What Startups Should Know About Leveraging Data to Begin Digital Marketing, Part 1
Recently, Adam Roe, of Atlanta-based digital agency FortyFour, presented to a group of entrepreneurs at the Switchyards Downtown Club; an Atlanta-based B2C hub. In this 4-part series, I’ll recap the topics he touched upon — actionable online marketing ideas and insights which any startup can apply. This first installment addresses a simple but powerful concept: start by building the best product you can to unlock the best marketing you can get — word of mouth.
“I have to warn you now,” began FortyFour’s managing partner, Adam Roe, “I have 44 slides to get through…coincidence?” With that, our Friends of Switchyards session was off for an informative, fast-paced ride through a primer on “Leveraging Data to Begin Digital Marketing.”
Adam, who began his career as a developer, kicked things off with a reference to Alan Beychok, CEO of Benchmark Brands. Adam credited Alan with introducing him to the world of eCommerce marketing, referring to his mentoring as an “MBA from the school of Alan Beychok.” So what did that MBA, along with his own experience, bring to light for Adam in terms of leveraging marketing data? And what can startups learn?
Adam’s first area of insight was the least “data-led.” He simply stated, “The better you build your product, and the better you build your brand into your product, the easier it will be to market.” He went on to quote Fred Wilson, venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures: “Marketing is for companies with sucky products.”
Not that Adam was devaluing good product marketing, but he wanted to drive home the point that acquiring customers is already an expensive proposition. Every startup’s goal should be to reduce issues as much as possible and let marketing solve the problem it’s best suited to: attracting and keeping customers engaged with a great product or service.
“The better you build your product, and the better you build your brand into your product, the easier it will be to market.”
In an era of “test and measure,” this is still one of the best common-sense pieces of advice we’ll ever hear. Why? Good products helps spawn product advocates, form stronger customer relationships, and result in the best kind of marketing: word of mouth. The result can produce more than customers, it can create advocates for us.
In the coming installments, I’ll cover Adam’s guidance for defining our initial marketing strategy, understanding what drives our business — the KPIs (including understanding and measuring Viral Coefficient), starting with low-cost channels, mapping channels and activity to the Intent Pyramid, and testing everything we can to establish statistical expectations and pursue improvements.
// Special thanks to Aly Merrit for her ninja editing and Adam Roe
