3 things startup marketers need to do to be taken seriously by founders.
I’ve been asked by new marketers, lacking in confidence, where to start when joining a startup. They feel overwhelmed. They can’t quite believe the pace their entrepreneurial boss is working at (and expects you to match).
Here’s a few ways for the new startup marketer to be taken seriously, use strategy to win over your boss and stop them from thinking you’re “just the social media person”.
Okay, there’s some good news and some not so good news.
The good news:
You’ve hit the jackpot if you join a startup where the founder(s) get marketing.
Honestly.
You’ll deliver more, much quickly. Why? Because you won't have to spend the first 6 months having to educate people.
The not so good news (when people think they know marketing).
I’ve seen the following play out in a few businesses.
I’ll speak with a founder who’ll tell me that they tried marketing but “it didn’t really work”.
“Oh, right, why’s that?” I ask, stroking my chin.
“Well, we hired a work experience girl. We don’t have much money, and to be fair, we only really need a few blogs and the instagram account updating”.
“Okay, tell me a bit more. What support did you give them? Do they have access to your brand work - you know, the tone of language, the vision? Do they know what high level goals you’re working towards?”
“Well, to be fair we are really at an early stage, so I don’t have all that yet”.
“Okay, I totally get that, but why did you get a marketing person in, and why didn’t it work out?” I say.
“A brand awareness newsletter isn’t going to generate me money. We’ve only got X amount in the bank. I really think we should focus on direct marketing instead”.
Le sigh.
Now, this isn’t a dig at those who’ve said this before - not in any way.
After all, there are some things you don’t know you don’t know.
But it’s a classic case of someone not really getting marketing.
They don’t see just how intrinsic it is to the startup’s success. Instead, they think it’s when you pay for a bit of Facebook advertising and become frustrated with the fact it hasn’t turned into IMMEDIATE SALES.
Quelle surprise! (not sure why I’m French today).
You know how…
some people are proud to have a Mac? And will line up for the next release of iPhone?
some people will go to Glastonbury, and wear the bracelet for months until it falls apart in the shower?
when you move jobs and insist your new company uses the same email marketing software you’d used previously?
That’s marketing.
But how do you get to this point?
The good news is there’s a way that you can proudly sell marketing internally whilst elevating your own profile.
As the first marketer you’ve got this awesome opportunity to shape this business.
To be viewed as part of the founding team; you need to do it right from the start. You need to help create the building blocks.
Do not accept and be happy with being described as “just the social media person*”.
(*That is actually harsh on so many levels because social media people have such a difficult job - but that’s a post for another time).
Making an impact from day one as a startup marketer
If you want to make a difference and help your new startup, you need to go in with the right mindset. You need to understand what type of marketing you’ll be involved in.
These are the 3 steps I urge you to consider when starting:
Assess what stage is the startup at
Understand what market approach it wants to take
Own the customer’s voice
Use the insights you can get from these to manage expectations with the founding team.
(Side reading, check out How founders are unknowingly failing their marketers, by the awesome Gia Laudi and Claire Suellentrop. There will be a LOT of aha! moments, I promise you).
1. Assess what stage is the startup at
A startup’s development falls into one of four categories, each which will determine what type of marketing you’re going to be involved in. I’ve written about these before in my post, hey marketer thinking of joining a startup, a lot of the theory is based on Blank and Dorf’s great book.
These stages are:
Customer discovery
Customer validation
Customer creation
Company building
E.g. If you come in at first stage, customer discovery, where you take the founder’s idea and see if there’s a potential need for it - you can’t be expected to bring in cold leads and sales immediately - when no one knows who you are, and you don’t even know if there’s a value proposition that’s going to work.
In early stage startup marketing, you can’t be expected to bring in cold leads and sales immediately - when no one knows who you are, and you don’t even know if there’s a value proposition that’s going to work.
Likewise, skip to customer creation and this is where you start to create demand by setting up channels. You’ll need to look at the channels your customers use, those you can get quick wins from and those that you need to set up early to help you in the long run. *tips hat to SEO*
Read up more about the type of marketing activities in early stage startups here.
2.Understand what market approach it wants to take
The type of market you enter will determine the activities you get involved in and the spend you’ll need.
You want to talk with the founders to learn:
Are you entering an established market with loads of competition?
Are you entering an established market, but have a niche product offering, that you’ll charge more for?
Are you entering an established market, but have a niche product you want to charge less for?
Are you creating a completely new market with no competition and no customers?
To understand which you fit in, speak with the founder, research the market, see who’s operating out there.
Depending on the level of competition, you’ll need to be aware of how much sales and marketing spend you need to compete.
Blank & Dorf suggest if you attack a market with just one dominant player, you need to spend three times the combined sales and marketing budget of the dominant player.
And, if you’re entering a market that has many names, the cost to entry is much lower - but you still need to spend 1.7x the combined sales and marketing budget of the company you wish to attack.
[Note this is all really useful when your boss says, “There’s no marketing budget available, but let’s take on Amazon!” - you’ve got the stats to push back].
Because of this, most startups tend to fall into 2a or 2b. They recognise an opportunity where a market leader isn’t meeting the needs of a particular niche.
Take Careercake, for instance. We operate in an established market (learning and development content) but our customers come to us because we offer something our competition isn’t able to. A product aimed at a particular part of the employee lifecycle (early careers).
And back to Amazon, they had to start somewhere. They began as a bookseller, remember.
3. Own the customer’s voice
Not everyone buys the way you think they do.
You don’t always know what’s going to influence them - their boss, their mates. You don’t know how they look for credibility signals.
Set up a series of interviews with potential customers and actual customers to start understanding their motivations, their objections. If you’re in b2b, learn how long it takes to get something past procurement.
For example, I worked for an online recruitment agency once. When the decision was made to extend the products they offered (they moved from advertising to technology) they realised pretty quickly that the sale of technology was very different to advertising.
Just because you’re selling tech doesn’t mean the end user ‘gets’ tech.
Even the words used to position the technology had to be researched. We thought we were selling to the Tech Teams, but instead, we were actually trying to get buy-in from HR Managers. HR Managers, who, attended CIPD events, preferred offline printed publications, and were always under pressure to prove the ROI of HR and its need to be in boardrooms. (Seems alien to me that this was the case).
It’s only from meeting with these people, learning how they look for information, who they trust - what political issues are going on in the business - that you start to understand how to position your business and advertise in the right place.
Roadblocks you may come up against when you’re an early stage startup marketer
When times are tough, resources or budget will probably be pulled immediately from marketing
There will be times when your boss or Sales Director comes running in with this amazing idea. You will share why it’s not great, but they’ll insist and you’ll be expected to look into it. The time you waste disproving it will be a bitter pill to swallow, but actually it’ll be really useful. As they’ll be more likely to listen to you next time.
They’ll get a consultant in - someone who promises growth hacking. Don’t let them get too excited about the magic beans! Growth hacking is short term. If they insist on bringing someone in, make sure they’ve got a proper understanding of marketing (buyer psychology being one example) not just someone who gets excited about the next sparkly thing.
Remember, your founder is learning also!
