
Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist? - danielhonigman
There are many ways to promote your startup. What are some tactics you&#x27;ve used that were effective, that you&#x27;d recommend to others?
======
patrickk
Not a checklist, but I put together a fairly comprehensive spreadsheet of all
the top marketing resources I've come across when I worked in a startup doing
online marketing:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ag_fyIIMSJ6DdGt...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ag_fyIIMSJ6DdGtkckxQUy1XMzRaSXh4S3kzdEFrQ1E&usp=sharing)

If you're wondering what should be on the non-technical guy's checklist, start
here.

Includes absolute gold from Mint.com, Neil Patel, Patrick McKenzie,
Kissmetrics and more, covers many areas of marketing such as:

\- getting press coverage

\- SEO

\- Link building

\- B2B Marketing

\- Blogging

\- social media

etc...

------
programminggeek
1\. Figure out your market before you build anything. Talk to them, get to
know them, figure out what they need.

2\. Ask them for an intent to purchase or to reserve a spot in line or
whatever.

3\. Build landing pages and advertise them so that you can validate your
ability to acquire customers before building anything.

4\. Create a human machine that looks/feels like the real machine you are
going to build later.

5\. Sell your fake, semi-terrible, human powered machine that pretends to be
your real system until you have enough sales to justify building the real
product.

6\. Build and sell your real product.

If you do #1-5 before you ever build what you would normally start by
building, you'll already have experience selling and marketing your product
before you ever actually build it.

~~~
alphagenerator
Serious question regarding #1: What if I am the market because I am addressing
a need I have that others have not addressed? Is the question then whether
others have the same general needs?

Do I get to walk around thinking I have instant validation, or am I rolling
the dice on the likelihood that others have the same problem?

~~~
gk1
I was once in that situation, and I learned that yes, you do need to validate
that others have the same issue _and_ that they're willing to pay for the
solution _and_ that there are enough such people to make this a viable
business.

The product I created was a tool for a small niche of artists (of which I was
a part). It solved a major problem I had, and I _knew_ that others had the
same problem. I even ran it by a few other artists and they loved the idea.
What I failed to validate was whether they'd pay for the service. As it turns
out, most artists in this niche can't afford to pay even $18/month for a
service, and they're just as happy using a manual alternative.

~~~
alphagenerator
What if you had used a freemium model and delivered your product as a free app
with IAP or ads and such? Or was the market too small in such a case?

~~~
gk1
In hindsight I think the market was just far too small and did not have the
expendable income to pay for such a service.

------
CurtMonash
I write about this kind of thing quite a bit.

[http://www.strategicmessaging.com/marketing-communication-
es...](http://www.strategicmessaging.com/marketing-communication-
essentials/2012/07/03/) is on marcom essentials vs. nice-to-haves.

[http://www.strategicmessaging.com/marketing-in-stealth-
mode/...](http://www.strategicmessaging.com/marketing-in-stealth-
mode/2014/03/03/) is specifically on stealth-mode marketing (not quite an
oxymoron).

And [http://www.strategicmessaging.com/strategy-for-it-
vendors-a-...](http://www.strategicmessaging.com/strategy-for-it-vendors-a-
worksheet/2011/09/18/) is the strategy (not just marketing) worksheet that a
whole lot of tech companies have relied on.

~~~
blumkvist
Quality stuff, have an upvote!

~~~
danielhonigman
Agreed!

------
andys627
SEO - takes a while to get picked up and also some trial and error, but once
you've got it will bring in a trickle of leads every day. This adds up.

Guest posts on industry blogs - My experience is to make it easy for the
person to put the blog up - have a few ideas ready when you contact them. Make
it awesome and they'll ask you to write another one.

Advertising is hard and expensive. Repeat advertising is HARD and EXPENSIVE.
Its hard to convince people to buy your stuff with ads/landing pages. Its
expensive to run ads. Great for driving traffic before you've "earned it"
other ways. Measure, measure, measure and iterate. Spend time on different ad
variations and turn of the bad ones. An increase in CTR from .05% to .1%
doubles your clicks!! Spend some time on a landing page. Make sure you wow
these people so you get referrals and stretch every last penny of your ad
dollar. Use retargeting - its way cheaper and way more effective. Takes 5
minutes to setup w/Perfect Audience All of these things stretch your marketing
dollar farther.

Referrals - ask people to refer you. Or better yet, WOW them and they will do
it for you. In my experience, people _ARE_ ok with doing business w/new
companies that aren't super polished. Make up for it with ridiculous service
and responsiveness.

~~~
shostack
I was with you until the recommendation that it "takes 5 minutes to setup w/
Perfect Audience."

Taking five minutes to setup a display campaign is a horrible idea for an
experienced display buyer, let alone someone who doesn't have years of
experience in the space. Lots of DSPs try to make it seem simple enough for
Joe Businessowner to setup a display campaign, but that doesn't mean they
should.

To go about display buying properly you need:

\- A decent budget you are ok wasting to collect your initial data set

\- Proper conversion tracking in place

\- Ideally an ad server and/or way of measuring the contribution of view
through conversions/revenue from a cross-channel attribution standpoint

\- Display creative, and ideally multiple variations to test

\- Retargeting tags set to take advantage of various list-based tactics

\- Etc. Etc. Etc.

Some things like an ad server might be ok to do without if you know what you
are doing as the DSPs all have their own you can use these days, but it
enables things like exposure-to-conversion reporting which is pretty
important.

Advertising in general is indeed hard and expensive, and all too often I see
companies who have tossed thousands upon thousands of dollars (sometimes with
several zeros appended) on buys that weren't thought out, weren't tracked
properly, weren't managed properly, and that they ultimately deemed failures
because they don't understand how view-throughs factor into the broader mix.

Source: I do this for a living.

 _EDIT: Formatting_

------
shostack
I'm a senior digital marketer who has worked both agency and client-side with
anything from shoestring budgets to millions of dollars/month for close to a
decade. I'd like to share some guidance on digital media and analytics that I
have observed many people/companies making mistakes with. Not saying any of
this to brag--just giving context so you can more effectively judge the
quality of my advice.

1\. Please dear god make it a priority to get your tracking setup properly. At
the very least you should have your primary revenue generating action tracked
as a conversion goal. Other things you should track are key actions that lead
up to this, such as signing up for a free trial, and the various steps
involved in that. This gets you into things like event tracking. Google
Analytics is fine for this initially, although some newer analytics companies
offer some interesting things such as Heap Analytics with their "track
everything and worry about defining it later with a WYSIWYG editor" approach.
You need to have a crystal clear understanding of your funnel to identify
where any problems/bottlenecks are. Just as important are tracking
cancellations properly (for SaaS at least) so you can do a proper cohort
analysis across various dimensions.

2\. If you are starting on AdWords, and you don't have conversion tracking,
you are asking for trouble with a handful of exceptions. Read through the
entire AdWords help site if you haven't managed an account before. It's a lot,
but it is just as technical of a discipline as software development with its
own share of intricacies, known issues, workarounds, etc. It is also changing
incredibly quickly.

3\. For paid search in general, if you have a limited budget start small with
a handful of keywords you think are appropriate (including your brand name
terms), and keep the number of ad groups/campaigns/ad variations rather small
initially. Doing so makes it easier to tell when you have enough data at
various levels to begin making optimizations. Additionally, you should keep
your bids fairly high initially and focus on driving CTR. Building up a solid
Quality Score is priority one for a new account as it determines long-term
efficiency and scalability, and CTR is the #1 factor in determining that.
Ultimately, this can get you into a positive feedback loop of higher
CTR->higher Ad Rank->lower CPCs->lower CPA->higher ROI.

4\. Display buying is not a simple thing to learn, and if you don't know how
to interpret the data (particularly view-through conversions), you are going
to be unhappy and lose money. Ease into it, and understand that it takes time
to see an impact. If available inventory/business permits, focus your initial
display efforts on particular DMAs or geo targets and see if there is any lift
in your brand search query volume on AdWords. That can in some cases give you
a sense of if things are working.

5\. Understanding what cross-channel attribution modeling is all about is
mandatory in this day and age, particularly if you engage with agencies who
may not have a vested interest in valuing display view-through conversions at
anything less than 100% (seen it happen too many times). If you don't know
what attribution modeling is all about, you had best read up on it. In short,
it means that just because you see a conversion in AdWords for example,
doesn't mean that AdWords should get all the credit for it. Digging deeper
into search funnel reports or the awesome Google Analytics attribution and
path analysis tools, you'll frequently see other multiple touch points such as
organic search, email, social, etc. Certain channels, like social and display,
tend to play a larger role at the beginning of the buying process with
generating awareness, and attribution models let you get a sense of that. If
you have impression and view-through data from an ad server (DFA for example),
you can get a much more complete picture of how your display efforts fit into
that mix.

6\. Don't listen to any gurus or agencies/consultants that claim to know all
the secrets of AdWords, or display, or whatever. There is no secret sauce.
There is however lots of buried knowledge in various help sites, industry
sites, industry forums, etc. and it is a fairly technical discipline that is
evolving at a breathtaking pace, so it is easy to get overwhelmed and buy into
these promises. Do your due diligence, and properly vet through any such
hiring decisions. Ask to see what exactly they might do for your
account/business. If they are anything but 100% transparent in their approach,
run away. The real value to look for is someone who can execute properly and
consistently, and frankly, the knowledge should be given away for free since
that alone won't lead to success.

7\. Developers--I get that for many of you marketing is this evil misleading
thing that you want nothing to do with. We have differences of opinion, and I
could show you plenty of examples of marketing done right. Bottom line though
is that you should try to avoid the "Field of Dreams" fallacy. If you build
it, there is no guarantee they will come. Marketing is what gets you visitors
and leads, and then sales and/or your product are what close the deal.
Advertising (an aspect of marketing), when done right, is delivering the right
message to the right audience at the right time and place. It does not need to
be (and shouldn't be) misleading or make false promises.

8\. Understand the nature of your advertising placements and traffic sources.
Some networks get their traffic from places that makes me highly skeptical of
the quality of their inventory. Likewise, some placements just aren't worth
the value.

9\. Don't waste your time with small targeted direct buys initially. It takes
much more time to setup and execute than going through something like the GDN
on AdWords or a DSP (once you know what you are doing). These scale MUCH
better, will give you more data to optimize against, and in many cases are
more cost-effective. If you have a particular placement that is doing
gangbusters and want to guarantee more inventory, then and only then should
you consider approaching the publisher for a direct deal at a slightly higher
CPM than what you are clearing off the exchanges.

10\. Many DSPs, ad networks, etc. have minimum monthly spend requirements of
$5-10k. Understand that this is done to separate the serious buyers from the
rest, and that typically you won't have even close to enough data to properly
measure success with a display campaign for less than that (sometimes even
with that amount). Display efforts can take time to see the results of, and
even more time to reach optimal efficiency.

11\. Understand your sales cycle with regards to number of touch points
needed, duration, etc. Not much more to say here other than this plays a large
role when setting up retargeting properly. Not considering retargeting? You're
leaving conversions and dollars on the table. It is some of the lowest hanging
fruit in the funnel, and while you might risk paying for unnecessary touch
points, odds are you will more than offset this by keeping your brand top of
mind over longer sales cycles. Mind your frequency caps though or you will
assault your audience with a never-ending parade of your display banners.

12\. Believe it or not, some agencies are actually quite good at media buying,
and can bring to the table economies of scale even Fortune 50 advertisers
can't reach on their own. Sometimes there is a misalignment of incentives, but
this almost always comes down to poor scoping during the initial sales
process. Understand that agencies are a service-based business, and make sure
you are paying for sufficient staffing on your account, otherwise you get what
you pay for and don't be surprised if you don't get any love and performance
suffers. There are many benefits to agencies, but just as many benefits to
building a team in-house, so weigh the pros and cons before making a decision,
and make sure you go to RFP with several agencies before hiring one. Don't be
afraid to pit them against each other with regards to the things they are
telling you.

Anyway, its lunch time, but hopefully this is helpful for some folks here. I
truly enjoy helping people with digital marketing, so feel free to reply here
with any questions you might have.

~~~
danielhonigman
Very robust answer. Thanks for taking the time to respond!

~~~
shostack
Thanks--I guess I had a lot of this pent up and this was the perfect thread to
post it in.

------
jwblackwell
SEO takes a long time (compared to other strategies) to work. So for most
startups it shouldn't be a priority. You also don't want to be relying on
Google for traffic.

You're better focusing on building relationships with influencers in your
industry, guest posting on their blogs and asking them for feedback to help
build a good product. This in turn will encourage links anyway and make the
SEO come naturally.

------
kristofferdk
1 effective content marketing approach I used with previous company:

1\. create a slidedeck with lots of visual & publish on Slideshare 2\. create
blogpost with the slidedeck embedded - remember to test the headlines (e.g.
with KingSumo for Wordpress) 3\. change the headline in slidedeck & blogpost
according to what works best - after we updated the headline on Slideshare one
deck went from 1,000 views the first 24hrs to 10,000 views in the next 24hrs
(not only due to being featured by Slideshare) 4\. share your blogpost on
various channels (niche Linkedin groups, twitter etc.) - and don't forget to
submit to Buffer ([https://buffer.wufoo.com/forms/buffers-awesome-content-
colle...](https://buffer.wufoo.com/forms/buffers-awesome-content-collection-
form/)). Buffer can really drive traffic & a crazy amount of shares on
Twitter.

------
bhartzer
People mention SEO, but that's such a broad term now. So many people have
different opinions on what SEO really is. It's not just "optimizing your site"
and then spamming links to your site all over the place.

Let's forget for a moment about links. What's critical is that you build a
site that's search engine friendly. Here's what I would concentrate on:

\- Unique content, well written (hire a good writer if you can't write the
copy yourself).

\- Site structure is important. Think of a pyramid type structure where
important high level concept pages link to categories that link to
subcategories that then link to more specific pages. Some sites only have high
level and then category pages, and that's just fine.

\- SEO Best Practices. Use unique title tags, heading tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.)
and image alt attributes on all images. Link within sentences to other pages
on your site.

\- Privacy policy, disclaimer, and TOS pages should be on the site.

\- If you appeal to an EU audience, then make sure the proper cookie notices
are there on the site. See Google's CookieChoices.org.

\- Add a blog. Update it regularly with fresh posts, talk to your users. Even
if it's just updates about new features. Tweet, +1 and Like your posts (i.e.,
share them whenever you write a new post.

\- Press Releases can still help. Add press release to your own site on your
press release page, then distribute.

\- News. Add a news page on your site, link out to where you've been mentioned
in the news.

\- Hire a PR guy or gal. Someone who has contacts in your industry who can
help pitch story ideas. SEO isn't just about links and optimizing your
content. It's about getting your brand mentioned. A good SEO can optimize a
site. A great SEO can get your brand mentioned in the news and drive traffic.

I could get into all sorts of other SEO details, but what's important is to
get your site taken care of first. It's got be search engine friendly and
crawlable with unique content, though.

------
paulnrogers
You can't really provide much value without knowing the goals / intentions
behind the campaign / activity and obviously decisions on channels would be
massively dependent on verticals, circumstances and budgets, however content
campaigns alongside paid activity can be good from a launch branding POV.

I've seen people combine offers with quirky / creative content, which is
leveraged via paid StumbledUpon, Twitter and FB advertising to generate brand
impressions and traffic.

I've also seen sponsored YouTube content work quite well for startup brands.

Obviously SEO and PPC / displayed are more acquisition channels - but
dependent on the goals, these represent good channels for quality / qualified
traffic.

------
mladenkovacevic
Yes, yes do your market research, identify pain points, find a compelling
value proposition.. do all those things.

But once you've defined the technical aspects of your product-market fit,
write a story. The story of why you are doing what you're doing (not how, or
where or when.. but why). This story must be true and it should resonate with
you so you don't get sick of re-telling it a million time in a million
different ways.

Then build that story into your product and find the most frictionless ways of
enabling your users to spread that story for you through your product. Finally
identify any and all channels where this story might garner a captive audience
and go and share that story yourself.

------
suzyperplexus
I suppose you need to ask, "What is the point of promotion?" If you're just
trying to get to a particular niche audience and you know they're on a
particular channel, then go there and start interacting. Defining marketing
isn't going to get people to look at your product and producing your messaging
in a perfect bubble is a surefire way to keep you in obscurity. I suppose my
tactic is creating a shortlist of 1000 ideal customers, reading what they
read, figuring out their needs, and then after all that research --
approaching them humbly with a request to demo.

------
johnmoore
1) Set up a Twitter page. 2) Set up a facebook page. 2) Have your branding the
same on all social media. 3) Connect to relevant followers or potential
customers. 4) Connect your blog posts automatically to twitter.

~~~
Kequc
How do you mean by connect your blog posts automatically to twitter, you mean
have twitter link to new blog posts? What tool do you use?

~~~
johnmoore
In wordpress you can connect your twitter feed, so when you write a blog post
it automatically posts on twitter. I can't remember if it was a plugin I
added.

It also makes the short url for you. So you can track on statcounter.com how
many people clicked that short url.

------
gk1
Blogging is always on my list.

It's almost like cheating. A well planned and written article can get you
thousands of visits from relevant people to your site. Then some of them visit
your main site, some of them sign up for your service, some share your site
with their colleagues, etc.

For example, a recent blog post I wrote to help promote my own consulting
service brought in ~15,300 visits over this past weekend. The post before that
brought ~10,000 visits. A post for a company I work with brought them ~30,000
visits _in a day_... You get the idea.

~~~
longneckdeer
I think a reasonable follow up question is how did you market your blog posts
so successfully?

~~~
gk1
Nothing complicated... Just posting on relevant subreddits, HN, Designer News,
etc.

I think the more important (and far more difficult) part is writing an article
that's interesting enough that it doesn't need a lot of work or trickery to
get visits.

------
userium
I would also add usability to the already mentioned tactics. Usability testing
helps you to understand what people really want, thus making you a better
marketer.

In addition to testing your own site, you can also do a usability test for
your competitor's site. You might find some interesting marketing ideas that
way. :)

Here is a free usability checklist for websites:
[https://userium.com/](https://userium.com/) And services like e.g.
usertesting.com are great for getting feedback from users.

------
Shehroz
Hi, I am new here and I have a product, its a VPN(Virtual Private Network)
trying to make a venture through it. Why VPN? because people like i my country
and many other are facing bans and censored contents on internet. Can you
people please help me and some suggestions on marketing this product as i am
computer scientist so have weak side in marketing. I will be really thankful
:) P.S: If you want to check the product , here is the link: getolive.org

------
trengul
We tried Stumbleupon PD for getting quite cheap traffic, when we were on
initial stage - it helped us to validate the concept and move further.
Advantage - you will also get a free traffic just as regular stumbleupon
submission. Betalist is quite hot now as well - we got 100 subscribers to beta
from it.

~~~
c16
My problem with stumbleupon is that while you may get many visitors (in the
thousands per page), I noticed that very few - if any - actually cared. Did
some analysis on it and I wouldn't use SU again: [http://ssdpress.com/when-it-
comes-to-blogging-readership-its...](http://ssdpress.com/when-it-comes-to-
blogging-readership-its-quality-over-quantity/)

~~~
danielhonigman
Good point. They don't stay long, and they likely won't sign up for anything.
If you get a big spike from SU visits, it could take down the site. And you'll
have nothing to show for it.

------
cordie
Creating a podcast is a really simple way to create some leads coming to you -
[http://justhitpublish.com/podcasting-matters-software-
compan...](http://justhitpublish.com/podcasting-matters-software-companies/)

------
hmcm55
[http://andrewchen.co/2014/07/08/theres-only-a-few-ways-to-
sc...](http://andrewchen.co/2014/07/08/theres-only-a-few-ways-to-scale-user-
growth-and-heres-the-list/)

------
bengali3
the answer depends on your product!!

Rob Walling has a great grid for how to think about marketing based on what
your product is: see his blog at
[http://www.softwarebyrob.com/](http://www.softwarebyrob.com/)

Is it Sold on Value? Is the Need obvious? Are people active looking for it?

also check out inbound.org. At the moment Dharmesh Shah has the top post with
"how to grow a startup with inbound marketing"
[https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/36749575#](https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/36749575#)

------
gschlenkhoff
Use something like quickmvp.com to tweak yout branding. Before you finally
decide for a brand name consider pusruing an Adwords campaign to find out
which branding and marketing slogans convert the most.

------
NameNickHN
Here are the things that have proven effective for us:

\- Guest blog posts \- AdWords \- Answering questions in forums on other
websites \- Content marketing \- Getting partners that promote or sell our
services

------
grimtrigger
Blogging. I'm not really a good writer, so I tend to do a lot of interesting
data things. My startup is also Reddit based, so the content gets pretty
decent attention.

------
paulnrogers
Building on this, I'd suggest that your goals should be primarily focused on
early stage branding activity and building foundations for long-term
acquisition.

------
LeicaLatte
I organized bootcamps about the product and even mobile dev sometimes. Found a
good loyal user base. Recommend it.

------
kinj28
it all depends on your objective. it can be user acquisition or customers. if
customers then b2c or b2b? in geofrey moore's world, is your product a
category or still very innovative? depending on this - maybe you can arrive at
a tactic

------
blumkvist
The very first thing that should be on everyone's marketing checklist is
understanding what marketing is and what it is not. A lot of people use
marketing and promotion interchangeably. Promotion is just a part of your
marketing strategy.

Marketing is the science of bring a product to market. A good marketing plan
includes (among other things) initial market research, analysis of the
marketplace (the dynamic relationship between companies, products, segments,
distribution channels and consumers), finding a product-market fit (defining
product design and specifications based on the market analysis and your
short,mid and long-term goals), pricing strategy, and finally - promotion
strategy.

There are some great (and free) MOOCs on marketing strategy on coursera. I
recommend "Competitive strategy" and "Advanaced competitive strategy" by
Tobias Kretschmer, if you are not looking to change the world with this great
new app you and your friend are hacking together. Checking out "Introduction
to marketing" is good if you want a checklist for consumer-driven philosophy.
A rule of thumb when taking MOOCs is to use the videos simply as general
pointers. If you want to really learn - use the recommended literature.

~~~
visakanv
This. The most important part of marketing your X is building a X that
matters. This applies whether you're doing a startup or playing in a band. The
best promotional tactics will flub on a bleh product that nobody cares about.
You'll waste time and money trying to sell something that people aren't
interested in buying.

A lot of good marketing is about figuring out how to position your offering in
a way that allows people to talk about your stuff. The marketer is really a
facilitator- you have as little and as much influence as that sounds.

The promotional stuff at the end, that's the victory lap, that's the easiest
bit. The million (or billion!) dollar question is- who does this matter to,
and why, and how do we put it in front of them in a way that makes them agree?
The rest is just elbow grease.

