Startup Marketing 101

Anoop Aulakh@_anoop

About Me

• Marketing, BizDev, Sales, Product• Design, Non profit, Real Estate,Tech startups• Vancouver / Silicon Valley• QuikPiq, Perch, Schoolzone, Cleanweb, Strutta

@_anoop

Early Stage Startup Marketing

• Customer Development• Getting Traction

• Any burning questions?

Customer Development

• Product Market Fit

Customer Development

• Understand your customers’ problems and needs intimately

• Create a hypothesis• Validate with real people

Customer Development

• Online Survey• In-person interview

Food on the Table

• Observed shoppers at grocery stores• Asked survey questions• Asked interviewees to sign up for $$$• Got rejected!

Food on the Table

• Found 1 person willing to pay• Used “Concierge MVP” to understand needs

and problems• Dropped off weekly package with coupons and

recipes• Collected feedback, AND… $9.95• Manual work, no code

Eventually…

• Got a few more customers• Learned LOTS• Low tech iterations (in-home visit > emails,

cheque > credit card)• No wasted time/money on product

development• Built a solid foundation of domain expertise so

they knew how to win

Customer Development

Tools• Survey.io, Google Forms, SurveyMonkey• “If you could wave a magic wand and change

anything about the way you do _______, what would it be, and why?”

• Will you pay $20 to sign up today?

Don’t know where to start?

Exercise

• Who is your customer/user?• What are your assumptions?• Where can you find potential users to

interview?• How can you test your assumptions in the

interview?

Getting Traction

Getting Traction

• Where can you find your first customers/users?

• How can you do this on a low budget?

Pre-product Marketing

• Lead Generation: Landing Pages, AdWords, Social Media

• Content: Blog, articles, e-book, whitepapers• Relationships: prospect, media, influencer

You are the expert in your domain!

from @aprildunford

Lead Generation

• Landing Pages, Social Media Promotions• Lead capture promotions, downloads,

webinars

Landing Pages

• Concise Value Proposition• Use your customers’ language• Clear Call To Action• Capture email

• Tools:• Unbounce, LaunchRock, Striking.ly

Social Promotions

Social Promotions

• Low Barrier to Entry (Enter to Win)• Fan-gate if on Facebook• Offer a prize that is relevant to your users• Collect email!

Tools: (use free trials)• Offerpop, ShortStack, Strutta

Content Marketing

• Blog, articles, e-book, whitepapers• What content is valuable to your user?• Who makes good content today?• Learn from top players• Use terms and keywords your customer uses

(SEO)

Where to post…

• Quora• Hacker News• Reddit• Blogs specific to your nice market

A word about PR…

If your customer doesn’t read tech blogs, Don’t waste time getting covered by tech blogs!

Exercise

• What type of content might be valuable to your user?

• Who makes good content today?• What are some examples of blog posts you

should create?

Push The Ball Forward

• Be ruthlessly efficient with your time• Don’t spend time on activities that aren’t

crucial• Test assumptions quickly• Get out of the building!