the essential startup marketing playbook by steve mann

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved

THE ESSENTIAL STARTUP MARKETING

PLAYBOOK

Y O U ’ V E C R E A T E D A P R O D U C T

NOW WHAT?

Having triplets keeps you young!

Top CMO at the intersection of strategy & creativity

Top 100 CMO on Twitter

FierceCMO Top 15 B2B CMO to Watch

Peer 100: Top 100 Marketing Pro

Governing member: CMO Collective

@stevemann

Steve Mann


Agenda

1 The foundation

Branding, positioning, persona development & segmentation

2 Standing up your GTM strategy

S&M mapping, Metrics? We don’t need no stinkin metrics?

3 Execution

Inbound v. outbound, infrastructure, tying it all together

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Watch for “Startup Sauce”

{ }1 The Foundation

Branding


Let’s Level-Set


VISUAL

get

Brand is not a logo…


VISUALa tagline…


VISUALor a product.


VISUAL

Branding is the act of forming a

deep & long-standing

emotional connection with a

consumer which ensures long

term loyalty and revenues


And its not just for B2C


Impact of B2B branding

15%

79%

5%

64%

2%

60%

CONSIDERATION PURCHASE PRICE PREMIUM

No brand connection

High brand connection


Gen X Gen Y (Millenials) Gen Z

Who should you be building your brand for?


Startup Sauce: Welcome to the Brand Stairway

Its about the founding team & your people

…your culture

…and your aspirations!

Execution is critical. Are you consistent,

credible, and authentic with your

customers, partners, and ecosystem

Its about building trust and loyalty.

{ }1 The Foundation

Positioning


Positioning

The act of creating distinctive messaging that occupies a unique place

in a customer’s mind, as well as market category


Startup Sauce: Positioning Startups is formula driven*

For: Your target audience

Who are dissatisfied: Current solutions

Our product: describe the product

category/solution

That provides: Breakthrough capability

Unlike: Our competitors or

legacy solutions

We deliver: XYZ features & benefits*

{ }Positioning Case Studies

Tibco Spotfire & Lexis Advance


Positioning Startups (or mature orgs) is formula driven

Courtesy of Mark Lorian, former VP Marketing for Tibco Spotfire


The formula is always

there but customers

never see it.

For attorneys and other legal

professionals

Who depend heavily on legal research

to build their cases

Lexis Advance is a comprehensive

“google-like” research solution

That provides the most

intuitive design, deep legal content

and best-in-class legal analytics

Unlike Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg

LA is the first and best place to find the

right cases test your assumptions and

craft winning legal arguments.


YOUR TURN

{ }1 The Foundation

Persona Development


Each of your firms will be selling to

multiple buyers who have different

personas in the firm. You will need

to develop archetypal personas in

order to develop positioning that is

customized to individual buyers.

“ “


“ “With personas, business can be more

strategic in catering to each audience,

internalize the customer that they are

trying to attract, and relate to them as

human beings.

--Krux partners


Persona development fundamentals: The 8 questions

1What is their demographic

information? 2Job and seniority level

and are they they

economic buyer?3

What does a day in their

life look like?

4What are their pain

points? What do you help

them solve?5

What do they value

most? What are their

goals?6

Where do they go for

information?

7

What experience are they

looking for when seeking

out your products and

services?

8What are their most

common objections to

your product or service?


Persona

Information

Personalized

positioning by

persona

Courtesy: Buffer

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved Courtesy: Kula Partners

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved Courtesy: Buffer


Startup sauce: persona takeaways• Helps identify with your audience and better solve their problems by

having an in depth knowledge of their goal, objectives, pains and

day in a life

• Aligns sales and marketing on targeting

• Creates a “person” to message to, thereby enabling you to

personalize your messaging

• Include the whole team in coming up with these personas as

everyone brings a different perspective and different information to

the table

• The results will be a better experience for the customer and a more

engaged user for your business.

{ }1 The Foundation

Segmentation

What is it?

The process of dividing up

large heterogeneous markets

into more homogenous

sub-segments that have

unifying characteristics.

These unifying characteristics

make it possible to TARGET

these sub-segments & market

effectively to themCourtesy: Match Node


4 Basic types of segmentation

Geographic

Duh!

Countries

States

Regions

Cities*

Neighborhoods*

Demographic

Age

Gender

Income

Family makeup

Education

Income

Needs

Psychographic

Life style

Social class

Personality

Behavioral

Product usage

User type

Personality

Benefits sought

Loyalties

Attitudes

Needs


But wait! There’s more!

Firmographic

Industry

Product(s)

Revenue

# of Employees

Titles

Hybrid

Firm + Attitude

Demo + Behavior

Geo+Firm+Demo

…

Most segmentation

strategies are

hybrids.

B2B

Startup Sauce: People buy, companies don’t. So make sure to include variables that

characterize your buyer.

Startup Sauce: Keep it simple

Use either a single base

segmentation model or combine it with one other

For instance:

B2B: firmographic & geographic

B2C: geographic and demographic

Stay away from behavioral and psychographic

They are the most powerful, but the hardest

to implement



Startup Sauce: Target the Beachhead

New Product

New Business

Model

Your Market

You will be targeting this

market!

And this beachhead segment

Startup Sauce: Beachhead segments have

common needs.

Segmentation + common needs + persona = Initial target

Delivering to this segment

will provide you with great

referencable clients!Segment PersonaNeeds

Beachhead Segment



Startup Sauce: Focus is essential

Don’t be afraid to be

extremely targeted at

first. Its much easier

to expand from a position

of strength than having to

contract due to failure


YOUR TURN

{ }2 Standing up your GTM Strategy

S&M Mapping


The Traditional Demand Funnel

Opp

Lead

Inquiry

Prospect

Deal

Market Awareness

Demand Generation Marketing

Domain

Sales

Domain

Startup Sauce: Map your Sales &

Marketing Process

Demand

GenProspect

Needs

AnalysisDemo Pilot

Prove

Value

Prop

Proposal Close

Critical to figure out what YOUR sales & marketing process looks like to

eliminate major hurdles and bottlenecks in order to scale your business.

After you have 10 deals under your belt, sit down and map out the steps of

every deal you WON or LOST.

1



Startup Sauce: Identify Customer Needs & Motivations

Demand

GenProspect

Needs

AnalysisDemo Pilot

Prove

Value

Prop

Proposal Close

NEEDS/PAINS/CONCERNS

MOTIVATIONS

• Scalability

• Functional fit

• Company stable?

• Make me look good?

• Price

• Addons

• Partner strength

• Easy to implement

• Price

• Aging legacy systems

• Word of Mouth• References

2

Startup Sauce: Craft a Tactic Map

Once you’ve mapped the pains and motivations of your prospects against

your sales and marketing process, then map the individual tactics that you

need to move the prospect down the funnel to closure. The tactics that will

best address their concerns and motivations.

3



Startup Sauce: Craft a Tactic Map

Demand

GenProspect

Needs

AnalysisDemo Pilot

Prove

Value

Prop

Proposal Close

PR

Email

Search &

Social

Content

Marketing

Events

Qualifying

Questions

White

Papers/Con

tent

Success

Stories

Online

qualification

See-Try-

Buy

User

Survey

Decision

Maker

Survey

Economic

Buyer

Survey

Live Web

Demo

White

Papers

Interactive

tour

Download

Eval copy

90-day trial

Configuration

Services

References

Customer

Success

Stories

Direct

Sales

Proposal

Reseller

proposal from

Quote sheet

{ }Process Mapping Case Study

JBoss


Focused on Customer Concerns & Motivations

www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-marketing-machine/jboss-example/


And Then Mapped Tactics To The Process

Learn more: http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-marketing-machine/jboss-example/

{ }2 Standing up your GTM Strategy

Metrics? We don’t need no stinkin metrics!


Without metrics you’re dead meat.““


Remember the Demand Funnel?

Opp/SAL

Lead/SQL

Inquiry

Prospect/MQL

Deal

Market Awareness

Marketing metrics enable you to gauge

the effectiveness of your marketing

efforts and to understand your resource

utilization in capturing and retaining

customers.

Ideally you want to do this in context of

the Demand Funnel.


Critical: Conversion Rate

Opp/SAL

Lead/SQL

Inquiry

Prospect/MQL

Deal

Market Awareness

Purpose: determine the quality of your

marketing & sales as well as your

qualification process.

Enables realistic sales projections.

What does it look like?

Ratio of closed deals compared to each

stage in the funnel and the funnel as a

whole.

Inversely related to funnel leakage.

Typical B2B companies experience

13 wins: 1000 inquiries

Nurturing

Bucket


Critical: Funnel leakage by stage

Opp/SAL

Lead/SQL

Inquiry

Prospect/MQL

Deal

Market Awareness

Purpose: gauges effectiveness of tactics

by funnel stage or identifies a process or

competency issue.

What does it look like?

% of prospects that fall out of the funnel

by stage

Note that leaky funnels especially at the

marketing/sales handoff is not always bad.

Sales may determine that the lead is not

worth pursuing at the time.

Also helps manage the individual strengths of

the sales team if you are a sales manager.

Nurturing

Bucket

%age

declines

by stage


Calculating ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment)

Opp/SAL

Lead/SQL

Inquiry

Prospect/MQL

Deal

Market Awareness

Nurturing

Bucket

Purpose: Derivative of ROI (determines how much profit

one has generated from invested capital). ROMI looks at

how much return have I generated from my marketing

investment.

ROI (%) = Net Profit ($)/Investment ($)

Calculating ROMI:

ROMI = Incremental revenue attributed to Marketing

($)/Marketing Spend($)


Other Crucial Marketing Metrics

Opp/SAL

Lead/SQL

Inquiry

Prospect/MQL

Deal

Market Awareness

Nurturing

Bucket

1. Web Traffic – what is the volume, where is

it coming from, which content is most

popular

2. Leads by campaign/tactic – which

programs/sources/offers are driving leads

3. Email bounce/open/click thru

4. Revenue per marketing dollar spent, typical

B2B ratio is 1:32, best-in-class is 1:62

5. Pipeline Volume – what multiplier of volume

in the pipeline do you need to hit your

revenue projections?

{ }3 Execution

Inbound v. Outbound Marketing


Consumers are no longer listening

Nurturing

Bucket


We play too many roles today

Nurturing

Bucket

61

And have too many product choices

Source: Darwin Day Conference, Google

TNS Media Intelligencehas over 2mm brandsin its DB, growing at 700/day, over 10% per year

In the 1990’s the number of brands on grocery store shelves tripled from 15k to 45k

62

Too much content

Today, media is fragmented

13,500 radio stations (4,400 in 1960)

17,300 magazine titles (8,400 in 1960)

82.4 TV channels per home (5.7 in 1960)

And the Web:

Millions of sites

Billions of pages

Source: Darwin Day Conference, Google

63

Too many access points

Web TV

Email

Game Platforms

Tablets

Websites

Texting

Search

Radio

DVD

TV

Blogs

Magazines

PC/Mac

Satellite Radio

DVR

Video On-Demand

Newspapers

iTunes

Smartphones

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved. Courtesy: wordstream.com

200 MOn Federal DNC list

84%of 25-34 YOleft a favorite site because of intrusive Ads

91%opted out of brandthey had subscribed

44%of DM never opened


Source: 2001 Corporate Executive Board survey


So what’s a startup to do?““

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved Courtesy: @bhalligan, Hubspot


Inbound marketing earns the

permission of the consumer to

market to them. Permission

may be implicit or explicit.“ “

Courtesy: wordstream.com

@bhalligan, Hubspot


Revenues

AffinityRelationships

Content

Experience

Conversation

Relationships

Brand Affinity

Ready to BuyCreate Content


Optimize and Promote


But should I ever use outbound?““


It depends““


Outbound marketing sends an interrupting message to

the consumer to try to initiate a dialog

eMail

Rented Lists

Cold Calling

Appointment setting agencies

Direct mail

Retargeting


What’s Retargeting?

User’s

device is

anonymously

cookied with

search term

Search term triggers

display in ad networks


Startup Sauce: When to use outbound

Urgency to get started with marketing

Need immediate feedback

Have precise targeting information

Willing to pay more to acquire


Startup Sauce: Concerns about outbound

Lower conversion rates

Tie your outbound efforts to inbound

Not producing any viral awareness

Higher cost per lead

Courtesy AdWeek

{ }3 Execution

Infrastructure


What foundation do you need?““


Startup Sauce: The Marketing Technology Stack

CRM

System of record for your customer,

prospects and contacts, marketing

results & purchased data also stored here.

Marketing

Automation

Automates marketing campaigns

so that responses are personalized based

on response. Nurtures prospects down the funnel.

CMS Enables management of all web content & keywords

Social MediaSocial tools that enable you to manage your

engagement on social channels as well as tools for

listening.

AnalyticsA broad array of suite tools and best of breed

solutions to analyze web traffic, brand sentiment,

engagement levels and marketing effectiveness


Startup Sauce: The Marketing Technology Stack

CRM

Marketing

Automation

CMS

Social Media

Analytics

1

2

3

TMS

{ }3 Execution

Tying it all together


The root causes for ineffectual marketing

Lack of customer understanding

Poor execution

Inability to accurately measure and adjust


BrandBrand Position Persona Segment Map Tactics Measure Stack

Eight building blocks for great startup marketing

Talent Finance Management Content Digital


For young companies, the product is the

brand but a great product doesn’t do you a bit

of good if your interactions are negative,

inconsistent or unauthentic.

We will lay the foundation based on

culture, values, talent and brand position.

Be credible, authentic and consistent.

BrandBrand Position Persona Segment Map Tactics Measure Stack

Brand building


Distinctive positioningDevelop positioning using

the Moore formula.

Use it to drive our content and discussion.

Remember, people buy,

companies don’t so be sure to

tie it to the personas you develop

Brand Position Persona Segment Map Tactics Measure Stack


Develop your personasCreate explicit profiles of folks you want to

target with your product, service or solution.

Make sure you build personas for all

members involved in the buying process.

Tie it back to positioning

It’s a collaborative process



Create your segmentationOnce personas are developed, determine

segmentation for targeting purposes.

What companies are you going to target? What

individuals?

Basic: geographic, firmographic, demo or

light hybrid.

Develop a needs profile for your beachhead

segment and focus!Courtesy: Match Node



Map the processLook at the first 10-15 deals worked

and map out the Sales & Marketing process

Map customer concerns and motivations at

each stage

Then figure out the tactics that will address

each concern or motivation.

Refine as needed but don’t make too

many changes too quickly. Test!!



Determine tactic mixStart with inbound because it will take

longer, but will yield higher conversion rates,

lower cost of customer acquisition and rabid

evangelists for your brand.

You must earn permission!

Create>Optimize>Promote

Use outbound selectively to get into market

fast but be precise on your targeting or else

it could harm your brand.@bhalligan, HubSpot



Conversion rate, funnel leakage, win rates,

ROMI are all critical.

Make sure they are complementary to your

sales metrics.

The web makes it eas(ier) but with the

plethora of data that is out there you need to

select the right ones.

Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Measure



Build the MarTech StackGet a great System of Record (CRM) and

System of Engagement, &

make sure it deeply integrates with

marketing automation tools.

Ensure sales and marketing are running off

of the same CRM solution.

Look to Hubspot and SFDC.

Point solutions like Hootsuite and Spredfast

for social media.CRM

Marketing

Automation

CMS

Social Media

Analytics



But most of all…““


Experiment! Fail fast! And have fun.““


THANK YOU!

the essential startup marketing playbook by steve mann

Marketing

creative commons

rights reserved visualgetbrand

revenues2015 ablebrains

b2c2015 ablebrains

tibco spotfire2015 ablebrains

levelset2015 ablebrains

market category2015

positioning startups