lean marketing for early stage startups - dreamit accelerator - april 2012

www.theleanmarketer.com

Lean Marketing for Early Phase Start-ups

Rebecca Steinberg Herson

Presented to: DreamIt Tel Aviv Accelerator

April 23, 2012

A bit about me

• Led global marketing for over a decade in tech

companies & non-profits

• 3 high-growth Deloitte Fast 50 companies

• Primarily B2B, some B2C

• Today: principal at The Lean Marketer, providing

outsourced CMO services

• Fan of the Boston Red Sox & Celtics

So this is marketing…

Our ambitious agenda

• Getting to know your customers

• Getting to know your industry ecosystem

• Lean product management

• Segmenting your market

• Defining your message

• Increasing your influence

• Calls to action

• Promotion

• Identifying what’s working (calculating ROI)

YOUR SOLUTION SOLVES A PAIN.

WHO SUFFERS FROM THIS PAIN?

Getting to Know your (potential) Customers

Your Customer is Not You

How to get to know your customer

• Old days

– Focus Groups

– Phone surveys

– Analyst Reports

– Trade Shows

Market Surveys • Use surveys to

– test product ideas

– confirm your instincts

– refine your message

– discover new potential customers

• Google docs - its completely free

– Can be edited collaboratively (whoever you allow)

– Lots of available designs, or embed in your own web page or blog

• LinkedIn Polls

– Survey your own network for free

– Survey specific demographics for a fee (~$1/response)

How to get people to fill out the surveys

• Post on groups, update your status, tweet, repeat

• Beg your friends and beg them to beg their friends

• Incentivize them

– free ipod/amazon gift certificate/ coffee with the founders…

– early access to your beta

• Reach out personally

– you can send a message to anyone LinkedIn member in the

same group as you

– Inmail also works but has to be very enticing

Paid Survey Audience Solutions

• B2B:

– http://www.thinkspeed.com/ $3 - 5K/ survey depending on

the audience

• B2C:

– SurveyMonkey Audience

http://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/audience/

– $3.00 per finished response for standard demographics

(gender, age, income, education, employment, location.

Requires professional plan (~$20/month)

Jump in to Social Media

Identify key people in your industry

• Search Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook for relevant people, groups, comments,

companies

• Follow, read their tweets, check their blogs

• Retweet relevant content – people appreciate it and it builds your

credibility

• Tweet your own thoughts – be authentic

• Join relevant groups on LinkedIn, Facebook

• “Lurk” for a while before you jump in – think cocktail party

• Then, start discussions (LinkedIn)

• Correspond with people who enter the discussion

• DM influencers (Twitter)

• Reach out to people – they are people, and most want to help

12 Become part of the conversation

Trade Shows – a concentrated learning

• If you attend, do your homework

• Check on twitter what people are saying about the event, tweetups planned

• Review all the exhibitors and speakers – who do you want to talk to? Do

you want to meet the exhibitors or the attendees?

• Most of the people in the booths are sales reps – is that who will be most

useful for you? Some companies also send executives, but they don’t hang

around waiting for visitors; you need to book an appointment

• The Press are also there. Don’t bother with them unless you already have a

customer they can talk to

• Look up the people you want to meet on LinkedIn and memorize what they

look like – you just might run into them in a hotel lobby

IDENTIFY 3 WAYS YOU CAN LEARN MORE

ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMERS

EXPLORE YOUR ENVIRONMENT

Don’t forget, polar bears can be sneaky

Your Environment

• Narrow it down to the relevant:

– Competitors

– Potential Partners

– Sales Prospects

– Journalists/bloggers

– Industry analysts

– Marketing channels

– Industry events

– Etc.

www.theleanmarketer.com 16

TechCrunch Disrupt is not the relevant launchpad for

every startup

Free tools for Web research

• Identify industry events, active companies, potential

partners, competitors http://www.google.com

• Identify market trends over time, estimate potential volume

and geographies http://www.google.com/insights/search/

• Estimate traffic volume, cost of acquisition, find related

keywords https://adwords.google.co.il/o/KeywordTool

• Identify your competitors keywords:

http://www.keywordspy.com/

• Get your questions answered: http://www.quora.com/

Don’t Know? Post a Q on Quora

• http://www.quora.com/

Learning @ LinkedIn

Herson 20

IDENTIFY 3 QUERIES THAT WILL HELP YOU

LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR ENVIRONMENT

(COMPETITORS, CHANNELS, ETC.)

LEAN PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

Test Early and Often

There is no substitute for watching real people try

(and fail) to use your product

Testing Tools

• Your brain

• All the survey & social networking tools mentioned

earlier

• http://pickfu.com - $10 for 50 opinions

– Use for A/B testing

– Gauge popular opinion

– Determine consumer preference

– Predict consumer behavior

WHAT ARE 3 LEAN TESTS YOU CAN RUN

BEFORE YOU RELEASE BETA?

SEGMENTING TARGET MARKETS

Identify your ideal customer(s)

Build marketing personas • Customer company size / end-user demographic

• Vertical industry – finance, medical, retail, automotive,

• Geographic location

• Who is my potential buyer? What is his/her job title?

• Who are my influencers? What are their job titles?

• What is the total addressable market?

• Who competes in this market already?

Segmenting the market

• Different segments will require different marketing

strategies

• May require slightly different product features

• Try to limit yourself to the quickest acting segment at

first – for first customers

• Later, focus on the most profitable segment

WHO SHOULD BE YOUR FIRST TARGET

SEGMENT? WHAT CHARACTERIZES THEM?

DEFINING YOUR MESSAGE

Value Proposition, Elevator Pitch

• The unique value you offer to your customers

• Boil it down into a very short, medium and long

statement

• Literally try saying it in the elevator – it’s hard

• Test it out on others, especially outside your company

• Polish this before you start officially promoting, to

maintain consistency

Elevator Pitch Template

From: http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/startups-give-us-your-best-one-sentence-pitch/

WHO IS YOUR (INITIAL) TARGET AUDIENCE?

WHAT PROBLEM DO YOU HELP THEM SOLVE?

INCREASING YOUR INFLUENCE

Why you need a blog (or FB Page, or Vlog,

or Tumblr, or Twitter feed, or…)

• It’s the second thing people will look at when they want to understand

you and your company

• (the first is your LinkedIn profile)

• Great for SEO

• It becomes your own media channel - who needs ComputerWorld

anymore?

• Gives you more credibility with the mainstream media – you can become

a source for them

• Gives you something to tweet, for people to retweet, and for them to

comment on – gets you into the conversation

• Of course, you need to have something to say

Start your blog (or X…)

• Blog can be your own personal blog, that is, if you have enough to say on your own

• If you open a company blog, you will have more options for contributors

• Facebook pages have lots of blog-ish options; main drawback: not searchable

• Be authentic

• Talk about issues in the industry

• Comment on newsworthy items

• Offer advice

• Blog at least 2 months before you want to publicize it

– This ensures you know what you’re getting into and can maintain it

– You will have archived content from day 1

• If you’re vlogging, include keyword-heavy descriptions for each video

• Include CALLS TO ACTION in your blog or near your posts

• Don’t know what to write about? http://blog.kissmetrics.com/topic-generation-machine/

THINK OF 5 IDEAS YOU CAN

BLOG/VLOG/TWEET ABOUT

THE CALL TO ACTION

Calls To Action

• Sign up for our newsletter

• Visit our web site

• Download this white paper

• Enter this contest

• Meet us at this event

• What do you think about X? Tell us in the comments

• Register for our free version

• View this webinar

• Answer our survey

• Call our hotline… operators standing by

• BUY!!!

Herson 40

www.theleanmarketer.com www.theleanmarketer.com 42

WHAT ARE 5 DIFFERENT CALLS TO ACTION YOU

CAN USE TO MARKET YOUR SOLUTION?

MARKETING PROMOTION

Promotion

46 MIT Sloane School Marketing Management Course Lecture

Social Networking

Public Relations

• Keep track of articles that cover your industry – these are most likely the

journalists you will want to contact when the time comes

• Journalists look for newsworthy stories:

– Timely

– Conflict

– Unexpected

– Meaningful

• Craft your “pitch” based on what you’ve learned about the journalist – what

kinds of stories does s/he write?

• Try for the less obvious publications – you may find coverage easier to

achieve

Trade Shows/ Conferences

• You don’t necessarily have to exhibit (expensive!!) – try visiting the first

time, and making appointments – great research tool

• Apply for speaking engagements even if you don’t exhibit

• Check with the organizers if they have any matching-type services to

bring relevant people to you

• Request the press list in advance and reach out to relevant journalists

before you get there

• Tweet that you’re going; update your LinkedIn profile; Facebook

• Don’t expect the relevant leads to show up just because you are there.

You need to make the meeting happen.

HOW TO KNOW WHAT’S WORKING (ROI)

How to Measure What’s Working?

• SALES (of course)

• What if you’re not selling? Divide your pipeline into specific stages, and track

opportunities as they progress

Social/ SaaS: 1-free trial registrant 2-spent time on site/app 3-populated personal profile 4-asked support question … 8-signed up for 1 month paid 9-Renewed for 1 year paid

Traditional Enterprise Product: 1-Qualified suspect – meets our criteria 2-Initiated contact 3-Interest expressed – potential opportunity identified … 9-Verbal commitment to purchase Closed Won Closed Lost Stalled/Postponed

Sample Pipeline by Lead Source

Stage6

Stage7

Stage8

Stage9

Trade ShowLondon

Twitter

Google Ads

Webinar onSecurity

Articles

Measuring Conversion Rate

Unique page views

Respondents

58 Attendees

4700 Email blast sent

Invitations Opened

2% of invited

44% page conversion

25% open rate

Attendees > respondents indicates WOM

Iterate, Iterate and Iterate Again

• Build in feedback models

– A-B testing

– Track opens, clicks, event attendance, registrations, etc.

• Do it better the next time

• Adjust your message

• Adjust your demo

• Adjust your home page

• Adjust your marketing channel

• Try to improve the # of leads coming into the funnel

• Track and improve your conversion rate at every step in the funnel

WHAT SALES STAGES ARE MEANINGFUL

FOR MY BUSINESS?

That first (second or third) customer

• Revenue is important, but in the early stage these are even more important:

• Feedback that can help improve the product

• Testimonial - a customer approves a quote for your web site or other marketing materials

– “This product is great because it solves such & such problem…”

• Case study – customer goes on the record with before/ after data and quotes

• Reference – customer agrees to talk to other potential customers, journalists or analysts about how great you are

Useful Marketing Resources

http://theleanmarketer.com

marketing resource list in right column, scroll down

Highly recommended reading:

Thank You!

Rebecca Steinberg Herson

rebecca@theleanmarketer.com

+972-54-444-2372

http://il.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaherson

lean marketing for early stage startups - dreamit accelerator - april 2012

relevant people

key people

real people

relevant content people

competitors http

discussions linkedin

linkedin member

market surveys

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