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May 21, 2013 BY Mark Evans Posted in Startups | Leave a comment

Why Startups Should Create Customer Personas

For startups looking to break into the market, identifying their customer is obvious.

Far too often, however, startups tend to look at target audiences as one amorphous group that has the same characteristics, needs and interests.

The problem with a one-size-fits-all approach is while “the customer” may appear to be the same, they may actually break down into several target segments with slightly differently needs and interests.

A startup’s product may serve all customer segments but the messaging to reach them can’t be the same. What works well for one group, may not resonate with another.

To get a better handle on your customer segments, a valuable exercise is persona creation.

This involves discovering and drilling down into the different types of potential buyers. It means answering questions such as:

  • How old are they?
  • What are their specific needs and interests?
  • Where do they discover information about your products?
  • What would solve their problems or make them successful?
  • How would they look like a hero to their boss?

In creating personas, startups may discover there are several distinct groups of customers. As a result, the startup may have to change its marketing and sales strategy and tactics to effectively pursue them.

This scenario happened with a client recently that was targeting social media managers. In creating personas, it became apparent that while social media managers were a target audience, other customer segments included digital marketers and chief marketing officers and PR/digital agencies.

Each of these customers could be served by the product but their needs and goals were different. It became obvious that having a single marketing and sales approach wasn’t going to work well.

So how are personas created?

It begins with being open to the idea there are different kinds of customers. Then, each customer has to be personalized. The easiest way is giving each of them a name, and then layering on characteristics such as age, job title, experience and responsibilities.

Let’s look at a small business owner looking for accounting products. One customer could be “Mary”, who runs a 10-person small business. Mary does her own accounting using Excel but needs accounting software to accommodate growth.

Another group could be “John”, who handles accounting and HR for a 25-person business with $5-million in sales. John is using basic accounting software but needs something more powerful and able to integrate with the company’s CRM system.

Mary and John could use the same accounting software but their needs are different. It means the messaging has to be personalized rather than generalized.

For startups, the big challenge is having a balance between having corporate messaging that embraces different types of customers and, at the same time, being able to speak to these customers in different ways.

The creation of personas is not only important but it could reveal surprising and valuable insight to jump-start your marketing and sales efforts.

There are many ways to create personas, including an online service called personapp.

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May 20, 2013 BY Mark Evans Posted in Startups | Leave a comment

This Week in Canadian Startups (May 18, 2013)

startup newsletterFor people who have been watching Pebble for awhile, it has been fascinating to see its path from a smart watch project created by students at the University of Waterloo to being the belle of the ball at Kickstarter (more than $10-million raised) to now raising $15-million in venture capital.

Pebble is the lead story in the newest edition of “This Week in Canadian Startups”. There is also two items about incubators: a Financial Post suggesting incubators are failing because they don’t spawn enough successful startups, while Mark MacLeod counters that incubators are doing a great job of nurturing entrepreneurs.

To get “This Week in Canadian Startups” in your inbox every Saturday morning, all you need to do is subscribe.

May 14, 2013 BY Mark Evans Posted in Startups | Leave a comment

Startups and the Art of Storytelling

Screen Shot 2013-05-14 at 7.00.39 AMAs brand journalism and content marketing become more engrained into the way that companies do business, storytelling is clearly becoming more important.

There are a couple of reasons why this is the case. First, good stories are interesting, attractive and compelling. Second, brands will need to become better storytellers as content marketing becomes table stakes. When everyone’s telling stories, you need to be better at it to rise above the crowd – something we’re seeing in social media.

So, how do brands tell good stories?

It starts by being customer-centric, which means looking at what the customer wants to read, listen and watch as opposed to what a brands want to tell them. It’s a slightly differently perspective but surprisingly difficult for many brands who think that consumers like it when they babble on about features.

Truth be told, consumers really don’t care about your products, other than whether they help make their lives better, easier, more profitable, etc. There are many choices for consumers who can pick from products offering  the same features.

What consumers want is how you’re going to help them. What are the most biggest benefits of using your product? Mint, for example, helps the consumer “understand what’s going on with your money”. Freshbooks “makes billing painless”. WattPad helps you “connect with stories”.

For good storytelling to happen, it starts by taking an inside out perspective. Then, brands can begin to create narratives that are engaging and add value.

Once a brand embraces this approach, they can start to create content that resonates. Depending on the target audiences, it could be blog posts, videos, case studies, white papers, e-books or slide decks. And, of course, brands need a Website that tells an easy to understand story with clear benefits and calls to action.

Not not all content has to be dramatic or have a bad guy or hero. But it should be accessible and engaging in some way, and easily flow so it doesn’t feel like work. Some of it has to do with good writing and video production, and some of it has to do with design and production quality.

There are a few other considerations for good storytelling.

One, you need an editorial strategy that takes into account a company’s goals and objectives (e.g. drive leads and sales), the resources and budget, and how much content the target audiences are willing to consume.

Second, brands need a realistic tactical execution plan that lets them create a steady flow of content that makes storytelling a persistent and sustainable part of how the business operates. It makes no sense to come out of the gate swinging, and then lose your storytelling enthusiasm.

Third, brands can never lose sight of the fact people like stories. And, like children, they will read the same story over and over again if the stories are interesting and compelling.

For more thoughts, here’s a blog post by David Meerman Scott. For people attending the mesh conference, Knock Twice’s Kyle Monson will be doing a keynote presentation about brand journalism on May 16.

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May 10, 2013 BY Mark Evans Posted in Startups | 2 Comments

Should Startups Use Consultants?

Earlier this week, the New York Times’ “You’re the Boss” column asked whether small and fast-growing businesses should hire consultants.

The author, Clifford Oxford, opined that consultants should mostly be kept away:

“This is the human factor of growth, and quite frankly, most consultants contaminate the whole place. Keep them out of this part of the business. Think about snakes in a wood pile. In fact, go back and find that 10-foot pole and grow without them.”

As a consultant who provides marketing services to startups, I think Oxford is wrong because it doesn’t reflect the value that consultants can offer at the right time for the right price.

One of the crucial considerations for startups, especially early-stage ones, is they need to be strategic and selective about how they spend money. There are parts of the business that demand a full-time employee because they’re core to the company’s operations. At the same time, there is a lot of stuff that needs to get done but doesn’t necessarily need a full-time, part-time or contract employee.

Instead, a startup can look to a consultant to fill an important gap on a project basis to achieve a key deliverable or milestone. In hiring a consultant (or hired gun), the startup can tap into someone’s experience, expertise and network to get exactly what it needs when it’s needed. It does not have to be a long-term or expensive relationship but it can provide both parties with what they need.

So when should a consultant be hired by a startup?

For many startups, the interest in a consultant begins when they have a problem to solve or a task that has to get done. At this point, they can try to have someone internally do it or look to hire someone if the position needs to be filled right away. Another option is finding someone (aka a consultant) who can come in for a set period of time (let’s say one to six months) to provide strategy and tactical assistance.

The key is determining what kind of help is needed, and then finding someone who has the experience and track record to fill that need. And you have to find someone who shares your values, passion and vision. That’s the first big step.

Next, a startup has to find a consultant who thinks strategically and performs tactically. A startup does not, under any circumstances, need a consultant who puts together fancy strategic recommendations, and then leaves the startup to execute. To me, that’s a half-ass job that provides little value, and gives consultants a bad name.

Third, a consultant needs to drink the Kool-Aid. While they don’t work for the startup, they need to feel like they’re part of the team, even if it’s for a short period of time. As well, the startup has to feel and know the consultant has a vested interest in their success, not just getting paid for consulting services.

So what about fees?

The image of consultants is they’re blood-sucking, money-hungry wolves. That may be true for some but it’s a sweeping generalization. A good consultant who wants to work with your startup should recognize the budget limitations and accept the reality that working for reasonable fees is part of the opportunity cost.

If a consultant wants to make large hourly rates, they should work for a big corporation. If they want to work with startups, they need to take a different approach – one that takes into account a startup’s potential and the buzz around their business and sector.

Truth be told, it can be hard for a startup to hire a consultant who meets the above criteria. The reality, however, is there are a lot of good consultants who can meet the needs of startups and, in the process, deliver a win-win proposition.

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May 7, 2013 BY Mark Evans Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Startups | 4 Comments

How Much Should Startups Spend on Marketing?

dollar signHow much should startups spend on marketing?

It’s a difficult to answer question to answer because many startups think that anything spent on marketing is a challenge to justify, whether it’s $100/month for a digital tool or $25,000 for an extensive media and blogger outreach program.

The reality is most startups see marketing as a luxury or something that solves a point of pain, rather than a need-to-have or an exercise that has solid ROI. As a result, establishing a marketing budget can be a daunting exercise.

The easy answer is how much to spending on marketing is do more than nothing. Every part of a startup requires an investment in time, money and/or people, so spending on marketing is a no-brainer.

So how much makes sense?

This depends on a number of variables based on your budgets, objectives, target audiences and where your startups sits within the growth cycle.

For early-stage startups with limited resources, a reasonable budget could be $250 to $1,000/month. This would involve using a handful of free tools such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite for social media monitoring and publishing, social media services (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and Website optimization tools such as Kissmetrics, MixPanel or SEOMoz.

A budget of this size doesn’t involve having a part-time or full-time marketing person but it  provides ground cover and establishes a solid marketing foundation that can be built upon as growth accelerates and a marketing plans expand.

Over time, the marketing budget can expand to $1,000 to $10,000/month by adding  a part-time or full-time marketing person to handle social media and create content for blogs, case studies, white papers, press releases and marketing and sales collateral. This kind of budget lets a startup use premium services such as Hubspot or InfusionSoft. And it may accommodate having a PR agency on a project basis or on a small retainer, although I’m not a fan of early-stage startups having monthly retainers for PR.

As a startup accelerates it growth and begins to drive brand and product awareness, it is not unreasonable to be spending $10,000 to $25,000/month on marketing. At this stage, a startup has expanded its marketing team to two or three people, it is aggressively leveraging social media and content marketing, it’s sending people to conferences and perhaps sponsoring key events, and it has a solid media and blogger outreach program.

As much as spending money on marketing can be difficult for a startup to grasp and make happen, marketing is a key and necessary part of running a business. If customers don’t know you exist or understand what you do, it goes a long way to undermine the growth and success of your business.

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May 1, 2013 BY Mark Evans Posted in Startups | 4 Comments

How to be David When There’s a Goliath

big-vs-smallFor most startups, being to market first with a new idea or service is a rarity and luxury. For everyone else, the market is usually dominated by one or two players, even if the market is still in the early stages.

It can be intimidating to have another startup with a strong foothold, not only with customers but in terms of awareness and media/blog coverage. It can look like an uphill battle in which a fledgling startup is scrambling to gain traction and credibility.

So, what does it take for a startup (aka David) to battle a Goliath, even if the Goliath is another startup?

At a high level, it means taking a different approach that can separate a new startup from the pack in some way. It could be better design, UI, UX, customer service, marketing or pricing (although pricing is a short-cut). It could be a matter of being more creative, flexible, agile or opportunistic.

One of the realities for many market leaders is the danger of complacency. With large market share and a strong brand presence, it can be easy to lose your competitive edge. This can open a window of opportunity for new player to move quickly to move the ball forward. The wins may be small but as long as they keep coming, they add up over time.

The most important thing for “David” startups is recognizing that having a good product at the right price isn’t nearly good enough. It gets you in the game but it’s table stakes. To battle Goliath, you need to be better, faster, more user-friendly and flexible.

At the end of the day, it could see David become a strong player but still be a David.  This isn’t a bad thing because it means you have a viable business that always has the potential to close the gap if Goliath stumbles, loses its competitive focus or stops improving and evolving its products.

The bottom line is not to be daunted or afraid of Goliath. Instead, focus on what you do best and then make it a mandate to do even better.

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