Marketing Your Startup

by Simona Covel

  IS AN AD AGENCY RIGHT FOR YOU?

  If you need to shift strategies fast, or if you need to connect with an audience and aren’t sure where to begin, or if your marketing has sputtered, or if you’re in the midst of a period of aggressive growth, bringing on an agency might be the right decision.

  Writing a check isn’t going to magically solve all of your problems. Before beginning the search, a small company needs to think critically about what role an agency would play in your business objectives. Whatever the reason—whether you’re planning for accelerated growth, redesigning your brand, or branching into new territories—it should be fully formed before you first reach out to agencies. It’s not the agency’s job to hash out your business objectives; it’s their job to craft a marketing strategy that aligns to those objectives and helps you reach them. So know what you’re trying to do before you begin the search.

  Working with a marketing agency, especially for the first time, should not be an impulse decision. Plan for a search that could take weeks and even stretch into months, much like an executive hire does. Whoever you select will hopefully be around for several years. Even if they’re not located within your walls, they are an extension of your team. You want to take your time making the decision.

  As you search, you may find that the agency landscape feels fragmented. These days, many agencies have a very specific expertise that may not meet all of your needs. Most large companies work with multiple agencies—a big company may have one agency for digital marketing, one for branding, one for social media, and one for advertising—plus an in-house marketing team. While that’s probably not going to be the case for you, you can still find ways to benefit from working with multiple niche agencies that offer really specialized expertise.

  If you find you really click with a highly specialized agency that can’t meet all of your needs, that doesn’t need to be a deal-breaker. You may be able to work with a couple of niche agencies who excel in a certain area—a content marketing agency and a traditional ad agency, for example, or a digital marketing shop and a branding agency. Any agency worth its salt is accustomed to working as partners with other, complementary agencies on behalf of its clients.

  Before making a decision on any agency hire, consider the time you are willing to dedicate to this partnership, the money you’re willing to invest, the skills your team already possesses, and the skills your team lacks. Your agency relationships should take you out of your comfort zone a bit—they should bring strategies and ideas that your team couldn’t have produced on their own. They should challenge your thinking and continually refine and sharpen it.

  WRITE A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL

  Once you’ve addressed the tough questions about why an agency is right for you, it’s time to see how a few agencies think. A request for proposal (RFP) is the most common way companies share a little bit about themselves and your advertising objectives, as well as any financial requirements or contractual stipulations that make your request unique.

  When expressing your vision, try to be realistic. “The small marketer that says I need an ad in the Super Bowl with no concept of the costs or how that money may be used more prudently in other manners is not based in reality,” says 4A’s Finneran. “That’s a problem.” The realistic scope and direction of your marketing stems from a clear understanding of your business model, your customers, and your prospects. No one knows more about your business and your customers than you do, and it’s critical that you pass that knowledge on to any potential advertising partner through your RFP.

  That means being very clear about your target audience, so the agencies who are vying for your business come back with a clear, targeted proposal that you can judge. If you’re wishy-washy about your target audience, an agency isn’t going to be able to clearly tell you whether they’d prioritize social channels, content marketing, or out-of-home. But if you say your target is men in their twenties who live in urban areas and commute on public transportation, you’ll get a much more focused proposal for you to evaluate.

  WHITTLE DOWN YOUR LIST

  With an RFP in hand, it’s time to start the actual search. Remember that agencies come in all shapes, sizes, and colors: There are thousands of them, and they are constantly changing. Instead of plunging in blindly, enlist the help of your peers. You can talk to other business owners to see what agencies they’ve considered or are familiar with. If you belong to an entrepreneurs’ group, that’s a great place to start because they’re likely to recommend agencies who are adept at working with startup, high growth firms. You can also research via trade associations and dig into the marketing and advertising industry press to look for promising upstarts or specialized agencies.

  There are dozens of criteria with which to narrow the agency field, but perhaps the most fundamental choice revolves around whether a small or large agency fits the needs of your company best. It’s not always the case, but a smaller agency may feel more comfortable for a smaller company. Smaller agencies tend to have more accessible executives and be easier to navigate. That may come, though, at the expense of the very buttoned-up, hyper-professional approach and documentation you’ll get from a bigger shop. Plus, established big shops have often worked with large brands and bring a host of experience they can apply to your work.

  MEET THEM IN PERSON

  Meeting with agencies can be intimidating, but you’ll feel more comfortable if you do a little homework. These meetings allow you to really see how an agency works from both a creative and a business sense, so it’s important to make sure you ask any questions or express any concerns to get all the answers and assurance you need to make a final decision.

  Before the creative discussion begins, certain legal technicalities such as confidentiality, idea ownership, fees, and non-compete clauses need to be addressed and negotiated. An agency can’t give you a thorough, well-thought-out pitch if they don’t have all of the relevant information, which includes details about your product and market. That makes some founders squeamish, for sure, so make sure you have a rock-solid confidentiality agreement in place; consult your lawyer at the start.

  Once you’ve gotten the legalities out of the way, it’s time for more creative conversations. Often, first meetings between advertisers and clients are called capabilities meetings because advertising agencies demonstrate what they feel they do best—you may hear someone from an agency refer to their “capes.” This is your chance to see where an agency believes they shine. They’ll probably try to tell you that their capabilities are broad in scope—this is a sales pitch, after all—so dig into what they’re presenting and make sure you’re comfortable.

  To assess the skills of certain agencies, ask for case studies demonstrating the agency’s past projects. Keep in mind that case studies are not meant to exhibit their experience in your industry, but the creative team’s overall style. Is it safe, or does it push boundaries? What’s the tone? You can ask for examples that may be relevant for an audience or a strategy that you’re considering.

  While assessing the abilities of the agency you’re meeting with, also take the time to assess the people in the room. In any meetings with a prospective advertising agency, stress the importance of meeting with the actual team who will work on your campaign to determine if you have the chemistry to make this partnership work through good times and bad. There will be stressful, high-pressure moments. You want to feel comfortable with the team—hopefully they’ll be with you for the long haul, as you grow.

  Keeping It in House: Dollar Shave Club

  Agencies aren’t right for all young companies. Dollar Shave Club founder Michael Dubin described to Inc. why he decided to hire full-time marketing staff rather than sign on an agency:

  By late 2014, something started to shift in the company. You get to a point—usually it’s between fifty and eighty employees—when you need to start bringing in some process and organizational discipline. As the CEO, you have to realize you can’t do everything yourself any
more. And teams need strategists, but they also need the right layers above and below to execute in specific areas. And I don’t mean stacking people on top of one another hierarchically. I’m talking about ever-deeper layers of specialization and focus.

  Around this time, I started up an internal creative agency. We needed to build a really robust campaign for our first made-for-TV spots, which poked fun at how hard it can be to get into the “razor fortress” in most retail locations. I found some entrepreneurial creatives who could do more with less—we still had to be pretty scrappy—and an incredible project manager who could keep us on track.

  A lot of companies outsource much of their creative work. We don’t. We wanted this expertise in-house precisely so we could be nimbler. This small group has grown to about twenty people. I still lead the team, help brainstorm, and give final approval, but instead of doing 75 percent of the work, like I did in 2013 and 2014, now I’m involved in probably about 20 percent of the work.

  Our viral videos are basically our bible, and they help the team maintain our unique voice. The marketing has probably been the hardest thing for me to delegate as we’ve gotten bigger. It’s tough to realize that you need to hire people who can do things better than you, especially when you have some expertise in a particular area.

  Then again, it’s also challenging to hire people for positions that you have no expertise in. I made that mistake with my first senior engineering hire, back in 2012. I just didn’t understand the necessary qualifications because of my own inexperience. It became clear pretty quickly that it wasn’t a good fit. Ultimately, if you want to build a big company, you need talent for every department that matches the much higher level you see at more mature companies. The more experts you have, the faster you can move. Instead of doing the work yourself, you have to shift into a role of inspiring and motivating people to drive the right results. It’s one of the most important shifts a startup needs to make on the road to becoming a big company.

  12

  UNDERSTANDING MARKETING SOFTWARE

  SOFTWARE ISN’T A PANACEA, but for a cash-strapped young business, the right tools can accelerate and bolster your marketing strategy. The trouble is figuring out where to start in a marketplace flooded with options.

  Most founders are aware of customer relationship management tools like Salesforce or Hubspot, which we discussed in Chapter 7. They offer broad suites of tools for your sales and marketing functions. But there are dozens more. The available options are vast—and some tools are quite low-cost, or even free. Here are a few that are highly regarded in key marketing functions.

  WEBSITE AND ANALYTICS

  When it comes to your website, you’ll probably start with Google Analytics. Most businesses do, large and small. The free tools from Google Analytics allow you to see which of your pages are performing best, and how users are navigating your site. It’s an incredibly valuable tool to see if your customers are interacting with your site the way you thought they would.

  To go deeper, with Optify, your website will be benchmarked against others in your industry, with feedback helping you determine areas where you can improve. Advanced analytics will give you all the information you need about those who visit your website, including the sites referring those visitors and what actions they take once they arrive at your site. This information could be just what you need as you start a new marketing campaign.

  Some CRM tools that you may already be using, like Hubspot, also offer web analytics as part of an integrated suite of products. Hubspot also offers a pretty robust free version showing where site visitors are coming from and which pages are converting that many startups may find sufficient as they’re getting off the ground. Plus, on Hubspot’s site you’ll find some really killer marketing resources for free. Whether you’re looking for some creative site design ideas, a course on content marketing, or even a guide to effective blogging, chances are you’ll find it among HubSpot’s free marketing tools.

  SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT

  Staying active on social media takes time, and time is one commodity many entrepreneurs lack. Hootsuite is one popular tool that helps to monitor posts across various social media accounts. You can schedule posts to go live on multiple platforms at once, giving you the convenience of writing all of your social media messages at a time that works best for your schedule. You can also schedule posts to go live at a time when your followers are most likely to see them, rather than when you happen to be online.

  Buffer is another free platform: It has all the important features you expect with a social media management platform, like post scheduling, baseline analytics, and the ability to customize posts for each social network. It also offers a browser extension so you can quickly and easily share what you’re reading online without logging in to each of them.

  Boosting your social media audience can help amplify each message you create and send. Followerwonk is a tool from Moz that helps you identify followers who are most likely to be interested in the type of content you offer. You can also research your existing followers to learn more about their interests and goals to better identify the type of content you should be sharing. This has the added benefit of giving you insight you can use when searching for new followers.

  SURVEY DEPLOYMENT AND MANAGEMENT

  Chances are, at some point you’ll want to send out some kind of customer survey or questionnaire. SurveyMonkey is arguably the most popular tool in the space. The platform offers a robust free option where you can design and send slick, professional-looking surveys to your email list. The software also includes an analytics tool to analyze their answers.

  What makes SurveyMonkey really useful is their expert-reviewed templates and questions to make sure the data that you’re getting will be accurate and helpful—not skewed because of the way you worded your question or answers.

  CONCLUSION

  V IRGIN GROUP FOUNDER Richard Branson built an empire by staging stunts and generating worldwide attention. Barbara Corcoran spent years establishing herself as a real estate expert in New York City and cultivating a symbiotic relationship with the press. Dollar Shave Club invented an entirely new way of selling a standard drugstore commodity by making funny videos and making sure the right people saw them at the right times.

  It’s easy to gloat about the single viral video that took off or the guerrilla tactic that yielded a major customer breakthrough. But as the reporters and editors at Inc. have interviewed thousands of successful entrepreneurs over the years, we’ve learned that’s not how most small companies hit it big. Instead, you can trace their success to, among other things, a rigorous, well-thought-through marketing strategy that was executed over the course of months—or more likely, years.

  Richard Branson never delegated control of his social media accounts, despite running a global empire, because it would undermine his distinct voice and the rugged, in-your-face authenticity of his brand. Barbara Corcoran developed proprietary research reports, worded them carefully, and distributed them religiously, like clockwork, year after year. Dollar Shave Club founder Michael Dubin deliberately delayed announcing the company’s new funding deal so the announcement would correspond with its video launch—dramatically increasing the likelihood that anyone reporting on the funding would discover the video.

  In other words: Commercials look slick and tweets feel casual. But behind those executions are marketing strategies that take groundwork and effort.

  For many new company founders, that may come as a surprise. They believe passionately in their product or service and want it to speak for itself. But the reality is that even the most breakthrough, effective, earth-shattering product can’t gain traction without garnering some attention—preferably, lots of attention—from the right people.

  No single expert can—or should—dictate your marketing strategy. But if you follow the steps in this book, you’ll be well on your way to discovering what your brand stands for and how you can communicate that to customers and potentia
l customers. The hardest part is getting started. In the words of that brilliant marketer Richard Branson, “Screw it, just do it.”

  SOURCES

  Introduction

  1. https://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587

  2. https://www.quora.com/How-did-Warby-Parker-gain-its-initial-traction

  3. https://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/jumpstart-inboundmarketingv2

  Chapter 4

  1. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2017/2016-nielsen-social-media-report.html; http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/02/more-americans-are-turning-to-multiple-social-media-sites-for-news/

  Chapter 5

  1. https://www.forrester.com/report/You+Dont+Need+A+Social+Marketing+Strategy/-/E-RES133541

  2. https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/02/28/facebook-advertising-benchmarks

  3. http://www.wsj.com/articles/lacroix-bubbles-up-in-sparkling-water-brand-competition-1460047940

  4. https://adespresso.com/blog/instagram-ads-cost/

  5. https://www.millwardbrowndigital.com/pinterest-and-the-power-of-future-intent/

  6. https://blog.pinterest.com/en/150-million-people-finding-ideas-pinterest

  7. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-snapchat-users/snaps-older-user-base-slowly-growing-ahead-of-ipo-analyst-idUSKBN15N2DG?type=companyNews