Here’s what you need to know about startup marketing
This is my second year in a marketing role. I’ve joined a New Delhi based technology startup called Contify that is doing some groundbreaking work in the areas of web intelligence and monitoring. Two months into the job, all my notions about marketing have been challenged. In terms of learning, the experience has been unlike anything I’ve ever known. But when you’re working for a startup, every single hour counts. I now realize that my time could have been put to better use had I known a few things before hand, ergo this post. Given the pace at which tech startups are scaling in India, a lot of experienced marketing professionals and management grads will feel compelled to jump ships. High-tech marketing however requires a very different approach and mindset to succeed. Here’s what I’ve learned:
Don’t rely on past experience
Unless you’ve done marketing for a tech startup before, don’t be adamant about implementing what you’ve done in a traditional marketing role. And never ever rely on what you learnt at B-school. No one teaches digital marketing or customer acquisition in college. The higher education system, especially in India, has been too slow to adapt. We’re still stuck with Philip Kotler (which is important too) when what we really need are Gary Vaynerchuk case studies. Instead of jumping right into tactics, make sure you have a solid grip on what the product is at its core. High growth startups evolve on a daily basis. If you don’t understand the product inside-out, you’re going to send out the wrong word, turn away solid leads, attract the wrong prospects, and flush the entire campaign down the drain.
Read for inspiration, not implementation
The Internet is a crazy place. It has the answer to everything. And when it comes to ‘growth’ and ‘marketing’ the content out there is just mind-numbing. And I’m not talking about low quality content. If you start looking, you’ll come across genuinely great tips, tricks, tactics, and ideas shared by some of the world’s most accomplished startup marketers. Like me, you’ll be compelled to try and take in as much as possible. Initially it’ll feel great. You’ll go around unloading your awesomeness on to colleagues from sales, engineering, and design, quoting anecdotal examples of strategies that have got startups millions of new users. And then the moment of truth will bring you back to ground zero. You’re CEO is going to ask you something and your response will start with “I think…” This is what I got back:
“If you keep telling me what you ‘think’, then I’ll go ahead and do whatever it is that ‘I think’. - Mohit Bhakuni, My CEO”
He wasn’t angry. But he wasn’t pleased either. The point is, just reading up things and trying to implement them will get you as close to what an “I think” is - an assumption. Reality check: startups don’t work on assumptions. They can’t afford assumptions. Your CEO needs data. So whether you’re redoing the website, designing landing pages, writing copy, or running contests, don’t assume that since it worked for this amazing startup in New York it’s going to work for you. Talk to your customers, sit in on sales calls, and analyze every tactic relative to your proposition. This, not reading alone, will help you figure out what you actually need to do.
Create a learning plan
The only place where they let you keep your job while you try to figure out what to do is a startup. Be grateful for that and create a learning plan which benefits you as a professional and helps the startup build new capabilities which can be distilled down to every new marketing hire. Here’s mine:
The ‘Startup Marketing’ learning framework reverse engineers the marketing function into three core components each comprising of four learning areas:
Foundational: Knowledge domains which serve as a base to build a high-performing marketing department.
Functional: Specific tasks that are undertaken to create a marketing program.
Operational: Channels which a marketer uses in order to communicate and reach out to prospects and customers.
The learning areas of the first component correspond to the learning areas of the remaining two components. Expertise in each learning area has to be build from top to bottom. Under ideal circumstances, the marketing lead should be a pro in all these learning areas. But there are no ideal circumstances in a startup setting. The best way to ensure that the learning framework functions properly is to assign an anchor from the sales, strategy and design divisions to one or more learning area(s). This leads to cross-function collaboration and an arrangement where learning and capabilities are not confined to a particular individual or silo.
Learn, ask, document, and share
People in marketing roles are generally well connected on the Internet. But by not leveraging this network, you would be doing a disservice to yourself. Startup marketing experts and ‘Growth Hackers’ in particular are more than willing to help if you ask the right questions. If you try something new and get stuck, drop them a mail, try again and document the result. You can call this a marketing log. Go through these logs on a weekly basis. Pick up the most compelling ones and edit them into posts which you can share on some excellent publishing platforms like Medium, Sbvtle, and soon LinkedIn.
More than anything else, startup marketing is an iterative process. In our positions, we have to manage conflicting priorities on a daily basis. The key is to learn to process what’s important and block anything that leads us towards more assumptions.