The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing

Starting a business is exhilarating. Unfortunately, the “build it and they will come” theory doesn’t hold much weight and those overnight success stories you hear about are often the result of behind the scenes years of hard work. Simply put, startup marketing is a unique challenge often times because of the limited resources, whether it’s time, money or talent.

You have to be sure every effort, no matter how small, is well-planned and flawlessly executed. And to make it even more difficult, the traditional marketing strategies don’t always work.

Startup marketing is a whole different science. How so? The secret is properly combining the right channels: Content Marketing and PR.

So, starting from the beginning, here’s the complete Startup Marketing Manual.

Foundation

Before you start laying bricks, you need a solid foundation. A successful startup marketing strategy follows that same principle. Before you jump into marketing your startup, make sure you have the following bases covered.

1. Choosing a Market

It’s easy for startup founders to believe the whole world will love their products. After all, founders eat, sleep and breathe their products. The reality is that only a small portion of the population is interested in your product.

If you try to market your startup to everyone, you waste both time and money. The key is to identify a niche target market and go after market share aggressively.

How do you choose a market? There are four main factors to consider:

1. Market Size – Are you targeting a regional demographic? Male? Children? Know exactly how many potential customers are in your target market.
2. Market Wealth – Does this market have the money to spend on your product?
3. Market Competition – Is the market saturated? As in, are their many competitors?
4. Value Proposition – Is your value proposition unique enough to cut thru the noise?

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Entrepreneurs Talk about Raising Money

Here are more of their experiences and insights on getting startups funded.

Lower Infrastructure Costs 

With the growing availability of cloud-based computing and services, fewer startups need to spend their money on hardware. “In the early days of Spotify (2006-07),” recalls Enh, “we spent weeks looking at data centers and negotiating with hardware vendors, then finally co-locating. When we started Wrapp five years later, we didn’t need to buy any infrastructure. Higher and higher layers of business service are available in the cloud, so you get more and more stuff without having to buy or do it yourself.”

This has changed seed funding in particular, since startups can lower their initial costs and get products out faster. And for later rounds, notes Reddy, cloud resources make it easier to put up a prototype to show investors.

Changing the VC-entrepreneur balance

Those lower costs can affect the VC-entrepreneur balance, Enh believes. “Large, traditional VCs with hundreds of millions of dollars need a portfolio of about 200 companies to do angel investment properly. Anything that lowers the cost of starting a business may present VCs with the problem of keeping their money active.”

Besides VCs, it’s helpful for the ecosystem to have angels and accelerators willing to invest, says Fears, especially in Latin America where there are fewer institutional investors. “There’s also a growing community of 25- to 30-year-olds,” he adds, “who have had a couple of successful exits and want to invest $50-75,000 in first-time entrepreneurs. Those investors add a lot of value because they are willing to coach and mentor.”

Terms vs. valuation

In the offer, what’s more important for the entrepreneur to examine: terms or valuation?

Of course, the press will focus more on the valuation, but the terms are your agreement with the investors and you’ll have to live with it (and them) a long time.

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Venture Capital: 5 Tips for Nailing the Full Partnership Pitch

You have already had one (or likely multiple) meetings with a subset of a firm’s investment team, including a principal and perhaps a general partner. You’ve impressed your point person (or people) sufficiently so that you have been invited to present to the broader partnership. What do you do now? Here are five things to keep in mind.
 

1. Focus on Style, Not Just Substance

This may sound counterintuitive. However, if you have been asked to come in and present to the full partnership, you have already done a good job defining, defending and articulating your business plan, and addressing many questions and concerns. Your initial contacts from the firm have likely already written up one or more memos introducing your company, and have had multiple internal discussions about your company’s compelling prospective investment.

Now it's showtime! Most likely, the partnership will already be familiar with the facts around your team, market, business model, product, customers, competition and financial projections. They are now looking for the “X factor” — your ability to present with pizzazz, to capture and sustain the attention of the room, to project a degree of informed enthusiasm and to showcase your natural leadership and sales abilities with a healthy spark of charisma.

2. Balance Confidence With Thoughtful Introspection

You know your business better than anyone else. It is important for you to project confidence and conviction around the viability, magnitude and trajectory of your business. It is the job of those in the room to challenge your assumptions or to present perspectives that counter your thesis. It is your job to respectfully but credibly convey what you are doing and how you will actualize your plan.

At the same time, be introspective. The best CEOs and entrepreneurs know their strengths but also recognize where they need help. 

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16 rules of engagement to rocket fuel your start-up’s growth

Here are 16 things that essential if you are going to see your young start-up flourish into a high growth mid-market tiger:







1. Don’t be alone
The experienced, objective and dispassionate adviser / chairman / non-executive director (mentor) can make for a powerful combination with the passionate yet inexperienced entrepreneur who is not always as objective as is required. It’s someone to talk to and vent your frustrations at – safely.

2. Hire a high calibre senior leadership team
You need one of these if you are serious about growth. Too many founders think they can do it virtually by themselves or employ junior managers and expect director level results. Recruit for greatness.

3. Challenge
It is no longer all down to you and if your leadership team is motivated by long term growth in the value of the company then it’s likely they now own part of it too. You have to respect their views and listen to their advice. Expect to be challenged. If you aren’t something is wrong – you have a weak team or you are overbearing. Both are equally dangerous.

4. Learn to lead not manage
This means you have to build a great leadership team and then let them get on with it. Your role as CEO & founder is to provide the direction and uphold the vision and focus – through the ups and downs. Pick the right people and they’ll build a great company for you. Too often, a promising young business is stifled because the founder cannot make the leap from being the nexus of all decisions to leading a team. More of what got you here is not what will get you to where you want to get to. You have to let go and delegate, not over manage.

5. Trust
I trusted my fellow directors 100% that they always had the best interests of Coffee Nation at heart. We had a simple vision and were always aligned. Of course, we didn’t always agree but that is healthy.

6. Style

The advantages of having a partner for business startups

Two types of business operations in the form of a partnership that has been very popular today. Because if compared to the benefits the business owners who have the sole monopoly on the business owner is one of the shareholders that the difference is quite large. Together with the form of business in the current structure in the economy to facilitate business operations in the latter, more in this era, so you do not really have a chance to see emerging businesses that stem from the same owner, but only a little. The advantages of strategic partnerships with the following.

1. A capital increase.

Fund business is that of matching the story is well known for business. The partners will help business operators are promising to raise capital to expand much more. This is beneficial to invest in things that will not expand branch offices. Funds for the purchase of products. Employs. Working capital in the company. That these issues will have very limited if the company is owned only one shareholder. The financing will be difficult to run than companies that have business partners who share the same management.

  

2. Have an advisor on hand to help.

The assisted forward advice without having to pay employment benefits that the company is a partnership with business over the sole owner. Of course, because it operates in part to be indispensable, although, it is not difficult to see problems in the operation. This is to meet all the experience of business life. Having a good advisor who understands the problems and needs access to the company will help alleviate the burden on the operators to be very they are ready to be behind the scenes who help support the idea of ​​entrepreneurship and ready to be ahead in removing obstacles to encounter problems. It is helpful if businesses will open tremendous business partner with a partner. How bad because two heads are better than one head, lean on dinner.

3. has broad social networking business.

9 Things You Need To Know For Startup Investing

Startup investing can be rewarding both financially and personally. By investing in a startup you are contributing to job creation and capital formation. The influence of entrepreneurs has shaped the U.S. since before its founding and the contribution with such innovation its absolutely immeasurable.

Even though picking winners is not an easy game, making a home run by investing in startups means that the returns could yield between 5x to 100 times returns on the initial investment. However, it is crucial to conduct the appropriate due diligence on the business, market, competitive landscape and founding members to mitigate against risk.

At the company I co-founded for instance, RockThePost, an investment platform for startups, we help with the due diligence process by only showcasing highly vetted startups. Each entrepreneur and their high level officers have to pass through background checks in order to even be considered, in addition to pitching the business venture to our investment committee, which is comprised of four financial experts, and led by the former Chief Financial Officer of E*Trade Financial, Robert Simmons.

Below are some of the most important tips when considering making an investment in a startup company.

1) Invest in a domain you know. One of the best ways to reduce risk is to understand the market that startup operates in. This will provide you with a better sense when projecting the potential success of the venture. Make sure that the business has a scalable model so that it can grow to a level in which you will be able to get your money back as an investor.

2) Drill into the track record of the founders. The people behind the company are the most critical factor, especially for early stage companies. This is mainly due to the fact that products need to be iterated several times until they are able to find where they fit in the market. Just like Jim Collins’ book “From Good To Great”, it is all about having the right people sitting in the right seat. Eventually they will end up finding the right direction. Here you want to focus on their background story (previous companies, education, etc.) and what type of value they bring to the table.

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Buying a Business: Important Issues to Consider

Buying a business can be a very good opportunity to get into an industry without going through the startup process, which can be time consuming, costly,  and  comes with no guarantees.

That being said, a business that is for sale is like a used car. There are lots of companies out there but only a select few are worth purchasing. Due to this, it is very important for people to do their due diligence and investigate whether or not the business they are interested in has potential.

Evaluate Yourself

Owning a company is certainly not for everyone. It is up to individuals to make sure that they have considered all available options before making the ultimate decision to be their own boss. Therefore, it is important for a person to identify their weaknesses and strengths. It is always a great idea to jot these down on paper.

Aside from listing your professional achievements, strengths and skills, you should also note your personal characteristics. These play an important role in achieving success in the business world. This also allows you to compare your traits with the attitudes that make a good business owner. Some of these attitudes include the following:

•     Dedication

•     Perseverance

•     Leadership

•     Entrepreneurship

•     Confidence

•     Self-belief

A person who does not have these attitudes should try their best to develop them. If not, you may need to reconsider owning your own business.

Business Structure

As a potential buyer, you should consider the business structure prior to purchasing a company. This is because there are taxation considerations and protection issues that need to be shored up. Some of the possible business structures that can be adopted include the following:

•     Company

•     Trust

•     Partnership

•     Sole Trader

•     A combination of a trust and company structure

A potential buyer should always remember that each kind of structure described attracts ongoing compliance costs, setup costs, personal risk and tax rates. 

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