By: mak
March 22nd, 2018
These days with endless new startup marketing books and online classes almost anyone can get a sense of the marketing playbook they should use and get a feel for the tactics to build a brand and increase new users.
I am not saying that my startup marketing playbook is the best, or that others don’t have good ideas – just that this is what has worked repeatedly for me in being part of and leading startup marketing teams building several well-known and loved startup and high-growth brands.
In no particular order – because you have to do them all – here is my startup marketing playbook:
- PROFESSIONALIZE MARKETING DEPARTMENTS – Hire, nurture and manage marketing teams across Paid, Owned, Earned and Product Marketing and increase process, collaboration and communication across departments while working with Product, Technology, and Sales teams.
- BRAND ARCHITECTURE – Define a brand’s category opportunity, language and look and translate into sales pitches, messaging and marketing.
- BRAND POSITIONING – Create an emotional ‘sweet spot’ for a brand that is ownable, defendable, compelling and interruptive that allows you to connect with potential customers and convert into users while building national brand awareness.
- VALUE PROPOSITION – Create a compelling value proposition from the brand positioning that clearly articulates your brand’s attributes, allowing you to build consumer and sales messaging and advertising.
- TAGLINE DEVELOPMENT – Translate the value proposition into a powerful tagline that captures the imagination of prospects and customers, builds awareness and generates a brand story.
- CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF OFFLINE ADVERTISING – Create messaging from user insights leading to the development of memorable and compelling offline advertising that is built around the brand and that breaks through everyday noise and clutter.
- DIGITAL PERFORMANCE MARKETING – Produce targeted and measurable digital marketing that is optimized for a specific CPA and LTV to help efficiently increase acquisition growth and revenue.
- OFFLINE MEDIA STRATEGY AND BUYING – Where and how to buy offline media, at what levels, and how to target buys, produce advertising and measure success.
- ONLINE AND MOBILE MEDIA STRATEGY AND BUYING – Where and how to buy online and mobile advertising in a fast paced and changing landscape that is tailored to the right target audience and how to track ROI for those buys.
- WEBSITE DESIGN AND NAVIGATION – How to build better UX (user experience) to increase time on site, conversions, and engagement while building brand awareness and sales.
- SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING – How to efficiently buy search engine keywords on Google and other search sites that capture prospects and send them to your website.
- SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION – Website optimization and creation of original content using white hat techniques to maximize indexing by Google and major search engines that improve organic search ranking and increase organic users.
- SOCIAL MEDIA – Leverage Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snap and other emerging social media to build the brand, conversion, and sharing, leading to increased awareness, credibility, new user growth, and revenue.
- OWNED MARKETING – Develop low-cost Owned original written and video content programs that build original content, online reputation, and credibility, leading to more recommendations, new users, and revenue.
- EMAIL MARKETING – Develop an email and CRM program that welcomes new users, nurtures them and increases engagement, referrals, and brand awareness.
- EARNED MARKETING – Create and leverage Earned marketing communications and PR to proactively increase thought leadership, organic brand awareness, new users, and revenue.
Now, of course, the real challenge here – besides reading what to do – is how to actually do it. And do it with minimal waste of time or money.
If you are interested in leveraging my tens of thousands of hours of experience to build an effective and startup marketing playbook, let’s have a conversation.
Please contact me at Maktaste.
