What To Do First When Marketing Your Startup

When you’re looking to boost your marketing, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. SEO! Branding! Facebook ads! Sponsor a conference! Get on Vine and Snapchat! Write something on Medium that will magically go viral! Get a distribution deal with Walmart that somehow doesn’t lose you money! There are a million things to do, and you only have so much time and resources to do them.

So, where do you start? How do you begin to prioritize this giant mess of Marketing Stuff, when everybody’s in your ear suggesting different things?

I tell my clients to do the free stuff first, not only because it’s the cheapskate’s way to go, but because those things tend to be the fundamentals from which you build the rest of your marketing. Free is never completely free, of course?—?any of these things will take your time and attention, and sometimes they mean temporarily bringing in an expert to help you out. But free means the things you can do before you start paying for ads, or sponsorships, or cutting your margins with discounts and freebies?—?things that cost you money on an ongoing basis. This is the baseline work you do to set yourself up for success. And getting these things right first means that any subsequent dollar you spend on ads, discounts, etc, will be that much more effective.

“But wait,” you say, “I know good marketing costs money. My competitors are breathing down my throat and I WANT TO GET OUT THERE.”

Cool beans. You should get out there. But if you do the free stuff first, the paid stuff will work way way better. If your business were like archery, these are the things that make your target grow in size. Every subsequent arrow is that much more likely to hit, so you might as well do this before you go buy more arrows.

So, check your marketing against this prioritized list first, and go from there!

1) Understand your audience, your brand, and your positioning?—?aka, why should people care about your stuff?

Seems basic, no? But this is the core behind all successful marketing, and it’s amazing how often businesses get it wrong. People buy products and services, and if you can’t understand what makes your people tick, most of the other things you’ll do won’t be as effective.

Who is your audience? (Hint: it’s not “everybody”. Unless you have a marketing budget the size of Apple’s, this is a failing proposition. Start with a tighter target audience and grow from there.) What do they need? What do they want? What do they care about? What does your product/service do that actually fits these needs/wants? (NOT the other way around.)

Suppose you’re coming out with the first-ever smart toothbrush. It keeps track of your plaque, how long and how often you brush, and can even detect warning spots that look like they might turn into cavities. All these things are great. But when you actually try to market it as a smart toothbrush, nobody cares.

You: Hey everyone in the world! Look, it’s a smart connected toothbrush!

Everyone: Nobody cares, why would you need a toothbrush to be connected anyway, mine already tells me when I can stop brushing.

OR

You: Hey people afraid of the dentist and who get a lot of cavities! Look, it’s a toothbrush that flags dental issues early, so your dentist can fix them painlessly.

People with cavities who are afraid of dentists: This is relevant to my interests! Tell me more!

By doing some work to narrow down your audience to the best people to target (by no means the only people to target), you can focus on a group who needs your product or service the most, then figure out what they care about so you can talk to them in that context. The fact that your toothbrush also comes in eight jazzy colors and gives you an email notification when you need to replace the bristles might be neat, but not the thing that gets people intrigued enough to learn more. This helps define your positioning, and thus your messaging, which will be evident in all your subsequent marketing.

Pretty much, this makes your product or service as compelling as possible to people right off the bat.

2) Update your web presence

This doesn’t necessarily mean a full website redesign. Got your new positioning and messaging? Make sure it’s coherent and consistent across your entire web presence. Your website, your business social media profile, etc. Are you giving a speech at a conference? Make sure this same messaging is in your bio. Are you doing some PR? Make sure you’re prepped with this messaging. Etc.

Consistent messaging and appearance makes it look like you’ve got your act together, which makes people more likely to consider your product or service. (Don’t forget to include any physical elements in this too, like a storefront or product packaging!)

If your brand and offering are meant to be polished, and your website appearance isn’t, make sure you fix this too. People put more trust in things that look like they’re thought out. You wouldn’t buy an expensive watch from a company whose website looks like it was designed in 2001 in MS Paint?—?an expensive watch should come from an expensive-looking site. You wouldn’t trust an ambulance dispatch company whose website is full of typos— they need to look organized enough to manage both their site and Grandma’s emergency hospital transit. You get the gist.

The next thing to do is check if your site is findable. Do some searches online?—?not just for your business name, although you should start there, but also for other words in your category. If your company name is Dental Doohickeys Inc, search for: Dental Doohickeys, dental supplies, toothbrush, smart toothbrush, oral health, etc etc. If you’re not coming up at the top (and you probably won’t for the broader keywords), do some SEO?—?Search Engine Optimization. Add some meta-tags to your pages based on top Google-suggested keywords, and make sure you have relevant content that’s easy to link to and navigate through. This increases the organic flow of traffic, aka people stumbling onto your stuff on their own.

3) Measure, test, and optimize

If you have any sort of digital presence that leads to sales (whether it’s a digital storefront or a “contact us” button), it’s good to take a hard look at what’s going on. Where’s your audience coming from? Are the people you thought were your audience actually coming, or is it a new audience you hadn’t thought of before? If it’s new people, perhaps it’s time to revisit step 1. Maybe there’s different messaging that works better for them.

If you’ve got the messaging set for your expected audience, make sure it’s as easy as possible for them to get to a conversion, whether that means completing a purchase or sending your sales team an email. Before you start shoveling traffic at your site, make sure that it’s as easy as possible for your customers to convert. The more clicks they have to go through to get to that end goal, the fewer make it all the way through. (This is your conversion funnel. More on that another time.) Do what you can to remove those obstacles for them!

This doesn’t mean your whole site should just say “buy now!” with a honking big red button. That messaging that makes people compelled to purchase your product or service is still key, as is the polish of your site. This is where measuring and testing comes into play?—?test different combinations of messaging and funnels to see what’s most effective.

As you test, don’t try to do everything at once. If you’re comparing (funnel A + messaging B + price C) to (funnel D + messaging E + price F), you won’t know what’s making the difference in sales. Do just a messaging test, then test different funnels on that better messaging, and then test prices on that better funnel. It’ll give you better data than trying all the things at once.

4) Get into the conversations

Social media is called social for a reason, and you can use it for more than announcements. When done right, it’s another free way to drive traffic to your (improved) site on an ongoing basis. Who are the influencers you want to get excited about your product or service? Where are the most relevant conversations for your business happening?—?is it Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Snapchat, or somewhere else?

Get in there and start talking and listening, and contribute?—?do more than just talk about your own offering. (Nobody likes that brand. And nobody follows them.) Social media isn’t a bullhorn or a soapbox. Through interesting conversations, people will get to know you as an expert in your field (be it cookies or consulting) and will have you top of mind next time they need your offering, or have a friend who does.

Want to lead the conversations? Time to start creating interesting content for people to talk about, and to throw some PR into the mix. But don’t let this keep you from listening and contributing to other conversations.

Good social marketing takes dedicated time and attention. Make sure you devote the energy to it, or it’s about as effective as writing “buy my stuff!” on a rock and throwing it into the Grand Canyon.

So what happens if you’ve already done all of this?

You’ve done them… but are they working well? (Seriously. Check and test them. I’ll wait.)

If your messaging is on point and consistent, and your site is easy to find and navigate through, and your social media is doing what it needs to do, awesome. Good job! You’re ahead of the game. Now it’s time to prioritize your next marketing activities based on your specific industry and business model. It might be time to start up some comarketing partnerships, or turn on ads, or negotiate new distribution deals. This really depends on where you are with the rest of your business and your competitive landscape. Just make sure you’ve done this basic groundwork FIRST, so that every subsequent bit of marketing you do is that much more effective.

Effie Seiberg is the founder of Seiberg Marketing, a consulting firm that helps startups boost their business. Get more advice at Marketing Straight Talk.