3 less-shared lessons in marketing your startup

There is an immense of amount of information out there about how to successfully market your startup — how to build a marketing plan, how to have an effective social media strategy, or how to create killer content continuously. And they all are so important to build your brand personality and visibility. But here I decided to include recommendations that are infrequent but are as critical as having a good informative website, or an integrated social media strategy.

Lesson 1: What’s your story? I follow the Shark Tank series on television and really enjoy the way startups come and field questions about their product, the market and the money. I believe (and I am sure you do too!)It is so important to believe in your product, have a vision for its growth and know the resources required for that growth. With each startup taking the platform at Shark Tank, it strengthens my belief that every business needs a story, a pitch

Most of us have this dream of expanding our business by bringing investments. While that might be some time away, it still pays hugely to be prepared with your pitch. And here I am not emphasizing on the numbers (you will hire help for it if you are not a numbers guy yourself). What you need to prepare is the story behind your product or service. And believe me, we all like a good story!

  • What was your Aha! moment that led to building your product
  • What thoughts and emotions went behind it
  • If there is an impact already created with your product, tell that story

More on stories in my next story on marketing for startups. But an observation I wish to share here is one story or pitch will not fit everywhere. After you have crafted the story of your business, don’t stop there. Instead, practice it, measure the time you take to deliver it and then customize it to the context of your most frequented surroundings. For me those would be

  • 1-minute elevator pitch, to get you started in the smallest time-frame you get
  • 5-minute pitch in a networking event, to impress the CEO of your next potential client company
  • 5-minute employer pitch to build that high-performing team

Lesson 2: Maximize the value of work NOT done. No No! don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting a siesta here. On the contrary, I am suggesting that you do what you do best in your business, and make your product do what it does best in creating value.

I have two recommendations:

  1. When you started, you clearly had a problem that you wanted to solve, or an objective that you wanted your customers to achieve. What comes naturally to us startups is ideas of making our product even better with value added features and services. And soon we start building these features, spending more and more time and money behind these add-ons, thinking that our main product is now well-defined. I am not averse to experiments. In fact, it is highly recommended but only when you commit to run these experiments in a focused manner, not losing track of where you started and where you stop. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. I believe something similar applies even in business es— 80% of revenue could be coming from 20% of the features that customers value the most in your product. Keep this thought in mind when you next look at your business (and experiments).
  2. Maximize the value of your core competencies by focusing less on someone else’s. As a business owner, you are accountable for your business. And that’s probably the reason why you will want to design every post on social media about your product, or code the new webpage about your new product(s). I request you to respect your capabilities and trust others in your team to do work that is beyond your core competency.

Build a habit: to define and refine your vision and share with your team often so they can run with the day-to-day execution. Because that’s how you will master the art of maximizing the value of work not done!

If you are 1 person company: Learn to outsource. Hire the right vendor for yourself. You may have to try with a few initially, but you will eventually land the partner that gets you. This might sound like work, but it is for your sanity and value

Lesson 3: Continue with Agility. Sure you are a startup. And even if you are not, you can still relate to the ever changing world out their. A new policy get implemented, a competition suddenly appears out of nowhere and took your ‘steady’ client away. Or closer home, your super talented team member decides to explore career options outside your company.

My third and final lesson in this article applies to not only marketing but to your entire organization

The point is that your world is constantly changing. And in such a place, a long-term plan may not work. It is a good idea to adapt to Agile Marketing. I am in no away suggesting that you have no plans. What I will recommend is to have short-term plans. You have a vision of being present in every major city of your country. Spend some time to to think what that vision means today for marketing and how you can define a sub-goal what’s connected to the larger goal and at the same time, is achievable today given your current constraints. Revisit your short plan often and collect frequent feedback such that you can make tweaks and changes as you move ahead.

Out of the many recommendations that Agile Marketing makes, my favorite is to make your goals and your work visible. I once heard an interview of Brian Tracy, author of the best-selling book, Eat That Frog. He said that your employees and team members love to come to work when they know what you want. The point here is that when you are clear about your goals and priorities, and make them visible, not just clients, you also paved the way to delight your people.

The effectiveness of your plan increases manyfold, the moment you take it out of your neatly organized startup folder in your computer, and make it visible in a prioritized manner.

  • Your days (and that of team’s) look clear
  • You become realistic with what you can get in a week, given your team size
  • Your morale improves when you start pushing your to-dos to done!

I hope these lessons help!

Antara Pal Chowdhury

Written by

Work-wise: Agile marketer | As a Person: Continuous learner, keen wonderer & reflector of life around...

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