The Journey to Building the World's Best Coupon Marketing Funnel

You know, when I look back at the hustle and bustle of my most thriving startup, it's tempting to think it was all a cakewalk. But don't get it twisted; even when you're at the top of your game, there's this nagging feeling of, "I could've done that better." That's the entrepreneur's itch. We're never quite satisfied and are always hungry for more.

When you're an entrepreneur, you've got to be a jack-of-all-trades! I think it’s a lot like being a juggler. You're always trying to keep a dozen balls in the air, and sometimes one or two are bound to drop. For me, the hardest ball to keep up was the one representing my work-life balance. See I'm not one of those people who struggles to get out of bed in the morning to go to work. I love the grind, it keeps me up at night. Truthfully, I wake up at 2am excited to think about what I am going to try next. But that grind also leaves me with a tough balance. I felt like I was constantly having to make tough choices between my work and my personal life. Should I skip my kid's soccer game to work on a problem? Should I work late to get something done, or go home and help my wife with dinner?

I remember one time, my wife and I were arguing about whether or not we needed to buy a birthday card for our son's friend's party. I argued that he/we could just make one ourselves, she thought I was being ridiculous when I complained about the cost of birthday cards. What I knew and she didn’t was that we were struggling financially. Of course, I didn't want to tell her that. No one wants to admit when they are in that situation, especially if they are the ones that directly caused it right? So instead, I made up some excuse about how it’d be good for our son’s creativity. That worked by the way. I'm not proud of that, but it's just one example of the kinds of compromises I had to make to build Piggy. It's tough being an entrepreneur, but it's even tougher when you're trying to balance it with a family and survival.

Trial by Fire: How Marketing Funnels Mirror Life

My marketing strategies are like a mirror reflection of how I tackle life’s daily problems. I'm not sure if it’s because I've always been stumbling around and learning on the go, or if my brain has just been rewired into a marketing machine after nearly two decades of product marketing and funnel development.

It always amazes me when I speak to marketers or companies that drop these massive budgets on a marketing hunch, then give up when they fail. I personally find those stories so frustrating, because I know they have the wrong people in the wrong places. Marketing shouldn’t require endless budgets for success online, but marketing will need data to be successful. If you don’t have that, go back to step one and get the data you need first!

That’s not to say that being bold and blowing your budget on one campaign doesn’t work. Look at GoDaddy. They dropped their entire marketing budget on one super bowl campaign and crushed it. They got as lucky as a lotto winner in my opinion.. Despite the risk taker I am, I wouldn’t take those odds! Make your mistakes, make them small and learn from them quickly.

That's why I decided to share with you the story of how I built the world's best coupon marketing funnel. It's a story of risk, failure, and learning. But it's also a story of success. And I hope it will inspire you to think outside the box and create your own marketing masterpiece. 

The Birth of Piggy: An Idea Ahead of Its Time

When my partners and I started our most successful venture Piggy, we knew we had a great product. We were confident that it would be big, but we didn't realize just how big the online coupon industry would become at the time. In hindsight, it seems foolish that we didn't anticipate that. After all, in theory, everyone who shops online should be using a product like Piggy. Our product was intelligent and incredibly user-friendly, making it easy for people to find the best coupons and save money on their purchases instantly.

What Was Piggy?

You know that feeling when you walk into a store make a purchase and then realize there were coupons you could’ve used? What if you had a magical friend who would follow you around and hand them to you when you needed them? Imagine we built just that, but digitally. Enter: Piggy. Piggy, wasn't just some run-of-the-mill coupon pusher. Nope, Piggy was a sly friend, who'd virtually leap into action at every checkout page, holding the golden coupon for you. Not just any golden coupon, oh no, he was always holding the absolute BEST coupon. And just when you thought Piggy was done, he’d sprint back to the checkout, cheekily grabs a bit of cash from the till, and slide it into your pocket. Every. Single. Time. All it took was one click at checkout, and there you’d be with your personal pig trying all the available coupons on the internet and adding cash back to your order. Piggy was a revolutionary coupon concept that changed the way people shopped online forever. But it’s secret to success was simple: it offered users the best deals, without any of the hassle. No hidden costs, no data selling shenanigans. All the goods, none of the tricks.🍻

Tales from Piggy's Launch : Woes of a Bootstrapped Startup

Our product, in all its dazzling brilliance, should've taken the world by storm. But life's never that easy, is it? At that time when people thought of coupons online, it’s because they were at a merchant’s checkout, saw a coupon field and then left to search for coupons on google. They’d then find something like RetailMeNot with a bunch of nonsensical coupon codes that were fake for the sake of getting someone to enter their email. Then when that person did, they’d be pounded with emails or text messages. People were burnt out, they didn’t trust anyone, let alone an extension. Then of course there was the looming threat of competition. With a good idea, there’s bound to be other players in the space doing the same thing eventually. And if they brought outside capital, with a little luck and good idea. That could spell disaster for us. 

Outside capital for us? Nah, we chose to bootstrap, and quite stupidly I might add. I'll spill the beans on the whys and the how’s of it in a later chapter. And if you’re sitting on the edge, thinking of whether or not you want to be digging deeper into my entrepreneurial escapades, maybe now's the time to become a paid member. A little spoiler? You'll get a sneak peek into the pitch deck that had investors lining up with my later ventures.

Oh, and speaking of frugality, remember that birthday card dilemma? The same “tighten your belts” approach was our business mantra. Every dime counted. Whether it meant driving around in a sputtering car borrowed from a family member or tightening our bootstraps further; sacrifices were the order of the day. Product, payroll, and then, perhaps, a bit of ramen noodles if we had left overs.

I won't lie. The nuances of raising capital flew over our heads. Our stellar product needed the money, but we wanted it without the spotlight. The dollars, they were hard to come by.

Hold onto your seats, because what you're skimming through is just a glimpse of the grand saga of building the mightiest marketing funnel you've ever seen. Up next, I’ll pull back the curtain on adapting the product to fit the market and why "expert" advice might be noise.

Still with me? Here's a teaser for part 2 on finding product market fit. The coupon funnel I built, it raked in the big billions for the industry, Yep, Billions with a B. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it.