a quick guide to marketing your startup

A Quick Guide to Marketing Your Startup

2

A QUICK GUIDE TO MARKETING YOUR STARTUP

Sandeep Mallya

Founder & CEO, Startup Café Copyright © Startup Cafe Marketing Solutions

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by Startup Café www.startupcafeindia.com Cover Designed by Startup Cafe


Contents

3

Introduction…........................................................4 Leverage Social Media…......................................5 Have a Great Content Strategy…........................ 6 Focus on SEO…....................................................7 Design & User Experience….................................8 Facebook Remarketing…......................................9 Email Marketing…................................................10 Facebook Contests…...........................................11 Facebook Custom Audience................................12 Google AdWords…...............................................13 Competition Analysis….........................................14 Discounts or Trial Model…....................................14 Video Marketing….................................................15 Google Analytics…................................................16 Conclusion….........................................................17


4

Introduction

Startup Marketing can be a massive challenge due to the limited time and resources at a startup’s disposal. You may be solving a problem with your amazing product, but if people don’t hear about it, then all your time and effort spent on developing it is wasted. The “build it and they will come” motto is outdated and impractical. It’s impossible to build long-term sustainable business without a robust marketing plan. Despite being a crucial element for success, marketing always takes a backseat when you launch your own business. The focus tends to remain on building your product or adding new features to it. But startups which ignore marketing do so at their own peril.

As we live in a digital, social and mobile world, the old school marketing techniques which involved hoardings, newspaper ads, television ads et al are expensive and don’t usually work for small businesses. There are many examples of small businesses blowing humongous amounts of money on traditional advertising and going bust. Startup Marketing is a whole different genre of marketing. It does not involve traditional marketing techniques as these techniques don’t work for startups. The secret sauce to startup marketing success is the right combination of social media marketing and content marketing. In the following pages, you’ll find effective ways you can market your small business without a huge budget. Each point comes with links to tools and resources which will help you in achieving marketing excellence for your startup. We’ve provided examples wherever possible and recommended tools which either follow the freemium model or cost very little.

“Good marketing

makes the company

look smart. Great

marketing makes the

customer feel smart.”

Joe Chernov


5

1.  Leverage Social Media

Social media is here to stay and there are multiple platforms where you can showcase your product or service to your target audience. But don’t go social just to promote your offerings. Your fans will get bored and will eventually stop bothering to check-in on your page. Instead focus on educating and entertaining your fans and occasionally promote the value proposition of your product. Follow the 80:20 rule of social media. 80% of your content on social media should be aimed at educating your prospects and engaging them in conversation while only 20% should be aimed at driving sales and promoting your brand. Follow this rule and you will soon see results from your social media strategy. Before venturing out into social media, it’s crucial to define your buyer persona and target audience. Social media takes time and energy. To start with, choose just 1 or 2 platforms. For many businesses, Facebook is the primary channel due to its large active user base. Choosing the right social channel, however, depends mainly on your objective. So if your primary goal in using social media is to recruit talent, then LinkedIn may provide more value than Facebook. Develop an editorial calendar so that you’re posting consistently on your social channels. Devote at least 30-45 minutes per day to create content and schedule updates on your social channels. Like/follow other pages in your niche and interact with them on a regular basis. Respond to the questions posed by your fans. And more importantly, don’t give up if you don’t see results in the first few weeks. Be patient! It takes time to achieve social media success. Don’t compare it with social media advertising efforts. Think of it as an opportunity to build brand awareness, establish thought leadership, develop a loyal community of fans, and to gain market insight.

Recommended Tools & Resources

Social Media Management Hootsuite (http://hootsuite.com), Buffer (http://buffer.com),

PostPlanner (http://postplanner.com)

Social Media Usage of Startups •  81% of small businesses use

social media •  82% of small businesses use

social media for lead generation •  91% of small businesses found

it increased brand awareness •  Among social media users, 94%

use it for marketing

Source: LinkedIn


6

2. Have a Great Content Strategy From your website and blog to your social media channels and emails,

make sure your content is informational and educational to your target audience. The Hummingbird update from Google rewards great content. Because of Hummingbird, SEO is now more content driven and you should strive to make your content great to increase its visibility on search engines. Follow the 80:20 principle once again by ensuring 80% of your content aims at educating your prospects. Follow a consistent strategy for all your social media channels and you will soon see some loyal fans and customers for your business.

If you’re struggling to create original content for your social channels, you can curate content from relevant third party publishers in your niche. There’s no point in setting up a Facebook/Twitter business page and keeping it empty. Tools such as PostPlanner and BuzzSumo can help you in finding trending articles and topics in your niche, and you can either curate content or create your own original content by researching on these topics. Develop an editorial calendar for your social media pages and post consistently and frequently as per the calendar. If you’re maintaining a business blog, update it at least twice a month. Make it easier for your readers to share your content by adding social media share buttons. This also increases the chances of your content going viral. Shareaholic is a popular WordPress plugin which allows you to add social media share buttons to your blog posts. Also install a subscription plugin and place it prominently on your blog. If your content is engaging, you’ll soon build a loyal set of subscribers. It’s a great inbound marketing technique to generate leads for your business.


PostPlanner (http://postplanner.com) BuzzSumo (http://buzzsumo.com)

Shareaholic (https://shareaholic.com)

What’s Google Hummingbird? “Hummingbird” is the name of the new search platform that Google is using as of September 2013, the name comes from being “precise and fast” and is designed to better focus on the meaning behind the words. Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words. Source: Search Engine Land


7

3. Focus on SEO As stated in the previous point, SEO is now more content-driven. So put all

your effort behind writing great content. Don’t just stuff random keywords in your content to get a better search ranking on Google. That doesn’t work anymore. Instead focus on long-tail keywords and use tools such as Google Keyword Tool to find the relevant keywords in your niche. Focus on SEO best practices, and if need be, hire a good SEO manager to optimize your content. Also ensure that your website is responsive as mobile-friendliness of a website is now a ranking factor on Google. If you’re using WordPress CMS, then you can customize your website for mobile devices using the plugin WPtouch.

Yet another tool which can help you in resolving SEO issues on your website is SEOSiteCheckup. You can sign up for free and check the on-page, off-page, and technical SEO issues of your website. SEO is constantly evolving, so the key thing is to keep yourself up-to-date with all the new changes and algorithm updates. Moz has a resourceful blog and its founder, Rand Fishkin, is actively posting articles on SEO which are extremely useful for budding SEO experts. WordPress users can also install Yoast SEO plugin. This will make on-page optimization for your webpages an easy task.

And while you’re at it, make sure you’re optimizing content for other search engines as well. Bing now has a 20% market share in the US and DuckDuckGo, a search engine startup, is believed to be the fiercest competitor of Google. So don’t forget to check how your website ranks in these search engines as well.


Moz (http://moz.com), SEOSiteCheckup (http://seositecheckup.com/)

Google Keyword Tool (www.google.com/AdWords) WPtouch (http://www.wptouch.com/)

Yoast Plugin (https://yoast.com)

Avoid these 10 SEO Mistakes 1)  Keyword Stuffing 2)  Broken Links 3)  Copying Content 4)  Content Duplication 5)  Poor Content Quality 6)  Non-Unique Title Tags 7)  Non-Unique Meta Descriptions 8)  Non Credible Links 9)  Avoid the Using of Analytics 10)  Optimizing the Wrong

Keywords

Search Engine Market Share (Global) Google – 69.24% Bing – 12.26% Yahoo – 9.19% Source: NetMarketShare


8

4. Focus on Design and User Experience Websites that have great design and easy navigation always engage and

awe the users. While content plays a critical role in user engagement, design is often the first thing that a user notices on your website. Use compelling visuals and imagery to draw visitors to your website and to keep them hooked. There are tons of websites where you can get free high-quality stock photos. A website with great design and content makes you look like an industry expert, even though you may just be a startup. Check out the website of Fueled - a mobile app design and development company and you'll know what great web design and content is all about. While you're at it, check out their blog as well where they talk about top sites for design inspiration.

It’s also useful to do some user testing to see how your site is perceived by your target consumer. Peek User Testing is a highly-recommended tool where real users get a peek into your website and give a 5-minute review of your site. The users usually comment on design, navigation, content, along with some other insights which you can then use to improve the overall user-experience of your website. When it comes to graphic design for social media, Canva is the best because it’s loaded with features and extremely easy to use. You need not be a design expert nor a Photoshop Pro to design beautiful graphics on Canva. It’s a DIY tool with tons of templates and has a decent collection of stock photos as well. Pablo by Buffer is another useful tool for designing amazing graphics. While it doesn’t have as many features as Canva, it can still come in handy for creating super-quick graphics for social media.


Canva (http://canva.com) Canva Design School (https://designschool.canva.com)

Pablo (https://buffer.com/pablo#) Peek User Testing (http://peek.usertesting.com)

Fueled Website (http://fueled.com) 20 Awesome Sites for Free Stock Photos

(http://www.startupcafeindia.com/20-awesome-sites-for-free-stock-photos/)

User Experience Facts & Stats •  88% of online consumers are

less likely to return to a site after a bad experience.

•  48% of people cited a website’s design as the number one factor in deciding the credibility of a business.

•  94% of a user’s first impressions are design-related

•  67% of shoppers were more likely to buy from a website that is compatible with mobile devices.

•  Only 55% of companies are currently conducting any online user experience testing.

•  85% of UX problems can be solved by testing with 5 users

Source: Techcrunch, Mashable


9

5. Use Facebook Remarketing Facebook direct ads are not as effective as they used to be back in 2012.

In fact, there are several videos online which criticize this model by Facebook and some of the reasons are validated. The fact is that you can’t expect to achieve great results with Facebook ads if you’re still using it as if it’s 2012. If the targeting parameters of your direct ads are not precise and the messaging is not compelling enough, your ad will receive very few impressions. Since the organic reach of content has dropped significantly on Facebook, users have no option but to budget for advertising. So if you’re not sure about setting targeting parameters for your Facebook ads, the safest option is to make use of Facebook remarketing. This is how it works: •  You create a pixel code on Facebook through Ads Manager. •  You place that pixel code anywhere on your website. Typically it should be placed on the page where you’d like conversions to take place. Ex: Products page. •  You wait for a good number of visitors to your website •  Once you know you’ve had sufficient number of visitors on your website (Facebook will let you know when you’re ready), you reconnect with those visitors via Facebook ads.

Facebook allows you to exclude those visitors who have already made some kind of purchase on your website. This feature comes handy if you’re an eCommerce startup.


Getting Started with Facebook Remarketing: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/ads-for-websites/website-custom-audiences/

getting-started Facebook Ads Manager -

https://www.facebook.com/business/products/ads/

Facebook Remarketing is great for many reasons: •  Reduced cost per impression •  Better conversion rates •  Improved ROI •  Precise Targeting •  Cost effective branding


10

6. Email Marketing Email marketing isn’t dead yet. On the contrary, it’s more effective than

ever. However, some companies are still using emails in the least engaging way possible. As a result, most emails go to the SPAM folder. Have a content strategy for your emails as well and make sure your call-to-action is strong and compelling. Email lists are not difficult to generate. Have a form on the website or run a meaningful Facebook contest and voila, you have your email list. Use this list wisely and achieve results almost instantly.

By using a tool such as Mailchimp, you can then save these lists and use them whenever required. Mailchimp also allows you to design templates which are visually appealing and highly interactive. It’s also an excellent tool to familiarize yourself with email marketing and most startups can design beautiful templates and schedule email campaigns with the free version itself. Canva also offers several free email templates which can be used on Mailchimp.

Recommended Tools

Mailchimp (http://mailchimp.com) Klaviyo (http://klaviyo.com)

Stats Email Marketers Ought to Know •  91% of consumers check their

emails daily •  74% of consumers prefer to receive

commercial communications via email

•  66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message

•  Email marketing has an ROI of 4,300%

•  59% of companies are integrating email and social channels together

•  76% of email opens occur in the first two days after an email is sent

•  48% of emails are opened on mobile devices

•  Only 11% of emails are optimized for mobile

Happy Email Marketing!

Source: HubSpot


11

7. Facebook Contests Facebook contests can serve multiple purposes. Firstly, it’s a great way to

engage your community on Facebook. Secondly, you can build on that community and get fresh followers. And finally, it’s a lead generation tool which can help you with your email lists among other things. If you’re an App startup, then Facebook contests can help you create buzz for your app and get new users onboard.

Facebook contests are also considered to be more engaging than direct advertisements which can help you break through the advertising clutter. While third-party apps are no longer required to run Facebook contests, these apps are extremely useful in guiding the fans through the entire process. One such app is Wishpond and you can create your own Facebook contest at a minimal cost.


How to Run a Facebook Contest (http://corp.wishpond.com/how-to-run-a-facebook-contest/)

Wishpond (http://wishpond.com)

Facebook Contests can help you: •  Reach and recruit new fans •  Re-engage with your existing

community •  Launch new products and

services •  Reward your fans •  Get feedback from your fans

on a product you’re trying to launch

•  Build email subscriber list •  Increase brand awareness


12

8. Custom Audiences Feature on Facebook Another way to use your email lists is to make use of the custom audiences

feature on Facebook. To use this feature, you need to have a list of email ids or phone numbers (at least 20) of the people you want to target. In Ads Manager on Facebook, go to Audiences and click on Create Audience. Upload the file here or if you're using the mail service MailChimp, you can directly import the file from there. You can upload files in .csv or .txt format. When you're creating Facebook ads, just select this audience and Facebook will deliver ads to these people if they are on Facebook.

The advantage of using custom audiences feature is that you’re targeting ads to people who are already familiar with your brand and your products. As a result, the response rates to these ads will be considerably higher than direct ads. If you’re comfortable using Facebook Power Editor (many people

are not), then I’d recommend it. Otherwise, Ads Manager should work just fine.


4 Creative Ways to Target Your Email List with Facebook Custom Audiences

(http://www.jonloomer.com/2013/10/29/facebook-custom-audiences-target-email-list/)

How to Use Facebook Custom Audiences (http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-website-custom-

audiences/)

An Example: Let's say your company sells car seats for babies. The sales process is pretty long because these seats are very high quality, and your buyer persona does a ton of research before making a purchase. So your sales team usually calls potential customers at least two times before people buy, and has a good amount of lead intelligence about leads because of all the research they do pre-purchase. You've created a list of over 30,000 people in North America that have subscribed to your blog, talked to a salesperson, or given you their email address, and you want to target these people on Facebook to remind them about your business. Custom Audiences would be an excellent way to target this particular list of 30,000 people who have shown interest in your products, and potentially convert them into customers! Source: HubSpot


13

9. Use Google AdWords While SEO is a cleaner way to rank high in Search Engine Result Pages

(SERPs), it can take some time for your website or blog to appear on Page 1 on Google. An easy way to achieve that status is through Google ads or paid search as it's called. Creating an AdWords account is simple and it’s one of the most effective and proven ways to rank high on search engines.

Google ads are fairly straightforward – you pick the right keywords for your business, you set the budget as per your needs, and you pay only when an interested party clicks on the ad. Unlike organic search which has a long cycle to prove ROI, ads run by Google show results almost immediately. Google AdWords also contains an extremely useful feature called Google Keyword Tool which can help you research on trending/popular keywords in your niche.


Google AdWords - https://adwords.google.com

Common Mistakes to Avoid While Using Google AdWords 1)  Targeting keywords that are too

broad 2)  Putting too many keywords in an

ad group 3)  Sending traffic directly to your

home page 4)  Not including negative keywords 5)  Not running display ads for

Google’s Display Network 6)  Not measuring ROI


14

10. Do a Thorough Competition Analysis There are high chances your startup has a major competitor and this

competitor has deployed several digital marketing techniques to promote their business. Study the competition and analyze everything they are doing online. Check out the content on their website and blog, social media strategy, and the kind of advertising they do. Use tools such as SpyFu to make a thorough competition audit.

11. Give Discounts or Offer a Trial In their groundbreaking book Rework, Jason Fried & David Heinemeier talk

about how entrepreneurs need to emulate drug dealers. Here's an excerpt from the book - Drug dealers are astute businesspeople. They know their product is so good they’re willing to give a little away for free upfront. They know you’ll be back for more-with money. Emulate drug dealers. Make your product so good, so addictive, so “can’t miss” that giving customers a small, free taste makes them come back with cash in hand.

That is the reason why we have free versions of popular products such as Hootsuite, HubSpot, BufferApp, Moz, and HireRabbit. All these companies realize how good their product is and know that their customers will be willing to pay for their products once they see the value in it.


Making Freemium Work (https://hbr.org/2014/05/making-freemium-work)

SpyFu (http://www.spyfu.com)

One of the chief purposes of freemium is to attract new users. If you’re not succeeding with that goal, it probably means that your free offerings are not compelling enough and you need to provide more or better features free.


15

12. Video Marketing

There's nothing quite like a brief, informative video which explains your

products and services to your target audience. One of the most cost-effective

ways to make a video is to use easy-to-use tools such as GoAnimate to

make an animated video which educates users on your offerings. Create a

YouTube channel and link it with your Google+ business page to gain more

followers for your brand. Remember YouTube is the second-largest search

network in the world and videos are another factor that Google considers for SEO.

So have a video marketing strategy to engage your target audience.

If you’re yet to launch your product, then you can create a short 45-second

teaser video about your product to see how your potential customers are

responding to it. Or you can offer a short demo of your beta product just like Drew

Houston did for Dropbox. If you generate enough buzz, then you know there’s a

market for your product.


GoAnimate (http://goanimate.com)

DropBox Demo Video (https://youtu.be/7QmCUDHpNzE)

The Dropbox Success Story Drew Houston is the CEO of Dropbox, a Silicon Valley company that makes an extremely easy-to-use file-sharing tool. To avoid the risk of waking up after years of development with a product nobody wanted, Drew Houston did something unexpectedly easy: he made a video. The video is banal, a simple three- minute demonstration of the technology as it is meant to work, but it was targeted at a community of technology early adopters. Drew narrates the video personally, and as he’s narrating, the viewer is watching his screen. As he describes the kinds of files he’d like to synchronize, the viewer can watch his mouse manipulate his computer Drew recounted, “It drove hundreds of thousands of people to the website. Our beta waiting list went from 5,000 people to 75,000 people literally overnight. It totally blew us away.” Source: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries


16

13. Use Google Analytics All the activities mentioned in this book will be futile if you don't track and

analyze data on your website. Get a Google Analytics tracking code for your website. With Google Analytics, you can track your website traffic, get to see where people are spending time on your site, the bounce rate of your website, the search engine traffic of your site, the top content on your site which gets you the maximum visitors, and a plethora of other useful data which can help you in developing a digital marketing strategy.

If you haven't installed the Google Analytics tracking code on your website yet, stop everything right now and install it. You won't regret it.

If you’re using WordPress CMS, then we’d recommend a plugin called Jetpack which provides valuable stats on traffic growth and other useful functionalities.

Recommended Tools & Resources Google Analytics (https://analytics.google.com)

Jetpack (http://jetpack.me)

Here is a list of important data that Google Analytics will give you:

•  Where your visitors are coming from – very important if you’re targeting a specific audience.

•  How your visitors found your website – this is very important for determining which of your efforts are paying off. It shows if visitors found your site directly, through a referral from another website (ex: Twitter, Facebook), or from search engines.

•  Web browsers used by your visitors – knowing which web browsers your visitors use allows you to know which browsers you should be focusing on.

•  What keywords were used by visitors in the search engines to get to your website – this is very crucial for SEO. Knowing which keywords people are searching for to get to your site determines if you are on the right track.


17

Conclusion Startup marketing is not easy, but it’s a necessary function

that every startup needs to take seriously. Without marketing, you may have a great product or service, but you aren't going to generate enough buzz around it. You need to spread awareness of your brand and make people talk about it. And one way to effectively do that is through the digital marketing activities outlined in this book.

We hope you found this guide useful. If you have any

questions or if there was something missing that you felt should be included, send me an email: [email protected]. For more resources and insights on startup marketing, please visit www.startupcafeindia.com, and follow our blog: www.startupcafeindia.com/startup-blog.

About the Author Sandeep Mallya (Twitter: @SanMallya) is the founder of

Startup Café Marketing Solutions, a company focused on helping startups realize the true potential of social media and content marketing. As the CEO of Startup Café, he has advised a number of startups on social media and content strategy. He lives in Bangalore, India.

A Quick Guide to Marketing Your Startup © 2015 Startup Cafe Marketing Solutions