My learnings as a marketing advisor for emerging start ups

My learningMy learnings from being marketing advisor for emerging start ups

It was a late evening on one weekday in Thane when someone I knew while evaluating a marketing automation tool, met me in a mall. Before meeting he called me saying that he and two more of his colleagues were embarking on a journey to start their own venture and wanted to brainstorm a bit on the product category that they wanted to enter and where I had some experience in. What started off as an informal discussion ended up with a request to come on board as an advisor to shape their marketing. After a gap of nearly 6 months, when I didn’t hear anything back, and started feeling that perhaps it was not to be, I again received a call, signing me up as a marketing advisor. Today the same organization has nearly 50+ employees and about a year back had received 1.8 million dollar first round funding. Over time, I have engaged with many such startups, some over a short period and some for a longer duration, each letting me learn a lot more than I knew earlier. So I thought of sharing these learnings today. And here it goes

How you sell matters a lot more than what you sell

In today’s day and age, its practically impossible to come out with a completely new product concept or solution. And even if you do, it becomes very expensive for newbie startups to take it to the market and create traction. Most organizations in their incipient stage just ignore the importance of product marketing. For them, marketing means demand generation and everything else is a luxury. In my experience I have noted that when organizations, no matter how early they are in their journey, focus on boring stuff like properly defining their market, identifying which problems will they solve and which problems’ solutions will they take to the market, yes there is a difference, crafting their target audience and ascertaining which channels is going to be most appropriate to reach out to the target audience has a far deeper impact on the demand generation programmes. You will be surprised to know that I have interacted with many founders who just have one ask from me. How will you get leads? Well, sirs and madams, there is no sure shot formula, but if you get the basics right, some of which are mentioned above, you are far more likely to succeed than if you don’t. That’s a guarantee. Product marketing for me is more important than demand generation. ?

Quality over quantity

Yes you need lot of pages on your website, ?many blogs, quite a few other content pieces, PRs, testimonials, case studies and what have you. But do you need all of them right now? And how can a start up with no customer have case studies? So what am I trying to get at here. No matter how small you are, how less a monetary muscle you have, if I were to advise you to choose between quality and quantity I would any day ask you to focus on the former. Creating just one good whitepaper, with in-depth research is far more powerful than multiple blogs with nothing new to say. ?While its fine to use free or economically available tools for design, I feel that few important pieces of content like the product explainer video, product presentation and testimonials, if any, need a designer’s touch to make it stand out. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of looking good. Many SaaS products are sold basis its UI and ease of use. I then get surprised when these very organizations pay scant attention to design and quality for their marketing output. It’s as if it’s an afterthought. I am not advocating using Cannes awardee designer or copywriter, but I believe the attention that needs to be given on the quality of your marketing output should be no less than the attention you would give to acquire your first few customers.

?Create your vendor ecosystem

During the first few years of your journey, a start up wouldn’t be in a position to fill in all the roles required by full time employees. Since making the product market ready and getting customers is of paramount importance, most of the new recruits are either for engineering or sales and business development teams. Marketing usually is understaffed and I am not saying that this is necessarily wrong. But start-ups cannot afford to pay the opportunity cost because it is unable to give so much attention and budgetary support to marketing. So what is the way out? Create a list of external marketing partners that would work like your extended marketing team. Identify database vendors, digital and social marketing agencies, freelance designers, content writers, web technologists, campaign management agencies etc., evaluate them, negotiate and even if you can’t use them immediately, keep them on your speed dial. These vendors have extensive experience working and growing with start-ups and this can be a valuable force multiplier. Of course there would be many who would take you up the garden path and that’s why I feel this process is as important as building your other functional capabilities

Your first marketing hire should be your best marketing hire

The mistake that most if not all start-ups make is that they try to get the lowest common denominator as their first marketing hire. Anyone would do, as long as they are inexpensive, seems the motto. But the problem with this approach is that you will mostly get saddled with someone who will do only what you ask him to do. In other words, a big chunk of your time will go in guiding and monitoring him, thus making you do 50% of his work. Will you have that time? So what’s the solution? I am not advocating that you hire the CMO of Google as your first marketing hire. Firstly, why should he join you and you cant afford him either. Neither am I saying that you need someone with say 5+ years’ experience in SaaS marketing. You might not be able to meet his salary and career aspirations at that stage of your start-up journey. So here is what I would do. I wouldn’t look at the tenure but I would also not hire a greenhorn. Anyone with 2 plus experience is what I would seek. But I would definitely hire for attitude and ability to explore and learn. I believe that’s the only quality that matters at that stage. Most of the marketing that is required can be learnt on the job. If the person has the right attitude, eagerness to learn, ability to manage chaos, ability to multi task, not get bogged down by one bad day, is someone who would fit right in. ?If you get someone like him or her, then after the first 3 months, you don’t have to bother about marketing. They will be on their own meeting organization’s objectives. If you cant get them from other SaaS companies, look to hire them advertising agencies or fresh MBAs, with prior work experience from decent B schools. ?So pay a lot of attention on your first marketing hire. Hire on attitude and not experience.

Set aside a small portion of your equity for sweat equity

In your journey towards becoming an unicorn, you would need the advise and support of industry stalwarts and experts. You would need CMOs for marketing strategy, CTOs, CPOS and even perhaps CHROs. None of which you would be able to afford nor be able to be in a situation to get them on board in the first year or two of your journey. So how will you compensate them? Yes, you could hire them on a retainer basis, but their asking price wont be cheap. I think the best alternative is to have their skin in your game. Set aside, say 3% to 5% of your equity to be distributed amongst such experts. Offering an equity of 1% to your consultant CPO, would go a long way in him getting fully involved in your journey. His stake in making you successful goes up significantly and you too don’t have to shell out money up front. Yes, if you succeed, they will make a lot more than the retainer that you would have paid, but at the same time, if you fail, they too don’t make any thing. Now, of course there would be many who wouldn’t want sweat equity, but then its better you stay away from them as much as you can

Tools and More tools

The first thing that you will realize as a start up founder is that there are too many tools out there and most of them are free, at least initially. Every new person that you will meet will come with his list of preferred tools to use, confusing you even more. So I wont do that here. But its fair to say that you need to identity tools that can make your job easier. For example, if you want copy writing skills, then use copy.ai. There are tonnes of other tools, each acting as force multiplier. A successful start-up is also one that is able to pin point the right tools for the organization and makes judicious use of them

So hopefully, this article will be of some use to those who have made the exciting journey of building their unicorn. Remember, marketing is what will make or break your start-up. Do no ignore it