A 7-Step Guide To Set Up Marketing For Startups
This post was written by MEST Business Fellow, Kathrin Sühlsen.
Are you struggling to kick start marketing for your startup? You are not alone. Many new businesses find getting started with marketing efforts isn’t easy. People often wonder: Which channel should I use? How much budget do I need to allocate? What activities should we focus on?
The truth is, no one knows if Instagram, a referral strategy, or Email Marketing will work best for your business. But, spending time, money and resources on marketing activities that seem to be “best practice” but don’t relate to your business, can be fatal for your startup. Don’t run away so quickly… you need marketing to start acquiring leads and customers! With the uncertainty around who is your ideal customer and the moving parts around how you should build your product, a traditional, extensive marketing plan won’t work. Instead, let me share a more agile, marketing framework for startups.
Here are seven easy steps to get your startup marketing efforts up and running. Tried and tested, I used this process to grow an insurtech startup’s organic traffic and lead generation by 300% in 6 months!
Step 1: Create initial user personas
You have probably identified a target market that you want to serve initially, but often these markets can be quite broad. Therefore, it’s important to conduct proper customer segmentation and create clear user personas. Be as specific as possible: Next to demographic and geographic data, make sure to include characteristics about your users’ needs, buying preferences, social relations, mode of consumption, use of digital channels, etc. This activity is the foundation of all further steps, so take your time to get it right. Here’s a useful guide on how to define user personas.
I say “initial user persona” because — unlike an established business with hundreds or thousands of customers — you don’t yet know who your customers will be. At the beginning of your marketing efforts, your user persona will likely be based on assumptions, but that’s okay.
(We assumed that our initial user persona was: “A young professional between the ages of 25 and 35, has no children, lives in an urban area, regularly searches for educational content online, makes the majority of purchases online, doesn’t have detailed knowledge about insurance but feels the need to buy some, reluctant to meet with an insurance agent, uses Facebook a few times per week.”)
Step 2: Draft your value proposition
In your startup’s marketing activities, you want to make sure to clearly communicate the value that you provide to users/customers. To do this effectively, you and your team need to have a clear understanding of this value as well. Answer the question: What is it that customers get out of it? For example, does your product/service save them cost, increase their revenue, give them access to something, provide convenience, etc.?
It’s possible that your value proposition changes in the future (and it most likely will as you pivot). But, start with what you have now. This will help you get off the ground.
(Back when I worked for the insurtech startup, our initial value proposition was something along the lines of “We provide an online platform for comparing and buying different insurance products. Our customers save time (because they don’t need to meet an insurance agent), find and buy at the cheapest price, and thus feel in charge of their personal financial decision-making.”)
Step 3: Set marketing objectives & metrics
“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else”
-Yogi Berra.
That’s right — defining and working towards objectives is one of the most important things in your business. These objectives, or key performance indicators (KPIs), can represent your vision, your business strategy, or, in our case, the desired outcomes of your marketing efforts.
Make sure that your objectives are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound). Traditionally, marketers would look at customer acquisition from a funnel perspective, where people pass through different stages until they turn into customers. You can use this funnel to draft your objectives.
Ask yourself: “What do I want to achieve? What are my main business goals for the next 6 to 12 months and how will my marketing efforts contribute?” Keep in mind that most of your objectives might be based on assumptions. That’s okay — validating assumptions on marketing channels can be objectives as well.
Your objectives should be accompanied by metrics. Good marketing metrics are, for example, the number of leads, conversion rate, customer acquisition cost, click-through-rate or number of sign-ups. Avoid bad marketing metrics, those that are nice for your ego (Instagram followers) but in reality don’t bring you closer to reaching your goals. (Good read: 6 Pointless Marketing Metrics to Avoid at All Costs).
(In the beginning, we set our marketing objectives on a six months period, thus acknowledging the fact that our product, customer segments, and marketing channels are likely to change.
- Increase organic traffic by xx % > Visitors
- Generate xx leads through content marketing > Leads
- Have xx paying customers by the end of the year > Customers
- After 6 months we will have clearly identified one marketing/customer acquisition channel that works for our business > Assumption validation)
Step 4: Leverage on your test users
Great — Now you know where you are heading to and how to measure your “marketing journey”. Chances are that you are aiming at generating some form of traction, right? Before you select your marketing channels (in the next step) in order to acquire new leads and customers, don’t forget your early users! If you have a minimum viable product, you have hopefully tested it with different users who have given their input and feedback. They probably have a genuine interest in your product because you have engaged them in your product development process, it helps them solve their problem or it provides certain value to them.
These users can easily become early adopters of your product. Don’t forget about them, but instead keep them engaged, offer them discounts or even consider giving them your product for free. Basically, anything that keeps them happy. Because, if they have a great experience with your brand and your product, chances are high that they will refer it to their friends, family or other businesses. And, then the snowball effect sets in.
Step 5: Select initial marketing channels
Nowadays, you can choose from so many different startup marketing channels — paid and non-paid. Entrepreneur and author Gabriel Weinberg identified 19 traction channels; I like to argue that there are even more.
Don’t be mistaken — there is no “one fits all” channel for all startups. People might tell you that “Content is King” and that’s why you start building out your blog and social media channels. Or, you decide to attend every trade fair and conference because that’s what your competitors do. But, does this really apply to your particular product/service and your customer segment? My advice: Look at your user personas and marketing objectives, and then choose one to two channels, to begin with.
- Which online and offline channels do your users use?
- Who are your low-hanging fruit customers and how can you reach them the fastest way?
- Which channels give you short- and longterm results?
From my experience, one of the most promising channels is leveraging on your early adopters, such as making use of referrals. What better way is there than letting your customers speak to the value that you provide?!
(We assumed that people from our customer segment searched online for educational content to make better buying decisions. Thus, we chose content marketing and SEO as our initial marketing channels so that users would visit our website. Later, we also added business development and affiliate marketing to acquire leads.)
Step 6: Develop a plan for your channels
You’ve made it this far — Bravo! In order to get the most out of your marketing efforts, now it’s time to create a plan for each of the channels. This can be a content plan if you focus on content marketing, an ad campaign strategy if you test Google Ads, or a sales plan if you need to meet a lot of people in person. You can engage in different channels at the same time, but make sure they are all connected to the overall marketing strategy and objectives.
What to consider in planning out your startup marketing activities:
- Channel objectives
- Timeframe (one month, six months?)
- Budget (e.g. for paid ads on Google/Social Media or promotional material)
- Activities (prospecting, content creation, ad campaign management, securing speaking engagements, etc.)
- Team responsibilities
- etc.
(As for our insurtech, we worked towards monthly targets with weekly plans. Since we initially focused on content marketing, we developed an extensive content plan including keyword research, content creation, proofreading, content sharing, etc. Later on, we built out paid ads as well as business development strategies to reach our marketing goals through other channels.)
Step 7: Implement > Measure > Optimize
3,2,1 — Go! Now, get the ball rolling and test your marketing channels. You should give each channel a few months to develop and create outcomes. It’s crucial that you always have an eye on the objectives that you have created in Step 3. With your current marketing activities do you reach the objectives or not?
Metrics will tell you if your marketing efforts lead to achieving your objectives, such as acquiring leads and customers. They will also tell you if a particular channel does not work as expected. Then it’s time to optimize: Either you make changes within your channel strategy, e.g. allocating more resources, creating different content, etc. Or you abandon a channel completely and explore another one.
(Our initial content marketing channel proved to be quite successful. With a thorough plan, we managed to increase organic traffic by over 300% in less than six months. Through that, we were able to generate leads and a reasonable amount of customers. After a few months and by engaging a lot with our users, however, we discovered a more pressing customer pain point (the unavailability of a particular kind of insurance for many people). Subsequently, this led to the pivot of the product and customer segment, and to the adjustment of our marketing efforts. So, we went back to step 1 :))
Final thoughts
This piece is intended to guide you as you get your marketing efforts off the ground. It emphasizes an objectives-based approach to marketing. However, you can (and should) also use marketing activities to build your brand or to engage your current users. For example, even if social media does not turn out to be a lead-generation-channel, you might want to make use of it to establish yourself as a thought leader.
Your goal as a founder should always be to identify one or two strong customer acquisition channels. They are the ones that provide you with a constant flow of leads and customers and drive your business growth. But also remember to not get too dependent on one channel. Over time, you should strive to build out additional marketing channels as well and continuously test new ones.
