All you need to know about marketing for your startup. From how to test your product through when to launch and how to build your marketing machine for scale.
You are here because you want to know what marketing do you need which is great because ou already know that you need marketing – you are already ahead of the curve
To show me the Hockey Stick Growth
To acquire initial clients
To get me some buzz / traction
To help me grow faster
To find me new markets
Because everyone has one
Because my investors told me to get one
Test - Is your product ready?
Launch – Maximize impact
Growth – Scale, scale scale
Tech Company - No longer startup
הולך לדבר גם עם B2B
וגם על B2C
Many founders feel that they can simply launch the product to the public as soon as they’ve finished the development and QA. However, many have not formulated what they actually want to achiehve, not to mention how to explain the product to the world.
If you are Product company than you need
Test stage:
Messaging
KPIs
Funnels
Define your target audience – Lowest hanging fruits
Get a good copywriter to write your story and messages
Bring enough users in bursts to adapt to dev cycles
Create initial messaging according to target audience - minimum 4 versions copy
Install your Analytics everywhere
100% conversion rate increase - Remove camilyo
It’s also cheaper - more users fail as you go down the funnel - At the top of the funnel the impact will usually be the largest in terms of how many people will continue to the next stage
Funnels? Events? Users?
What’s relevant – What leads to conversion (chosen KPI)
Common – On boarding, Share funnel, daily usage – retention - Examples
Test for Purchase and subscription only after launch. First make sure you have product market fit
Cheaper and faster to test actions at top of the funnel
Adapt tests to dev cycle – work together
A client of ours had communication app – They allowed both Facebook and email – using only email increased the rate of people using the app as initial action by 50%. Set a goal to increase the number of people who login and then do initial action such as add more details, upload a photo or connect their cloud account
And this is how it looks when we look at the whole funnel – note that between 2nd and 3rd phase it’s higher in the old funnel but the overall conversion is higher
Bring traffic to youre website and test oppups and top bars, or anything else to make srue that when you launch, you can maximize the conversion ate
Popups, Top Bars, Exit banners – they can all work well as long as you provide awesome timely and needed content on your blog
Get a Facebook Page
Start being active on Twitter
Make sure to optimize your LinkedIn presence
Get a blog
Prepare a list of relevant bloggers
List your business online where possible
Create a landing page
Start working on your newsletter
Prepare and email to your contacts
Setup your blog and social presence – write initial content and get interaction so that your blog and social properties look alive
Get a blog running - Prepare a list of articles that will interest your target audience
Prepare a list of bloggers who might be interested in your product
List your business in releavant websites – From cruncbase for investors to Yahoo directory and from Angel list to Betalist
Create a landing page to collect emails and start your newsletters already
Need to manage Copywriter and manage the process of finding initial messaging - or at least know they need a copywriter or storyteller
Need to know how to acquire users – respeially on Google and Facebook - read the data
Work with product to determine KPIs and measure how the product works
Launch is a process – set a period of time for launch – after this period of time you’ll move into growth phaseand focus on different KPIs
Start analyzing from
Finalize your story with data from test - u know what works, you can now expand to a coherent story
Be Bold – Make sure you actually have a story
Target on the highest most narrow target audience that can give you sufficient traction
Steve jobs – First iPhone – Apple have invated world first – shown the finger Talk about this - The fucking finger – not scared at making a statement
Bring something else from startup content world
Clear
Measurable
Focus on
Hard to set KPIs - we don’t know how the product works yet
Choose Goals and KPIs for efforts:
Run campaigns on X channels
Get minimum number of users
Pitch X number of bloggers
Optimize content and website / a
Increase organic traffic by Y
Icons
Insert slides from previous PPT – icons
The fact you launched in not interesting to anyone – unless you’ve rediscovered penicillin – wait until you have something to say
If you want to do PR – Go with an agency located in target market and make sure you know how to maximize PR work
You;ve invented penicilien
You have customers who can back this up
Data about your industry and how it behaves
And you have founders or/and investors who are rock stars
If you are Product company than you need
Define KPI and set to get them any cost
Focus on launch success – You can only launch once - לא רואה בעיניים
Able to tie channels together – track and measure but mainly execute a coherent, complicated plan
Experience with many channels is more important then expertise with few
Holistic approach– Know how to measure all channels in one place – Google Analytics
Knows how to choose and interpret the story
If you die today – growth must continue
Analyze Data from Launch – What worked, what didn’t and what has potential
Become an expert in any channel that shows success – hire experts
Manage processes rather than channel
Building the marketing machine
Saying that you do Growth hacking is easy – finding the right features that will drive growth is a whole different matter.
Traffic before hacking– Hackers are multi talents – Don’t become one – hire one.
Start Playing - play with everything:
Email communication and signature
Viral mechanics
Conversion technics on mobile and web content
Play with content – Target audience and subjects
Take risks but measure it all religiously
Famous examples:
Airbnb = Craigslist story – posting all listing on craigslist as well – reverse hacking and invites – perfected invites and coupons
Hotmail with email signatures
Twitter – forcing to follow at least 5-10 accoutns after testing
LinkedIn – Public profile is nice and all but the who viewed your profile + email drips won
Mailbox - create desirability with showing you how far a long in the queue are you
Drop box – Giving you more volume when your friend joined -
Also mention gmail invites (remember people paid for them on ebay?
Or maybe this funnel – Inbound is a very good way to describe the holistic online marketing – make sure your content is there, your native ads, but most important :
1. What efforts to which stage of funnel
2. Analyze and draw conclusions
3. It’s cyclical
Talk about the change you’ve made in your clients’ lives – work
Show your impact on the world
Talk about your vertical - Become a thought leader
Focus on target audience – never all
Takes time – Minimum 6 months
Make sure the message aligns with the messaging!
Once you launch, you need to make sure your operation has the potential to be profitable and scalable - no other way to do that
K Factor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-factor_%28marketing%29
Talk about AirB&B
Remember – No one in Facebook knew what was K factor was
However – There’s only 1 Facebook the rest should measure
Funnel 2b (open_event 4th day average retention; 12/06 – 18/06)
Yearly Planning
Budget – overall
Build team
Clear ROI goals
Product feedback loop - Marketing must send feedback to product
Innovate with channels – Take risks
You need strategy – holistic, long terms, brand aware strategy
Large marketing department – divided to teams
CMO – Face of the company
New products – new markets and languages
Not just online – TV and Print
Team in multiple locations
Hire Experts
Don’t be afraid of consultants – learn to measure their effectiveness
Test more risky channels - Downloads, push, Offline
Be the second one to jump on a new platform or channel – not the last
Use Social Media to create multiple touch points with customers – be wherever they are – invest in the long term relationships