at a time?

  Also, "Ideally a request is about 30 minutes of work" is a pretty terrible way to phrase what you are saying. As a customer, I probably have no idea how long something takes you. I know what I need to acomplish, and will dump a crapton of work on you for the low price. Without examples, I will simply ask you "I need 10x the traffic I have now to site X" and expect that you will deliver.

  I think this is a really aluring idea, but I need more details!

• by hluska on 3/4/15, 2:27 PM

  Interesting idea, but there are a few flaws in the execution.

  1. I use an iPhone 5c and at that resolution, I only see 90% of your logo - it cuts off after "Marketers on Dema". If you front page Hacker News in the morning, you will see mobile traffic from people during their commutes. Not catching that during QA and recognizing it as a marketing problem is a concern.

  2. You write "Marketers on Demand empowers business owners to build their business without worrying if their marketing is on track." In my opinion, that's pretty bad marketing advice - the kinds of business owners and entrepreneurs who use HN need to have a handle on whether their marketing is working or not.

  3. You say "Ideally a request is about 30 minutes of work." How is anyone who is unsophisticated enough to use your service supposed to gauge that? How will that uncertainty tank your conversions? And, not to be rude, but in light of my first and second points, do you think charging $178 an hour provides good value?

• by edw519 on 3/4/15, 2:41 PM

  I wish you well, Jamil. Here's a freebie:

  Put on a jacket & tie and get a professional headshot. That image negates everything else you're trying to communicate on your page.

• by happywolf on 3/4/15, 3:29 PM

  Do you do job-based consultation? Say one has a project/website, and that person has some marketing goals in mind, can you quote a price instead? Also, any guarantee on effectiveness?

• by wodenokoto on 3/4/15, 2:23 PM

  How can you have a solution ready in 24 hours? Or even a thought through solution proposal?

  Some questions takes time.