Startups are constantly pitching their idea to investors, press, potential employees, and customers. But if you think about it, all those pitches are in different places. Some are in PowerPoint, others in email, others on your website.
Earlier in March, Crushpath raised $6 million and launched Pitch Sites to centralize all your pitches, make them easily shareable, and track conversions. A pitch site is basically a one-page website where you sell something to someone.
And here’s how it works.
- Create one general pitch site and five to six specific pitch sites. That way, you can create a targeted pitch to investors, companies you want to partner with, potential employees, attendees of events, or press. If you’re trying to land a particular investor, you can even make a pitch site exclusively for them, including their photo.
- Make each site public or private. Your general and press sites might be public, but you’d want to keep your investor sites private.
- Share it. Pitch sites get distributed by email or social networks. Your email can even include a snippet of the pitch site to lure people in. According to CEO and cofounder Sam Lawrence, pitch sites include an automatic SEO boost, so you’ll also get visitors from search.
- Track your success. Your goal with pitch sites might be to get downloads or get contacted by investors or press. The site can track views, leads, and conversion rates.
This is an unfamiliar medium, so Lawrence offered a few tips on getting it right.
- Be really specific. The point of Crushpath isn’t to build a duplicate version of your website. When visitors arrive, they should feel like the site was written exactly with them in mind. That means no buzzwords or general language.
“A lot of companies, because they’ve been creating websites for everybody, their communication ends up being for everybody,” says Lawrence. “The power of Crushpath is that you can get really, really specific fast. . . . That’s what’s missing today in company websites – it’s not specific, it’s very, very, very, very broad.”
- Think about what motivates the customer. They may have something to gain (like saving money), something to fear (like being unhealthy), or something they find controversial. According to Lawrence, startups tend to explain what they’re doing in general instead of focusing on what the customer wants.
- Make it simple. Use simple language, solve one particular need for one particular type of person, and use simple images and media rather than corporate stock photography.
Although pitch sites are particularly useful for startups, Crushpath actually designed them for almost anyone. They subscribe to the view in Dan Pink’s To Sell Is Human: that increasingly more people have “selling” as part of their job description, even if they aren’t salespeople. The San Francisco startup’s clients already include McAfee, StateFarm, and Cox Communications.
Crushpath’s recent funding was led by Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and managing partner of The Social+Capital Partnership, with participation from George Zachary of Charles River Ventures. They will use it primarily for distribution and hiring engineers.
Pitch Sites cost $9 per month per user before April 12 – sign up here.