If you’re looking for the tools and processes you need to build, review, and refine your startup marketing program, check out this deck from Peter Mansfield, Founder of CMO.LA and Early Growth Financial Services (www.earlygrowthfinancialservices.com).
Topics include these 4 key areas:
— BRAND EXPERIENCE – hint: it’s about more than just logos
— USER ACQUISITION – identifying key metrics and tactics that will foster sustainable growth, consistently feeding your funnel
— PARTNER DEVELOPMENT- who can help you do the heavy lifting?
— MARKET LEADERSHIP – using marketing to build credibility and support your end goals
2. The goal of this session:
Give you the tools and processes to build a marketing program
(and some tips on avoiding five very common mistakes)
3. About me: Consultant CMO and adviser for startups
Started Mansfield + Associates in 1992
Helped clients build an aggregate market value of close to $5 billion
Played a founder's role in successful startups including Brand3 (sold to American Express),
PropertyBridge (sold to MoneyGram). Wallaby Financial (sold to BankRate)
Supported marketing and fund-raising programs with VCs and angels for over 100 companies
4. About me: Ways I help fast growth companies
Mentor
Consultant
CMO in a
Box
Co-founder
9. People & processes: Cover the bases in all key areas of marketing
Branding:
Positioning/messaging/id
entity
Social media PR
Website/blog/content/in
bound
SEM/SEO/app store
optimization
UI/UX,
user testing, flows
Biz dev support
(collateral, presentations,
video etc.
Events/conferences Investor relations
10. People & processes: Who should handle your marketing?
Entrepreneurial:
Best startup marketersare
pragmaticrisk-takers
Creative andrelentless:
Need to figure out practical
waysof driving growth
Disciplined:
Followa processof
prioritizingideas
Collaborative:
Alignsales,customer support,
product development
Balanced:
Ego takes a back seat to
company goals
15. Brand experience: Starting points
Not just about
cool-looking logos
Top down
definitionof purpose
Every touch point that
you have with customers
Organizationalculture
and behavior
Don’t rely solely on
in-house branding
Measure for success
16. Brand experience: Enter the Golden Circle
What?
How?
Why? We believe inchallengingthestatus
quo anddoingthingsdifferently
Our products are beautifully
designed andeasy touse
Products liketheiPhone
20. Gender? Age? Income? Geography? Interests?Cars? Housing?
Pets? Idols? Fears?Aspirations? Religious?Clothes? Intelligence?
Conservative?Favoritecolors? Role models? Entertainment?
User acquisition: Know thy user
21. User acquisition: Defining the funnel
Acquisition: How do users find you?
Activation:Do users have a great first experience?
Retention: Do users come back?
Revenue: How do you
make money?
Referral: Do users
tell others?
22. User acquisition: Feeding the funnel
SEO/SEM Online ads
App store
optimization
Email marketing Social media Content marketing
Affiliate PR Partner marketing
24. User acquisition: Key metrics
Important
• Engaged users
• Repeat vs first-time actions
• Time between actions
• Repeat action probability
• Customer lifetime value (LTV)
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Not so Important
• Registered users
• Downloads
• Page views
30. Partner development: Optimizing partnerships
Understand your partner’s
operation, structure & team
Leverage their existinginternal &
external communication channels
Give them ongoing reasons
to stay engaged
Stay as close to the frontlineas
possible
34. In conclusion: Cover the bases
Getorganized
Branding
User/customer
acquisition
Partner development Industry leadership
35. Where to go next
Peter Mansfield: peter@cmo.la
Scheduleaone-on-onemarketing session:
Calendly.com/petermansfield
Editor's Notes
Couple of disclaimers. It’s impossible to do anything other than skim the surface of al the things you could be doing marketing wise. Plus, some of you are focused on B2B, some of you are B2C, so each company has different target audiences that require their own marketing approach. What I’m hoping we can do is start the dialog. Point you in the right direction, and give you the ground rules to build a viable growth marketing program.
I play a lot of different roles.
Marketing used to be so much easier 20 years ago. My job was to help support sales with some tried and tested tactics.
Today we are confronted with this complex and rapidly evolving set of moving parts. It can be over-whelming, but if you know what you are doing it also presents an opportunity to engage much more effectively with your target audiences.
Before you do anything you need to line up the right team and the right platform and processes for your marketing program.
Chances are you are going to be involved on some levele or the other with most of these marketing activities
If you are very early stage you may well be handling the marketing yourself. Or you may have a dedicated person or outside help from someone like me. Either way, whoever it is that is helping you needs most of the following characteristics
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt from seeing startups succeed and fail is that most are in good shape when it comes to vision, strategy. Where many fall down is when it comes to implementation. Digging in at a tactical level to execute on a market opportunity. A big part of that is not being organized.
At some point or another we’ve tried virtually all the marketing project management and communication tools and the ones we currently use are Glip (alternative to Slack) for instant messaging and our to do list, Podio for project management and SmartSheet for timeline management.
One other point on organization. It’s amazing how much tome startups waste trying to find assets – latest versions of their logo etc. We insist that one of the first things that drops into place is a sharable asset library with logical folders.
So one you are organized you can start getting serious about your brand. The goal here is to develop a credible, distinctive platform that encourages engagement
I’m not a big TED talk guy, but I strongly encourage everyone to watch this
This video will help you avoid mistake #2
This is a good article that takes you you through examples of cool companies that have great brands.
Next big area that is close to most startup’s hearts – user or customer acquisition
First stop here is to know your user.
The goals is to create a funnel that feeds potential customers in at the top and takes them through a nicely defined process and turns them into loyal profitable customers. We’ll take a look at the ways of feeding the funnel in a moment, but first here’s the stages in a typical startup’s funnel. This is courtesy of Kissmetrics, who are a great resource for information on funnel testing and analytics
As far as getting people into the funnel in the first place, there are a whole slew of tactics that you can try and test.
It’s impossible to do everything. That’s why it’s critical that you include a testing component to every marketing initiative that you put in place.
You also need a good set of software tools to optimize each opportunity. These are in tow primary areas – CRM/SFA and social media management.
These four sites and articles will give you a pretty good head start in building a user acquisition program
Particularly if you are targeting consumers directly is is often incredibly helpful to align yourself with partners that can ideally give you access to large numbers of potential customers. These could be channel partners that offer or resell your solution. Or they could be another app developer that shares a similar audience to you. It could even be a celebrity that serves as a brand ambassador for you.
Once you’ve established a partnership it’s really essential that you start optimizing it.