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November 13, 2012 BY Mark Evans Posted in Startups | 1 Comment

The 10 Steps to a Startup Marketing Strategy

marketing strategyFor any startup or fast-growing business that wants to start telling its story, a marketing strategy provides an important roadmap, as well as clear guidelines on what needs to be done.

So, what are the steps that need to be taken to create a marketing strategy?

1. Being clear about your goals and objectives. It means knowing what needs to be achieved, and the benchmarks and metrics to measure progress and success. The goals can range from brand awareness and media coverage to leads and sales.

2. Identify your core customers and target audiences. Who’s going to buy your products? Who are the other people you want to reach such as partners, suppliers, investors, the media or employees?

3. Figure out how your product different or unique. What gives your company and product a competitive edge or a window of opportunity? How to you articulate it?

4. Carry out a competitive analysis. Identify direct competitors; the companies that you’ll battle head-to-head. As important, dig into your indirect competitors – the products people use to solve the problems you’re addressing.

5. Know where your target audiences get information about the kind of products you’re selling. Where do they go to identify, research and learn? How do they behave when they start the sales cycle?

6. Pick the channels where your product story can resonate, and can deliver the most bang for the buck. It could be social media, a blog, white papers or a great Website – whatever the channel, it’s important it deliver value and drive consumers down the sales funnel.

7. Create a tactical implementation plan, including in-depth details about what needs to happen to drive execution.

8. Align your goals and marketing opportunities with your budget and resources. It makes more sense to do a few things well rather than many things in a mediocre way.

9. Create a dashboard to assess how your marketing efforts are performing, and measure on a regular basis to make any adjustments or tactical shifts in direction.

10. Be flexible and agile to account for new opportunities and moves by the competition. It is important to see marketing strategies as being fluid and dynamic as opposed to written in stone.

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November 10, 2012 BY Mark Evans Posted in Startups | Leave a comment

This Week in Canadian Startups (Nov. 10, 2012)

Canadian startupsJust in case you don’t subscribe to the “This Week in Canadian Startups” newsletter, the latest issue features a great mix of Canadian startup news, as well as a handful of curated blog posts about the startup scene.

The line-up includes a look what startups need to consider when it comes to embracing a freemium business model, the importance of the email people receive after they register for an online service, a kick-ass presentation about creativity by David Usher at the meshmarketing conference, and BDC’s decision to sponsor Startup Weekend events across Canada.

Subscribing to the newsletter is easy. It arrives every Saturday morning (after I get back from tennis), which makes it the perfect complement to coffee and the newspapers.

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November 8, 2012 BY Mark Evans Posted in Startups | Leave a comment

Startup 101: Talk to Your Customers

startup customersOne of the inherent weaknesses for many startup is they’re insular and often so immersed in their own little world that they fail to receive or solicit external feedback.

This includes getting information from customers – something some startups think they can’t do because they have few or no customers. But what has hit home over the past few months is how customer discovery and talking to customers plays a crucial role in how product development, market and sales go forward.

To many marketers, interacting with customers is Marketing 101 but for startups it is something they need to embrace in a bigger way. If they don’t, there is a danger they will create and launch a product that really doesn’t meet a customers’ needs.

This was highlighted a few months ago while developing core messaging for a collaboration startup. After creating what we thought was snappy and smart messaging, it was tested with a potential customer. Sadly, they didn’t get what the startup did. So we had to go back to the drawing board to create messaging that was simple and better.

For startups, customer discovery and customer research can be a challenge during the early days but there are effective ways to approach it. When you have no customers, you need to talk to people or companies who could be potential customers.

Ask them about their points of pain or things that could make their businesses more efficient or profitable. And then ask them how interested they might be in your product and what it might take for them to buy it.

For some startups, they may discover their product doesn’t address what potential customers need. Or they may discover the way early customers are actually using their product isn’t the way a startup thought it would be used. In either case, a startup will receive invaluable insight about their product and the marketplace.

This isn’t to suggest a startup’s idea won’t be successful if they don’t talk to customers or research how customers behave. But a startup stands a better chance of success if they have at least some information about people who have bought their product or may be customers down the road.

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November 6, 2012 BY Mark Evans Posted in Startups | Leave a comment

Why the Registration Email is Crucial for Startups

startupsAttracting new users is a challenge for many startups given the competition and how fickle people can be about making digital commitments. So it’s always surprising to see so many startups drop the ball after they convince me to sign up for a new service.

What usually happens is I hear about a service via friends, Twitter or a newsletter. If it passes the sniff test and looks interesting, I’ll register (as long as it doesn’t take too long). Then, I wait for the confirmation email to hit my inbox.

To paraphrase Lyle Lovett’s “Her First Mistake”, the registration email is when startups make their first mistake by sending an email that tells you to complete your registration, or it includes basic info such “Welcome to XYZ”, along with your username and password. Here’s an example:

So, what’s the problem?

Not to pick on Quinzee but this kind of email is uninspiring, uncreative, unexciting, and does nothing to validate or encourage my interest in the service.

Think about it – I’ve signed up for your service (a big hurdle!), and then you fail to keep the excitement going. With the first email, there’s a great opportunity to do more marketing to drive someone to actually use the product. In other words, the fish has been hooked, now you need to pull them in.

So, how should startups approach the post-registration email?

In addition to encouraging someone to confirm their registration, you need to tell them what your service does and the benefits. And then provide suggestions on how to start using the product. Here’s an example from Pheed, a recently launched social network.

Pheed

This is a better approach because it not only welcomes me to Pheed but provides four tangible tips on how to use it.

Here’s another effective post-registration email from Frank & Oak‘s Hunt Club. First, it instills confidence by declaring the first order is 100% risk free, and then reiterates there is free shipping and 10% cash back on every order.

Bottom line: If someone makes an investment to register for your service, don’t blow the first opportunity to bring them into the fold. That first email sets the tone for the beginning of what should be a long relationship so use it wisely.

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November 3, 2012 BY Mark Evans Posted in Startups | Leave a comment

This Week in Canadian Startups: Nov. 3, 2012

Canadian startupsGuess what? Canadian startups have a funding problem – something the Financial Post proclaimed in a feature story this week.

It’s the lead item in the latest edition of “This Week in Canadian Startups”, which also features posts by Wellington Financial’s Mark McQueen on how the CPP Investment Fund has barely deployed any of its most recent capital pool, a Canadian Business story on educational startups attracting investments, and how Toronto’s startup community can thrive.

To get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning, here’s where you can subscribe.

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October 31, 2012 BY Mark Evans Posted in Startups | 15 Comments

What Toronto’s Startup Community Must do to Thrive

brad feldToronto’s startup community has come a long, long way over past two to three years. It has evolved from a place where many people talked about launching a startup to a place where a growing number of people are creating startups or working for a startup.

As important, Toronto’s startup community is maturing as many of the key pillars that will make it vibrant are being established. All in all, there are plenty of reasons to be encouraged and excited.

With this in mind, it was inspiring to hear Brad Feld do a “fireside chat” with Extreme Ventures’ Andy Yang yesterday. Feld, the co-founder of TechStars and the author of “Startup Communities”, talked about the key ingredients that a startup up community needs to create a rock-solid foundation.

These include:

- Entrepreneurs (aka leaders) leading the charge, while lawyers, marketers, VCs, etc. (aka feeders) support the ecosystem.

- Making a long-term commitment. Feld originally placed this at 100 years but pulled it back to 20 years because it was an amount of people could get their heads around. Having a long-term perspective, he said, provides communities with the ability to deal with the cyclical ups and downs.

- Let anyone to get involved so they can support and nurture the community. This means  making it easy for people to connect in a way where there is no “friction”

- Have a constant flow of activity such as events, conferences, meetups, etc. that lets members of the community get together to exchange ideas, meet new people, etc.

In the wake of Feld’s insight, here are some things that Toronto’s startup community needs to continue its development.

1. More money. It’s the obvious need but the ability to provide entrepreneurs with the capital to develop ideas and drive growth is one of the highest priorities.

2. More people such as Chris Eben, David Crow and William Mougayar willing to make a personal commitment to support and nurture the ecosystem by organizing events and pulling in speakers such as Feld and Fred Wilson.

3. A directory for startups that they could tap into to find the services needed to establish themselves and drive growth. One of the most difficult things for any small business is finding the right kind of help at the right time, so a directory might be a way to make it easier.

4. Stronger and better ties with other startups communities such as Waterloo, Ottawa and Montreal. There are a lot of activity happening, and there are ways collectively we can support each other by sharing insight and best practices, and working together.

5. A kick-ass startup conference. Not to open the kimono too much but we’ve got some big plans for mesh ’13 to embrace the startup community after dipping our toes in the water last year.

6. More people like Feld to come to town to provide perspective and context about how we’re doing and how we stack up. One of the most interesting comments made by Feld is that “every community has unique characteristics, so the worst thing Toronto could do is try to be like Silicon Valley”.

7. More exits, which would do several things: get more entrepreneurs to take the startup plunge, encourage and reward investors for backing startups, and, hopefully, allow successful entrepreneurs to do more startups and/or invest in startups.

What else does Toronto’s startup community need to thrive?

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