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!
©Yelena Kadeykina
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
©Yelena Kadeykina
• 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
©Yelena Kadeykinana
Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing
©Yelena Kadeykina/@ykadeykina
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
©Yelena Kadeykina
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!
©Yelena Kadeykina
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
©Yelena Kadeykina
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
©Yelena Kadeykina
The Value of Social Media for Business
©Yelena Kadeykina
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.
©Yelena Kadeykina
What is Call-to-Action (CTA)
Words that urge the reader, listener, or viewer of a marketing promotion
to take an immediate action
©Yelena Kadeykina
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
©Yelena Kadeykina
What is the Weakest Call-to-Action?
©Yelena Kadeykina
Create Buzz
• Quizzes
• Polls
• Interactive Q&A
• Viral games
• Marketing Stunt
©Yelena Kadeykina
Why Video?
©Yelena Kadeykina
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%
©Yelena Kadeykina
What Types of Videos Can You Create?
For Brand Awareness:
©Yelena Kadeykina
Fun TV series
Meet the Team
Video Podcast
Source: HubSpot
For Lead Generations:
©Yelena Kadeykina
Webinars/Presentations
Event Invitations
What Types of Videos Can You Create
Source: HubSpot
For Sales Empowerment:
©Yelena Kadeykina
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