6 Marketing Mistakes Made by Pre-seed Startups
In this guest post — the second in our ‘mistakes series’ — Holly Brautigam from Passionfruit takes a deep dive into the 6 marketing mistakes made by pre-seed startups and shares tips to avoid common pitfalls.
When working for a pre-seed startup, time is precious and money is tight. Don’t waste it by falling into these common marketing traps.
- Clear marketing goals are missing
At Passionfruit, we speak to pre-seed startups every day and one of the biggest mistakes we see is companies not clearly defining their marketing goals.
Without explicit marketing goals, it’s much harder to figure out what tactics and channels you should be spending time and money on. Instead, you’ll end up ‘throwing darts in the dark’, with no guarantee on whether they will land.
Having a lack of direction makes it nearly impossible to market effectively. You need succinct marketing goals outlined so you can formulate a clear strategy.
Not sure where to start? Think about how marketing will play a role in the overall business goals. Should marketing efforts help to drive revenue? Bring in new leads? Increase brand awareness? A clear understanding of your company’s marketing goals, along with how they tie back to the overall business goals, will set the team up for more success over time.
2. Overlooking market research
Anyone who thinks they know everything there is to know about their target audience and their competitors, is probably wrong. To avoid making this mistake, even when you think you know enough, do more market research.
Oftentimes, it can be really tempting as a pre-seed startup to focus on investors, rather than users (we get it, they have the cash). But truly understanding the market, your competitors, and your target audience is key, so don’t overlook it.
Without market research — such as audience listening and customer interviews — you could have the wrong understanding of your users and ICP. This means you’ll likely invest in the wrong marketing channels and tactics. You’ll spend time, money, and resources planning activations or creating content that doesn’t actually resonate.
You’ll be upstream without a paddle.
We know it might be time-consuming and may not be glamorous work, but comprehensive market research is a must-have.
3. A top-down approach to marketing
When you’re the founder of a pre-seed startup, it can be hard to let go. You’ve put blood, sweat, and tears into getting the necessary funding. You’ve built the company from the ground up. It probably feels like your baby.
But overprotectiveness can result in a top-down approach towards your marketing strategy. Instead of building and putting your trust in a top-notch marketing professional, you might say ‘I don’t need help, I got this.’
But that would be a mistake.
Instead of doing all the work yourself, invest in hiring a good marketing leader who knows how to build out an exhaustive marketing strategy.
Find someone who has experience doing more with less. If (further down the road) you need more marketing help — don’t volunteer to take on extra work. Consider using marketing freelancers who can drive quality results for less money than a full-time hire or agency.
Remember, as a leader, it’s important to trust the people you hire.
Trust they can do their job well, and allow yourself to focus on other parts of the business which need your attention. If you try and do it all yourself, mental burnout is just around the corner.
4. Not investing in a strong website and SEO optimization
Very often, people judge others by the way they look. It’s called the halo effect or the attractiveness bias. Psychologically, we naturally assign positive thoughts or qualities to attractive people.
In this case, image really is everything. It might not seem fair, but it’s a fact. And the halo effect also applies to marketing and company websites.
A company website is often the first or last touchpoint a potential customer interacts with before making the decision to buy. A common pitfall is not investing in making the website attractive or user-friendly (p.s. don’t forget about mobile users!).
Instead, pre-seed websites might look dated and it can be off-putting for their audience. Especially amongst millennials who make up 73% of decision making roles. It might be last on a long list of priorities, but trust us, it should be at the top.
Related to this, pre-seed startups often neglect search engine optimisation and we can understand why. It’s complicated, costly, and it takes a while to see progress or results.
But choosing not to invest in SEO will cost you even more in the future. SEO is a sure fire way to increase organic traffic to a company website. It makes it easier for potential customers to find your company in a Google search.
Because it takes a while to see the effects of SEO, consider learning a bit about it yourself or even bring in an SEO freelancer (if feasible).
Either way, the sooner your company starts investing in it, the better.
5. Focusing on the product before focusing on marketing
A common mistake many pre-seed companies make is focusing on product development before focusing on marketing.
To get the best return on investment, these two teams must work in tandem. If a product team spends months building and refining the product, it won’t matter if there hasn’t been any marketing efforts around it.
A product is only great if people see it. And, marketing can help generate excitement for the product amongst your target audience.
But that’s not to say you should dive in headfirst with marketing without understanding product/market fit. You need to understand the gap in the market and how your product closes that gap.
After you’ve answered this question, you can build the marketing strategy around the product/market fit and make informed decisions about which channels and tactics will be most effective.
6. Not being patient
We’ve all heard the saying ‘patience is a virtue’. But in start-up marketing, it’s not just a virtue — it’s essential for success.
Growth is a long game, and oftentimes it takes time and consistency to see any rewards from your marketing efforts.
That said, many pre-seed startups call it quits on a channel or a tactic before they’ve given it a fair shot. For instance, a company might invest in TikTok and then give up after a month just because they haven’t gone viral yet.
It’s an understandable reaction — if a channel is not performing the way you want or expect it to, why would you pour more money, time, and resources into it? The answer is simple: you can’t learn without testing and you need to account for the learning curve.
Yes, ROI is important, but for pre-seed startups real growth takes time and patience.
Conclusion
Working at a startup is a unique experience. It’s full of the highest highs and the lowest lows. Sometimes it can feel like you are treading water and unable to succeed.
But take a breath.
If you have clear marketing goals which tie back to the overall business goals, have comprehensive market research, and invest in the right projects and the right people, your chances of success will increase dramatically.
Passionfruit is a marketplace for freelance marketers. They hand-match companies with pre-vetted marketing experts who seamlessly integrate within your marketing teams. This eliminates the stresses, time constraints, and limitations often associated with traditional hiring processes.
