Most people who create a startup want to see growth that builds on itself, the kind of growth that leaves your graph looking like a hockey stick. But that doesn’t always happen. Often, growth comes in fits and starts, leaving your graph looking more like a mountain range.
When this happens, it is easy to blame the fitful growth on something like the lack of a specific feature, poor coverage from the media, insufficient funds, or failure to capitalize on the “right” social media platform. But that’s rarely the problem. Usually, you need a better marketing strategy for your startup.
The 5-Step Process
These slides, which were presented alongside a talk given by Dan McGaw, walk you through the process of successfully marketing your startup. This proven marketing strategy is driven by five main ideas:
- Set Goals
- Plan
- Execute
- Measure
- Test
Goals are important, and most entrepreneurs realize this. So these slides focus on planning, executing, measuring, and testing. After you’ve set your goals (and you should definitely figure out your specific goals if you haven’t already), it’s time to plan. These slides show you a variety of planning tools, including Cacoo, Calendars, Trello, and Google Docs. You’ll see detailed examples of each one to give you a better idea of how they can help you create a successful plan.
Once your plan is in place, it’s time to execute, and to execute better than your competitors. These slides show you examples of great marketing emails to improve your email campaigns (If you’re looking for even more marketing email tips, we’ve got 12 ways to drive up your email ROI). You’ll also find ways to improve the execution of your advertising spend, including examples from Facebook, retargeting ads, Google ads, SEO, social media platforms, and marketing partners.
Execute. Done, Right? Wrong.
Once you’ve started to execute, it’s time to measure. In the slides, you’ll find information on some of the most powerful ways to measure your startup’s marketing efforts. See examples of UTMs and funnels, as well as a peek into the wildly popular Google Analytics. You’ll also find a great formula for measuring your failure, and learn how that can be one of the most important things that your startup does. It is likely that a lot of your startup marketing is going to fail, so make sure you’re learning from your failure as well as your success.
Finally—after setting goals, planning, executing, and measuring—it’s time for testing. In these slides, you’ll find examples of A/B testing in Optimizely, Unbounce, and Mailchimp.
Starting a company is usually stressful, doubly so when growth seems to stagnate. While it can be easy to blame features, coverage, money, or social media, it often has more to do with your marketing plan. If you’re not seeing the kind of growth you want, try these marketing strategies for startups.
