Marketing tactics layered on a flawed foundation will fail. This presentation outlines what the foundational elements of a growth strategy are and how to leverage them in your startup marketing and sales efforts.

1. Laying A Foundation for
Startup Growth
April Dunford, COO, Tulip Retail
@aprildunford Rocketwatcher.com

2. Warning: You’re Going to
Hate this Talk

3. Everyone Wants
Marketing Magic

4. The Trick that Makes
the Money Appear

5. On the Surface
Marketing Seems Easy

6. The Tactics Are Easy to Learn
There’s an
“ultimate” guide
for anything
(millions of them)

7. But Startup Folks Never
Say Making Money is Easy

8. Why is This So Hard?

9. Perfect
Tactics
On a
Flawed
Foundation
FAIL

10. Foundational
Elements

11. 1
Deep Understanding
of your
Target
Customer

12. Target Customer
Target
Customer
Unique
Qualities
Specific
Pain
Gathering
Spots
How
They
Learn

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

14. Story: That time my best inside sales rep
taught me all my marketing programs
were crap

15. 2
Clear,
Customer-Oriented
Messaging

16. Messaging
Message
What do
we do?
Unique
Value Alternatives
Proof

17. Story: Databases aren’t always
Databases and Neither are
Integration Platforms

18. 3 Understanding
The Target
Customer’s
Buying
Process

19. Understand the Buying Process
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
No Need Need Eval Buy Enjoy Re-new
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

20. 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

21. Story: How I learned to love
the Proof Of Concept

22. Thanks
@aprildunford
Slides:
rocketwatcher.com