April Dunford, COO, Tulip Retail

@aprildunford Rocketwatcher.com

Laying A Foundation for

Startup Growth

Warning: You’re Going to Hate this Talk

Everyone Wants Marketing Magic

The Trick that Makes the Money Appear

On the Surface Marketing Seems Easy

The Tactics Are Easy to Learn

There’s an “ultimate” guide for anything (millions of them)

But Startup Folks Never Say Making Money is Easy

Why is This So Hard?

Perfect

Tactics

On a

Flawed

Foundation

FAIL

Foundational Elements

1 Deep Understanding

of your

Target Customer

Target Customer

Target Customer

Unique Qualities

Specific Pain

Gathering Spots

How They Learn

Story: How is the CEO of a manufacturing plant similar to a banker? They aren’t.

Story: That time my best inside sales rep taught me all my marketing programs

were crap

2 Clear,

Customer-Oriented

Messaging

Messaging

Message

What do we do?

Unique Value Alternatives

Proof

Story: Databases aren’t always Databases and Neither are

Integration Platforms

3 Understanding

The Target Customer’s

Buying Process

Understand the Buying Process

No Need Need Eval Buy Enjoy Re-new

Knowing the cost of not solving the problem

Knowing the Value of solving the problem

Knowing the value of your solution

Why purchase now?

Using and enjoy the offering

Knowing I can’t do without the offering

Current solution good enough

Value not compelling Risks too high

Not knowing how to evaluate Great but not for me

I might change my mind Too much $

Bad service, Bad user experience Not using

Decided there was no need Move to other solution

Accelerators

Friction points

Mapping Tactics to a Buying Process

Buying Stage No Need, Need Eval, Buy Enjoy, Refer, Renew

What Problem-Focused Content/Programs

Solution-Focused Content/Programs

Activation/Engagement-Focused Content, Programs

Examples Articles/blog posts, Industry data, trend reports, curated content

Articles/blog posts, webinars, events, case studies, ROI calculators, advertising

Support content, How to guides, Best practices guides Forums, User Conferences

Where Where prospects are Partly where they are, partly your turf

Mainly your turf

Purpose Educate, Entertain, Engage

Differentiate, move to eval or sell

Experience value, create raving fans

Action Permission to “market”: likes, follows, newsletter/blog signups

Permission to “sell”: give contact info, trial sign-up, purchase

Renewals, Referrals

Story: How I learned to love

the Proof Of Concept

Thanks

Slides:

rocketwatcher.com

@aprildunford