Do’s and Dont’s of Marketing for Start Ups

by Yelena Kadeykina

©Yelena Kadeykina

Why Are We Here?

©Yelena Kadeykina

Because you want to solve

a business problem!

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Value Proposition “The brand promise”

©Yelena Kadeykina

Find relevant

information

quickly and easy

Find any item

you need

Developing Your Value

Proposition • Who you are?

• What you do?

• Where you do it?

• What makes you different?

©Yelena Kadeykina

Examples of Value Propositions

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• Price competitive

• Quality customer service

• Superior quality

• Easy-to-use

• Huge selection

• Customizable

• Community

Identify Your Target Market & Assess Market Conditions

• Size, growth rate and maturity

• Niche market or large market

• What segment exists

• What their basic needs

• What channels they consider

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Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing

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Outbound Marketing - a traditional form of marketing strategy that focuses on finding customers by building brand awareness through advertising and promotion.

Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers. This sense is related Seth Godin's idea of permission marketing.

Why Inbound Marketing is So Powerful

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Source: HubSpot

Blog/Content

SEO Social Media

How Do You Gauge Success?

• Inbound Links

• Subscribers

• Indexed Content

• Inbound Links

• Fans, Friends & Contacts

• Content

©Yelena Kadeykina

Source: HubSpot

Blogging: When to Publish?

• Start BEFORE you have a product

• Start BEFORE you have a website

• Start BEFORE you have anything!

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Source: HubSpot

Biggest Mistake to Avoid…

• Always host a blog on your own domain…

• Blog.company.com

• Blog sits on a subdomain of the main domain

• Company.com/blog

• Blog sits on a subdirectory of the main domain

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Source: HubSpot

How Often You Should Blog

• That depends on your goals…

• Steady readership

• At least weekly

• More is better

• SEO – getting ranked for important key words

• Frequency is less important

• However, more content creates more opportunities to rank

©Yelena Kadeykina

Blogging Do’s

• People love stories: take a recent experience and share it

• Make numbered lists of ideas, trends or thoughts

• Answer questions you recently received

• Comment on other blog posts you read

• Write blog entries as responses to breaking news in your industry

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The Value of Social Media for Business

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Social Media Do’s

• Build great relationships

• Meet people

• Start conversations

• Answer questions

• Help people

• Follow the golden rule; give to get

• Think before submitting your own stuff, no one likes a spammer

• Keep it relevant

• Make it useful

• Make it controversial

• Make it thought provoking

• Keep it brief

• Commit the time

©Yelena Kadeykina

The Biggest Social Media Don’ts

• Creating profiles everywhere

• Friending, following, connecting with anyone you can find

• Selling to everyone, immediately

• Using the same strategy in every environment

• Facebook is not LinkedIn

• Failing to measure what works

• Having un-optimized and inconsistent profiles

• Expecting instant results & failing to invest sufficient time and effort

• Focusing internally; nobody likes a spammer.

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What is Call-to-Action (CTA)

Words that urge the reader, listener, or viewer of a marketing promotion

to take an immediate action

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Call-to-Action (CTA) Best Practices

• Action oriented

• Tell them what to do and start with a verb

• Clear

• Indicate exactly what action to take

• Stress the benefits to viewers/readers

• Brief and focused

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What is the Weakest Call-to-Action?

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Create Buzz

• Quizzes

• Polls

• Interactive Q&A

• Viral games

• Marketing Stunt

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Why Video?

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Video is Powerful

• Online video more than doubled from 2010 to 2011

• On YouTube alone over two billion videos are viewed every day

• Having video on your website makes you 53x

more likely to appear on the front page of

Google search results…

• Video into your e-mail marketing increases clickthrough rates by over 96%

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What Types of Videos Can You Create?

For Brand Awareness:

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Fun TV series

Meet the Team

Video Podcast

Source: HubSpot

For Lead Generations:

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Webinars/Presentations

Event Invitations

Email

What Types of Videos Can You Create

Source: HubSpot

For Sales Empowerment:

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Case Studies

Product Demos

What Types of Videos Can You Create?

Source: HubSpot

• 30-40% of video views: Search queries Google, YouTube, Bing

• 30% of views: Social sharing on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc

• The rest: Discovered the video right on a website or a video platform

Promote: How Do Your Videos Get Found?

©Yelena Kadeykina Source: Pixability, Inc

The Top 3 Things Successful Video Marketers Do Differently

1. Produce way, way more videos: Top marketers published 11x more videos on YouTube

2. Invest in metadata that drive SEO: Top marketers used 52% more tags, 20% longer description texts and 585% more playlists

3. Use video assets on all channels: Top marketers had 53% more videos on their websites

©Yelena Kadeykina

Source: Pixability, Inc

The Methodology

• Get Found

• Create great content

• Optimize your content

• Promote your content

• Convert visitors to leads & customers

• Landing pages of your blog, website, ANY marketing initiative you run

• Track, analyze , optimize

• Test

©Yelena Kadeykina

Marketing Lessons for Early Stage Start Ups

• Startup success = 5% ideas + 95% is in the execution

• Marketing is like dating: build relationships, create dialogues with your partners and customers, etc.

• Be realistic!

• Establish your own identity

• TEST, TEST, TEST

©Yelena Kadeykina

A final Question… How Agile Are You?

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change”

©Yelena Kadeykina