Presentation given to Hult MBA's Co-Creation Lab.

1. DIGITAL STRATEGY
FOR STARTUPS
Anish shah
3/12/2014

2. WHO AM I?
Anish
Shah
Principal
Consultant
Purveyor
of
Growth
bringruckus.com
@anish_shah
anish@bringruckus.com
WHO AM I?

3. QUESTION
is digital marketing important?

4. WHY DO DIGITAL MARKETING?
The internet – the party everyone is at

5. WHY DO DIGITAL MARKETING?
Small business survey

6. OK, I GET IT. I NEED DIGITAL. NOW WHAT?

7. DIGITAL STRATEGY LIFECYCLE
engagement
acquisition
activation
retention

8. ENGAGEMENT/ACQUISITION
research
§ Find a Company Name and URL without a lot of competition online
§ Basic search on Google and Google Trends

9. ENGAGEMENT/ACQUISITION
Blogging
§ Begin even before your company begins
§ Thought Leadership
§ Medium.com
§ Guest Blogging (HuffPo, Forbes, etc.)

10. ENGAGEMENT/ACQUISITION
Social media
§ Build profiles and pages on all relevant social networks
§ Twitter, LinkedIn, and any industry-specific social networks
§ Begin inviting people to follow, connect, like, etc. At launch time, you don’t
want to be at zero.
§ Post sketches, thoughts, questions for you audience, photos of your team, etc.
Keep your audience engaged.
§ Don’t post just for the sake of posting. Make sure the content is interesting,
and enjoyable to the audience.
§ Ask for feedback through your Facebook page. This is a great place for early
product feedback, and multiple different viewpoints. If you’re embarrassed of
this interaction at launch time, the posts are simple to delete.

11. ENGAGEMENT/ACQUISITION
Press research
§ Find articles written about your industry.
§ Figure out writers and publications interested in your sector
§ Set up Google alerts
§ Who is your audience?

12. ENGAGEMENT/ACQUISITION
Press outreach
§ Prior to launch, build and pitch content that is:
§ Educational
§ Funny
§ Personal
§ Take a look at the specific publications, and tailor your content to fit their
style. Ex. “Top 10 List…”
§ At launch time, put together a press release focused on:
§ Your Product
§ Founder Stories
§ Why you’re different
§ Keep it simple. Begin your pitch with a short intro that explains what your
pitch is about. Don’t mention every single thing about your product.

13. ACQUISITION
SEO – search engine optimization
§ 70% of the links clicked on Google
are organic (not paid)
§ To rank website importance,
Google and other search engines
look for:
§ Backlinks – How many
websites have URLs linking to
your website
§ Keywords – If someone is
searching for chocolate
donuts, Google will show sites
that discuss chocolate donuts
§ This is why it’s important to get
blogs and media outlets linking to
your site

14. PAID ACQUISITION
SEM
Purchasing Sponsored Listings on search engines, usually Google.
Display ads
Clickable “Banners” that show next to content on websites
Social ads
Ads on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
Retargeting
Showing display or social ads only to people that have visited your website
Native advertising
Paying to have an article written by a major news outlet

15. TRADITIONAL PAID ACQUISITION
SEM
Display ads

16. SOCIAL ADS
facebook linkedin twitter

17. NEWER PAID ACQUISITION
Retargeting Native advertising

18. ACTIVATION
Customer research
We invest heavily in customer ratings and reviews
because they are used by up to 80% of shoppers to
guide purchases.
Global Director, 3M
The shopping trip now begins long before the
shopper enters the store, so store-focused marketers
have to move their efforts forward.
CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi

19. ACTIVATION
website
§ Even if you have an offline product or local business, people will look online to
learn about you.
§ When building your company’s website, it’s important to include:
§ Explain “Why should people love or trust you?”
§ A place for people to enter their email addresses
§ Positive testimonials
§ Links to your social media site
§ Relevant product or brand images
§ A clear explanation of how to access or purchase your product (CTA)

20. ACTIVATION
a/b testing
§ It’s important to test the elements of your website, emails, and ads.
§ Test one thing at a time to make the results easier to read.
§ All tests should be “actionable” = results can be used in future rollouts
a b
§ Copy
§ Length
§ Layout
§ Call-to-action
§ Product explanation
§ Color
§ Price
§ Featured Product
Examples of elements to test

21. ACTIVATION
a b

22. ACTIVATION
a b
Version
B,
the
category-­‐centric
layout
increased
total
clicks
by
14.93%
and
product
page
views
by
5.72%
both
at
a
99.9%
confidence
level.

23. bad
RETENTION
Email marketing
§ Recipients have low patience
§ Get to the point fast
§ Focus on only 1 or 2 subjects
§ Use an equal amount of image and text
§ Avoid writing long paragraphs. Try bullet
points and images.
§ Only send emails to people who have signed up
for them
good

24. RETENTION SEGMENTING
Cross-sell lifestage

25. RETENTION SEGMENTING
Re-engagementwelcome

26. TOOLS
Search marketing
blogging
Website builders
Slides from 2-hour long Email Marketing 101 class:
http://www.slideshare.net/AnishShah/email-marketing-101-30405023
§ Google Trends
§ Google Keyword Planner
§ Medium.com
§ Wordpress
§ Tumblr
§ Squarespace
§ Wix
§ Weebly
Email marketing
§ Mailchimp
§ Vertical Response
§ Customer.io
Analytics & a/b testing
§ Google Analytics
§ Optimizely
§ KISSMetrics
Social media management
§ Hootsuite
§ Buffer
§ Hubspot
Press
§ PR Newswire
§ Technorati
Good marketing blogs
§ Hubspot
§ SEOmoz
§ Mailchimp
Paid acquisition
§ Retargeter
§ Google Ad Builder
§ AdStage

27. THANK YOU.
NOW GO OUT AND DOMINATE.