The 7 Deadly Sins of Startup Marketing

There are some really great perks of the job if you're marketing a startup.

• You get to build something bigger than yourself. 
• You may work alongside some of the smartest, scrappiest, most interesting people you’ve ever met. I’ve worked with one CTO who had a fleet of chickens, and another who built a robot lawn mower. 
• You experiment, fail, learn, and improve – and in the process, grow both YOURSELF and the BUSINESS. 

And, when you get it right, you grow fast, maybe you make some money, and hey, you feel great. But, when you get it wrong... well, let's just say you learn a lot.

At INBOUND this year, I had the chance to share 7 of the most common mistakes startup marketers make. These are lessons I've learned by way of my own experience, and my perspective of high-growth organizations from Boston to Silicon Valley.

And, per usual, I've uncovered a few hard truths along the way.

You can watch the full video and get the slides for this talk here, or keep reading.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Startup Marketing (and How to Avoid Them)

Note: The 7 Deadly Sin trope originated with Christianity, relating to transgressions that were fatal to spiritual progress. Nobody's going to die if your startup marketing fails (unless you're doing, like, medical devices in which case, please don't sue me). Rather, these deadly sins are fatal to startup growth.

Sin #1: Poor expectations

Truth: Everyone has an opinion about marketing - and you know what they say about opinions...

Nowhere else in the business is a function so scrutinized and so open to uninformed opinions. Because everyone consumes marketing every day, everyone has an opinion on how it should be done. That generally means startup marketers have some really interesting expectations placed on them.

And perhaps nowhere else is this constant parade of opinion so bombastic than at a startup, an environment with high stakes, no money, no time, ambiguity, high risk, and an immense pressure to deliver.

What some marketers are expected to do in businesses is often ridiculous. Sometimes what we promise to deliver is absurd. We need to be clear about what marketing can actually do, and how much we should invest in it, both personally and as a business owner.

There are two sides of the spectrum:

Many people think marketing is unnecessary. Build a great product, and the users' sheer love for it will drive word of mouth virality. They'll tell a friend, who will tell a friend, who will tell Oprah, and all of a sudden you've got "I LOVE BREAD" levels of advocacy.

Sometimes this does happen.

On the other end of the spectrum, some believe marketing is magic - and they ultimately invest far too much in marketing as they believe it will solve all their problems. Sometimes the product indeed catches up to the vision and brand much later.

Most people fall somewhere in between, but mistakingly believe marketing is a list of tactics. The truth is - great startup marketing is:

• Strategic (not tactic soup)
• Aligned to business goals (Your most important startup marketing goals are your most important business goals. Hint: Funding is not a goal - that's a means to an end.)
• Essential - not something that can be treated as an afterthought or farmed out to your CFO's nephew. (I'm sure he's a good kid.)

Depending on the stage of your business, you'll have different goals and different methods of acquisition.

I know what you're thinking -- what if the product isn't perfect yet?!

Don't freak out.

At the incubation stage of the business - you know, when the product is still kind of figuring itself out - your job in marketing is actually, in large part, a discovery role, as you work to help the business confirm the RIGHT customers who are willing to PAY you to solve the RIGHT problem. Your goals here are to collect market insights, help build the MVP, and build awareness of the founders and the business itself to get on the radar for investment.

Here's that chart again to help quell the anxiety of we-don't-yet-have-product-market-fit:

In the full talk, I answer a common question - what comes first, brand and buzz or product? We all know companies who have built well-loved brands before having a great product in market.

My take: It depends on how much money you have in the bank. :)

The final part of expectation setting (this is a big sin so there's a lot to it) is understanding the role marketing plays at the stage the buyer is at.

PLG there stands for Product Led Growth, of which Openview has a library of resources.

Alright. You've joined a startup with the right expectations of Marketing. You've acknowledged your role in the process. What is left to possibly f*ck up at this point?

Plenty.

Sin #2: Trying to do it all.

Contrary to popular belief, marketers are human.

Look, life is about prioritization and that is never more evident than at a startup, where both time and money are tight. 

You've got to do what matters.

Unfortunately, marketing is a REALLY EASY WAY TO WASTE A LOT OF MONEY.

Look at the 2nd most popular reasons startups fail - they run out of cash. (Shortened graphic, emphasis mine, full graphic here.)

There are four ways to waste all your money in startup marketing:

1. Target the wrong buyers (or try to target everybody)
2. Spend all your money across a bunch of the wrong channels
3. Lose track of costs and return on your investment
4. Cry

Just kidding, there's no crying in startups.

To avoid wasting all your money:

1. Focus on who matters most - in the full talk I share strategies from Uber, DropBox (tech-savvy professionals who seek to simplify their lives), AirBnB (global citizens who want to live like a local) and Lululemon, who each have explicit, clear, and focused target audiences. I highly suggest reading about Lululemon's "muses."
2. Make money moves - big impact, creative, low budget motions. Creativity is free, people. Airbnb launched in a situation of high demand and low supply, namely the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver with a lack of hotel space. Uber launched in cities with built-in "accelerants" - real life situations to spur growth like a concentration of nightlife, events, intense weather, and sporting events. In the talk I share some of my own high-impact, low-budget (and effective!) marketing moves.
3. Watch your numbers. (CAC < LTV)
4. Profit

Sin #3: Imaginary market, imaginary problem.

Truth: 70-90% of startups fail, depending on whose research you refer to.

The #1, Grand Poobah, Big Daddy, Chief, TOP reason startups fail is.... wait for it...

A lack of market need. AKA: no problem to solve, and no market to market to. How can you tell when the product you're marketing is a dead end vs a winning bet?

It mostly comes down to solving real problems for a big enough market, and having the right team to execute the right strategy. (Yes, quite a few stars need to align for this to work. That's why so many fail, and so few make it big.)

One company that illustrates the importance of solving a real market need is Juicero, Silicon Valley's favorite joke.

The company raised $120M including funds from Google's VC arm to bring to market a $400 juicer + subscription (the magic word in the valley) to packets of juice.

According to Juciero's CEO, there was far more to the product than just a bag of juice squeezed by a large automatic... squeezer. It also:

• calibrated the packs by flavor
• used "connected data" to manage its supply chain
• could remotely disable Produce Packs if there is, for example, a spinach recall

But, as Bloomberg so eloquently puts it "... after the product hit the market, some investors were surprised to discover a much cheaper alternative: You can squeeze the Juicero bags with your bare hands."

Oops.

This leads us to another hard truth: If you imagine the pain, you’ll build tech that solves imaginary problems. You may also over-exaggerate the pain, assume the pain, fail to prove the pain, or simply delude yourself into believing the pain is more important to the buyer than it really is.

Some founders start a company to fix a problem they themselves experienced.

• Donna Levin, co-founder of Care.com, couldn't find reliable care for her children.
• Zoe Barry, CEO of ZappRx, watched her brother wait months for epilepsy medication.
• Nataly Kogan, founder of Happier, spent years seeking happiness through achievement.

Don't imagine the pain, and don't imagine the market, unless you're comfortable getting paid in imaginary money.

Also, an important aside I make in the talk is that lip service is not validation of a real problem. Don't listen to well-intentioned people who may tell you they'd be willing to pay for something, or tell you the problem is there. Money talks. Time talks.

Paying customers and active users are real validation. Everything else is noise.

The best antidote to not drinking the KoolAid or falling for your own BS is listening to real (potential) customers and being open to their objections.

A common refrain among founders:

"Our great product isn't selling. Why?"

You may have overlooked an objection (see above) or may be underestimating the competition (keep reading.)

Sin #4: Competitive delusion

This one is important.

It's never been easier to start a company. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found that 130M startups are founded annually, worldwide. 1.78M are tech startups, and here in the US, 80k new startups are created a month.

Marketing must draw a clear distinction between options for buyers - because, as we all know, when all the options look the same, you can only compete on price.

Marketoonist puts it at its simplest:

Your job is to make it seem like there's no other option but yours. Your job is to make it look like you do something vastly different than all the rest

In the talk, I illustrate the differentiation created by WeWork compared to the original shared office space company, Regus.

WeWork's growth to $47B (compared to Regus' $3B) is thanks in part to its intentional positioning.

"…more than beautiful, shared office spaces… a community. A place you join as an individual, 'me', but where you become part of a greater 'we'. Community is our catalyst."

But, many coworking spaces fall into the hall-of-lookalike-shame trying to compete with WeWork (but, ultimately, sounding just like them.) Read Ruth Reader's FastCo post "Here are a bunch of cowork startups saying the same things about how different they are."

We have to be incredibly on top of what the others in our market are doing and saying. This feels like such obvious advice to many, but when we have so much on our plates at a startup, it can be really, really easy to get comfortable and beat the same drum when the market may be calling for a different tune.

Sin #5: Underestimating the real competition

This one is simple.

Your #1 competitor is however the customer is solving their problem today. 

“What would your customers do if you didn’t exist? For many new products, the answer is: do nothing, or hire an intern to do it" - the remarkable April Dunford, whose two decades of experience is all found in a new book about positioning.

Marketing’s job is to point out what’s wrong with the current approach. You've got to be very clear about the risks of doing nothing to change the way it's being done today.

Sin #6: Vague on value

You've also got to be incredibly clear about personal value.

B2B buyers are 50% more likely to buy when they see personal value for them, or a positive impact on their career. They are also 8x more likely to pay a premium, according to research from Google, Gartner, and Motista.

I recommend the POV of Julie Supan, Dropbox's first head of marketing and communications. She considers the perspective of the individual using the platform: "If my life’s work is in the cloud, how will that change what my workday looks like?"

Another resource to help understand how value is felt on an individual level is from Bain & Company and HBR, who find that value is increasingly defined by more individual and inspirational parameters for B2B purchases:

Full article.

Sin 7: Hiring the wrong people.

The amazing Mollie Lombardi, Human Capital Management expert and Parkinson's advocate, says it best:

“Every hire is a huge percentage of your startup. Bad hires resonate, loudly."

You've got to get it right.

An early team at a startup looks much different than the team required for the scale stages of the business. Here's the difference:

On an early team, you'll do a little bit of everything.

Digital marketing, email marketing and database growth, customer interviews, competitive intelligence, copywriting, measurement and reporting, optimization and testing, planning, sales enablement and conversion paths, content marketing, earned media, events and owned media.

You know, a typical 9-5 ;)

The idea of a Jack-or-Jill-of-all-Trades is brought to life in a startup like nowhere else in the marketing world. That can be a great situation for some, and a really bad fit for others.

The DNA of a startup marketer:

• Comfortable with ambiguity
• OK saying “NO”
• Self-starter (no adult supervision required)
• Willing to reach beyond the job description (both below + above)
• Resilient (You will f*ck up. How you respond matters, most.)
• Resourceful (Learn to swim!)
• Great listener
• Optimistic realist

Sound like you? Go for it.

Being part of a startup is one of the most challenging, and rewarding ways to build a career.

One more truth to share:

The only startup marketing rules that matter are yours.

I know it's a cop out, but I'm not 100% right. These "sins" don't apply to all startups, all industries, or all marketers. There are many who are exceptions to these "rules."

As with everything else in life, never assume everyone else has it figured out. They don’t. I don’t. But there are a lot of people willing to share their lessons. One great book is Lost and Founder from Rand Fishkin - an honest look at the journey from a founder's POV.

Like marketing, in startups, everyone has an opinion. Listen to your customers, your instincts, and to what the data is telling you.

You will probably fail. So what? The biggest sin would be to not try at all.

Good luck.

Watch the video of my talk, and access the slides here.

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