Marketing for a new startup

I’m famously someone who can organise a party in a brewery, but can’t persuade a bunch of alcoholics to attend the event. The last thing I should be doing is giving marketing advice, but I thought I’d share my experiences in the hope of sparing some of you the more painful bits. I’m writing this while most of the conversations are recent, but therefore, I don’t know how things will turn out. Watch this space for part 2.

As a bootstrap founder of b2b saas software, I started to look at doing my own marketing because I ran out of funds around the time I needed to get going. Selling not being one of my strengths, I went looking for advice from marketing experts. Approximately everyone I asked two said two things: at least one recommendation that was utterly different from the recommendations I got from everyone else. And, they pointed out that some or other aspect of my website marketing content was really, really, bad, or just plain missing. I’m not in my comfort zone when asking for help, but even so, I was surprised quite how unpleasant the whole thing was.

Recommendations

To save you going through the same exercise, here’s a summary of the recommendations. I’ve pruned the ones that were specific to my product rather than generic, so this list doesn’t even cover all of them!

• Make some videos for youtube or vimeo, people like to see how to use the product
• Go and pitch at conferences for target industry
• Hire a stand at conferences for target industry
• Hire someone to rewrite your marketing copy
• Network with your potential customers in the local area
• Upgrade linkedIn membership, look for and cold call potential customers
• Write a blog about software pain points potential users have: conclude with how the product has solved similar problems
• Submit the product to software comparison sites and articles

My interpretation of this experience

Here is what I eventually concluded. I’m sure all of these are good things to do, but my impression is that the specific recommendations I got were based on the things that the person I asked was good at. For example, if they were good at public speaking, they suggested conferences. That’s great, but they weren’t tailoring their advice to the things I’m good at, or the available budget, or the available resources / skills / time, or my geographical location: I don’t live in Silicon Valley or any other tech or business hub.

Plus, most of this advice is primarily for companies in the growth phase, that is, companies that have some revenue already, and are hiring marketing consultants. I thought I was in the growth phase: after all, I need to grow some customers and my revenue. But it turns out, “growth phase” is a technical term, and I’m not in the standard definition. I’m in the phase of “get the first customer(s)”, which is not at all the same thing.

For a marketing consultant to be interested, I would need to have a least a small number of pilot customers, so that I have quotes, feedback, requirements, and above all testimonials. Even if I had budget available, marketers would not necessarily be interested.

Better copy might help a bit, but probably not much. Random passing traffic aren’t likely to be interested yet, my product isn’t mature enough, the target industry isn’t clear, and it hasn’t been through a real user feedback phase. I don’t have real user feedback, because I don’t have real users yet… ah yes, hello catch 22.

In summary, only one person can do the initial marketing / selling to land the very first customer, and that’s a founder. Ideally I would have a business-oriented co-founder, but in the absence of such a magical being, I’ll need a plan to do this myself. I’ve been doing this somewhat, by email and other messaging tools, but so far, it’s not been a success. Looks like I need to break out of my comfortable home office.

Meanwhile, MVP of my marketing copy is probably good enough for now, because I’m going to need to supplement it with in-person conversations anyhow.

Early marketing plan

The advice that resonated the most was about working with potential local customers. B2b saas software is theoretically available to a global audience, but my first few customers will need to have a personal relationship with me.

I want to get user feedback on the features, I want their quotes. Above all, I want my software to be the kind of thing you can just pick up and use, like most phone apps are now, and to make it so, I will need to talk to users and see them using it. I need to persuade them to talk to me about their pain, and their requirements.

As a result, the priority for now is local business events as a fellow business owner, not industry events, and not behind a stand.

Step 1: attend local business events

Even though my eventual target market is broad, I need pick a sector, and ideally all or most of my pilot customers will come from one sector. That way I can tailor the marketing copy to the pain points specific to the industry. Also, if I advertise too much early on, I might avoid be spotted and killed / bought by the competition. Time to expand industries comes later.

I’ve picked an industry sector slightly at random, on the grounds that a) they should have the pain points I’m targetting and b) there are lots of them in the local area. Many are sole traders, which are not a good target market for my software, but not all, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised how many I’ve found on a straightforward Google maps search.

Step 2: pick an industry sector, based on hunch with some help from Google maps for a local search

Cold calling doesn’t appeal at all, I’m terrible at selling, terrified of phones, and not very good at asking for or getting help. It’s a sub-optimal combination. But there is a hint of light, I’ve found a good number of companies in the target industry where I can probably ask someone for an invitation.

I used linkedIn search to work through my network to find friends-of-friends who are both local and in the target industry sector, and also to get an idea of the number of employees in the target companies. I’m currently hitting search limits, happily it’s towards the end of the month when they will be reset. Yes, I should upgrade my linkedIn membership.

Step 3: contact friends and colleagues who can set me up with a warm call

Implementing a plan

I have signed up for a couple of events, and I have a list of potential companies that I can warm call, and a list of friends to ask for a recommendation. Watch this space for what happens next!