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Marketing Your Startup
Marketing Your Startup Read online
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ISBN: 978-0-8144-3968-5 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Covel, Simona, author.
Title: Marketing your startup : the inc. guide to getting customers, gaining traction, and growing your business / Simona Covel.
Description: New York : AMACOM, [2018] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017060023 (print) | LCCN 2018004101 (ebook) | ISBN 9780814439685 (ebook) | ISBN 9780814439302 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: New business enterprises--Marketing.
Classification: LCC HD62.5 (ebook) | LCC HD62.5 .C675 2018 (print) | DDC 658.8--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060023
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1
WHAT IS MARKETING ANYWAY?
2
DEFINE YOUR BRAND
3
POSITIONING YOUR PRODUCT
4
HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU SPEND?
5
ONLINE MARKETING
6
TAKING IT OFFLINE
7
CUSTOMER MARKETING
8
WRITING A MARKETING PLAN
9
SETTING A BUDGET
10
WHEN TO MIX IT UP
11
FINDING OUTSIDE HELP
12
UNDERSTANDING MARKETING SOFTWARE
CONCLUSION
SOURCES
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WHEN WE SET OUT to write a book that could serve as an easy-to-read, hands-on marketing resource for company founders, we found much of the best material was within our own walls.
For nearly forty years, Inc. has provided advice, education, and inspiration to the leaders of fast-growing private companies, chiefly through our unrivaled editorial content.
That material—produced by veteran reporters, all-star editors, and expert columnists, among others—is much of what you see on the pages of this book. Our thanks to all of them; this book wouldn’t be possible without their groundbreaking work.
From that reporting, we’ve compiled the following best-of guide—a book that’s both actionable and inspiring, designed to help company founders demystify the art and science of great marketing. Our hope is that this will become a one-stop, indispensable resource to help you spread the word and ignite growth at your company.
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IF DOLLAR SHAVE Club’s founder hadn’t made that famous YouTube video, the one where he deadpans about razors, polio, and his big-name competition—to the tune of 25 million views? What if Dropbox didn’t think a referral program was worth it—a program that at times, generated 35 percent of the company’s signups?1 What if Warby Parker’s PR firm hadn’t helped place a story in GQ—a piece that dubbed the company the “Netflix of eyewear” and generated so many sales that the startup ran out of inventory?2
If those companies’ founders hadn’t decided to spread the word about their companies—each in their own way—they may have never become household names.
The same goes for your business. So you have a killer product. Now, how will people find out about it?
Many startups fail—even if they offer a great product or groundbreaking service—because they fail to get the word out. They may think the product will sell itself. Or they may think marketing is somehow underhanded, or dirty.
If that describes you, it may help to reframe your idea of marketing. The best marketing isn’t about pushing a message or coming up with a slogan. Marketing exists to help you find people who love your product: If you don’t plan to invest in marketing, you probably shouldn’t invest in building a product, either.
If you’re in the early stages of your business, know that it’s never too early to start. If you’re worried about somebody stealing your product idea, consider another worry, says Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot and a small-business marketing expert.3 Worry about how you’ll get customers. And team members. And funding. All of these things are really hard—especially if you don’t talk about your idea.
If you’re a marketing skeptic, you may have a gut feeling that marketing is sleazy. You’re not alone. This book is designed to help you overcome that—to think about marketing in a new way. The best marketing is about building brand, reach, and credibility, and doing what you do best: helping customers.
We know a lot about that: For nearly forty years, Inc. has chronicled the victories of fast-growth small businesses—and the bumps along the way. Over the years, we’ve talked to thousands of founders who grew their companies into household names about how they spread the word.
We learned something essential along the way: You won’t win in the marketplace by shouting louder, placing bigger ads, or buying the fanciest booth at a trade show. You’ll win by building a marketing strategy and applying the right mix of tactics for your business—no matter your budget.
Let’s get started.
1
WHAT IS MARKETING ANYWAY?
MARKETING IS SURPRISINGLY difficult to define. Part research, part design, part sales—at its core, marketing is any activity that makes it easier to sell your product. We’re talking generating leads, running TV ads, using customer relationship management software, or authoring a blog: It all falls under the marketing umbrella.
You’ve probably heard people use the terms marketing, advertising, and branding interchangeably. But if you want marketing to help drive your sales, you first need to understand the differences.
MARKETING
Let’s start with marketing because it is the umbrella under which all of these other practices live. I
t includes branding, messaging, online presence, content, social media, PR, advertising, research . . . you name it, it lives under the broader canopy of marketing.
BRANDING
Branding refers to the visual elements of a company—but it doesn’t stop there. Branding refers to specific elements that range from the logo to the color theory and how the logo is used on different marketing collateral, which is just a fancy name for websites, business cards, and letterhead.
But your brand is broader than your logo—it’s about how your company makes people feel. The feeling that you evoke is at the heart of your brand. That can translate into the music in your stores, the chairs you choose for your conference rooms, or what your executives wear.
If you’re an engineer or a researcher, the idea of devoting a meaningful amount of mental energy to a logo or a music choice may seem slightly bananas. But the brand is one of the most important parts of developing and invigorating your company. It’s all about what emotions you want someone to feel when they come into initial contact—which is critically important for a startup, which hasn’t made any kind of impression yet.
Some say it’s just a logo . . . tell that to Nike.
What I would do with an extra $10,000 for marketing:
“ If I was a new lifestyle company, I’d spend it on branding. Having strong creative with a really crisp point of view that is timeless and stands out, and that you feel reflects who you are as a company, provides huge bang for the buck. You’re going to live with your logo for a long time.”
AMANDA HESSER, founder, Food52
PR
“ It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
WARREN BUFFETT
PR, or public relations, is all about getting your brand out there into the press—a category that includes newspapers, magazines and TV but also the ever-growing universe of online media. Done right, PR can be incredibly powerful. Just ask Warby Parker co-founder Neil Blumenthal. Within 48 hours of GQ dubbing the company “the Netflix of eyewear” in 2010, the site was so flooded with orders for $95 glasses that Blumenthal temporarily suspended the home try-on program.
That wasn’t their only problem. The company had launched the website so quickly that they hadn’t included a sold-out indicator—so customers were placing orders long after inventory had run out. The bad news: The waitlist was 20,000 people long. The good news: The company hit its first-year sales target in three weeks. That’s the power of your name in the press.
While PR can help give you enviable problems like these, it doesn’t work for everyone, and it has to be executed adeptly. Not all media “hits” are created equal. PR is only one of the marketing tools, and in order to be effective, you have to have a great online presence and consumer standing to back it up.
ADVERTISING
Like PR, advertising is an outbound marketing approach—you’re pushing your message out. But this time, you’re not filtering it through a reporter. With the wonderful world of digital, there are boundless new opportunities to use this space that are extremely cost effective—from traditional media advertising, like billboards and TV, to Google AdWords and the latest social media advertising.
Like PR, it’s important to pick advertising destinations that engage your target market. Online advertising in particular can be incredibly granular—allowing you to laser-focus on the specific demographics and even the mindset of your target market. It’s also critical to understand that when it comes to the Wild West of social media advertising, the landscape is constantly changing. What worked one month may not work the next, and keeping up with the universe of social media advertising products can feel like a full-time job.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
All of these disciplines can exist in a silo—but they shouldn’t. You likely need a sprinkle of this and a sprinkle of that. Much more importantly, you need a cohesive strategy behind it all in order to determine how much money and muscle to put behind each campaign or initiative.
With such a vast set of objectives, one of the most critical tasks in practicing any kind of marketing is setting aside the time to analyze what worked, what didn’t, and what you can do next time to improve performance. If you don’t take this time after a campaign or even a test, you’ll never get better.
Ultimately, while marketing is an umbrella which encompasses all of the above and more, the handle of that umbrella is sales. All of your marketing messaging should work together and have strong calls to action to drive bottom-line revenue.
Which channels and tactics are right for your company? By the time you finish reading this book, you’ll know how to put together a strategy that makes sense for you—whether you’ve allocated a big part of your budget to marketing or need to bootstrap your way to success.
2
DEFINE YOUR BRAND
ICONIC FITNESS BRAND SOULCYCLE operates indoor cycling studios around the country and helped popularize the pay-per-class fitness model. Founders Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler always had a very clear vision of what their brand embodies. According to Rice: When it comes to the brand, she—yes, she—was a person, with distinct needs. “There were no accidents,” Rice told Inc. “We always thought of SoulCycle as a brand, even when we had no right to think of it as a brand.”
That meant laboring over everything from the fonts to the logo to the smell in the studio. Because the company’s first location in New York City was set back from the street with no signage, the founders were forced to focus relentlessly on the in-studio experience. “There were no sensory details left unturned,” Rice says.
The founders focused obsessively on their customer—the centerpiece of their brand. “We always say when we train employees that we’re not looking to create users, we’re looking for evangelists. It should be the kind of experience that when you’re done and you’re going out to dinner with your friends at night you’re still talking about it and it takes up most of the dinner conversation.” They remembered personal details about customers and went as far as moving a customer’s car if her meter was up. That, they say, is the “culture of yes” that makes customers want to tell their friends all about the experience.
From the beginning, they decided SoulCycle would be the star of SoulCycle. The company refused to sell water or protein bars from other makers in their store. Rice says that’s a cornerstone of how the brand developed into such a strong presence. “There’s only one thing you’re ever served, and that is soul. Your shoes say SoulCycle, the wall says SoulCycle, the clothing says SoulCycle. You cannot miss the message that we are trying to deliver you.”
SoulCycle’s branding works because it starts with the core understanding of their target customer—the person they needed more than any other, day in and day out. Every decision the founders made about the brand was based on connecting with that person—someone who was looking not just to work out, but to connect with a truly immersive experience. That brand became the grounding principle for how the company interacted with customers, every single day.
From there, they relentlessly focused on consistency, which experts say is key. The more consistent you are with every element of your brand—in SoulCycle’s case, that even includes the smell of the studios—the more your consumers know exactly who you are and will remain loyal to you.
BRINGING YOUR BRAND TO LIFE
“ If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.”
HOWARD SCHULTZ
A brand is a living, breathing thing and will undoubtedly evolve as your product adds features or as the marketplace changes. That can make it hard for an entrepreneur to decide when to declare yourself “done” with brand development and ready to bring that brand to market. You can start by making sure “there’s a level of rigor . . . in the beginning,” says Emily Heyward, co-founder of branding agency Red Antler, which has counted companies like Casper and Birchbox as clients.
The answers you come up with shouldn’t feel flip or dismissive. They should feel like a part of you, and a part of each and every one of your people, inside of each and every function within your company. If you can’t articulate those answers, if everyone in your organization can’t articulate them clearly, not only do you not know what your brand is, but you’re simply not ready to go to market, Heyward says.
Once you’ve answered those questions, you need to make sure the brand you’ve uncovered is viable for the long term—you need to future-proof it. You can do that, says John Cinquina, the founder of brand strategy agency Red Meets Blue Branding, and author of Build Great Brands, by periodically holding a strategic meeting with your organization’s key stakeholders to clarify the plan for the coming twelve months, as well as three, five, and ten years out. Consider the markets you might operate in, the size you expect to be, your product or service diversification plans, and the opportunities you foresee.
You may have answered these in the past, but this time, discuss these variables within the context of your brand. Define what role the brand will play in helping you reach these goals and targets. Brands can only be successfully tied to company growth when you understand what success looks like.
Marketing Your Startup