The Essential Startup Marketing Playbook by Steve Mann

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved
THE ESSENTIAL STARTUP MARKETING
PLAYBOOK
YOU’VE CREATED A PRODUCT
NOW WHAT?

Having triplets keeps you young!
Top CMO at the intersection of strategy
& creativity
Top 100 CMO on Twitter
FierceCMO Top 15 B2B CMO to Watch
Peer 100: Top 100 Marketing Pro
Governing member: CMO Collective
@stevemann
Steve Mann

Agenda
1 The foundation
Branding, positioning, persona development & segmentation
2 Standing up your GTM strategy
S&M mapping, Metrics? We don’t need no stinkin metrics?
3 Execution
Inbound v. outbound, infrastructure, tying it all together

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
Watch for “Startup Sauce”

Let’s Level-Set

VISUAL
get
Brand is not a logo…

VISUALa tagline…

VISUALor a product.

VISUAL
Branding is the act of forming a
deep & long-standing
emotional connection with a
consumer which ensures long
term loyalty and revenues

And its not just for B2C

Impact of B2B branding
15%
79%
5%
64%
2%
60%
CONSIDERATION PURCHASE PRICE PREMIUM
No brand connection
High brand connection

Gen X Gen Y (Millenials) Gen Z
Who should you be building your brand for?

Startup Sauce: Welcome to the Brand Stairway
Its about the founding team & your people
…your culture
…and your aspirations!
Execution is critical. Are you consistent,
credible, and authentic with your
customers, partners, and ecosystem
Its about building trust and loyalty.

{ }1 The Foundation
Positioning

Positioning
The act of creating distinctive messaging that occupies a unique place
in a customer’s mind, as well as market category

Startup Sauce: Positioning Startups is formula driven*
For: Your target audience
Who are dissatisfied: Current solutions
Our product: describe the product
category/solution
That provides: Breakthrough capability
Unlike: Our competitors or
legacy solutions
We deliver: XYZ features & benefits
*

{ }Positioning Case Studies
Tibco Spotfire & Lexis Advance

Positioning Startups (or mature orgs) is formula driven
Courtesy of Mark Lorian, former VP Marketing for Tibco Spotfire

The formula is always
there but customers
never see it.
For attorneys and other legal
professionals
Who depend heavily on legal research
to build their cases
Lexis Advance is a comprehensive
“google-like” research solution
That provides the most
intuitive design, deep legal content
and best-in-class legal analytics
Unlike Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg
LA is the first and best place to find the
right cases test your assumptions and
craft winning legal arguments.

YOUR TURN

{ }1 The Foundation
Persona Development

Each of your firms will be selling to
multiple buyers who have different
personas in the firm. You will need
to develop archetypal personas in
order to develop positioning that is
customized to individual buyers.
“ “

“ “With personas, business can be more
strategic in catering to each audience,
internalize the customer that they are
trying to attract, and relate to them as
human beings.
--Krux partners

Persona development fundamentals: The 8 questions
1
What is their demographic
information? 2
Job and seniority level
and are they they
economic buyer?
3
What does a day in their
life look like?
4
What are their pain
points? What do you help
them solve?
5
What do they value
most? What are their
goals?
6
Where do they go for
information?
7
What experience are they
looking for when seeking
out your products and
services?
8
What are their most
common objections to
your product or service?

Persona
Information
Personalized
positioning by
persona
Courtesy: Buffer

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved Courtesy: Kula Partners

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved Courtesy: Buffer

Startup sauce: persona takeaways
• Helps identify with your audience and better solve their problems by
having an in depth knowledge of their goal, objectives, pains and
day in a life
• Aligns sales and marketing on targeting
• Creates a “person” to message to, thereby enabling you to
personalize your messaging
• Include the whole team in coming up with these personas as
everyone brings a different perspective and different information to
the table
• The results will be a better experience for the customer and a more
engaged user for your business.

{ }1 The Foundation
Segmentation

What is it?
The process of dividing up
large heterogeneous markets
into more homogenous
sub-segments that have
unifying characteristics.
These unifying characteristics
make it possible to TARGET
these sub-segments & market
effectively to themCourtesy: Match Node

4 Basic types of segmentation
Geographic
Duh!
Countries
States
Regions
Cities*
Neighborhoods*
Demographic
Age
Gender
Income
Family makeup
Education
Income
Needs
Psychographic
Life style
Social class
Personality
Behavioral
Product usage
User type
Personality
Benefits sought
Loyalties
Attitudes
Needs

But wait! There’s more!
Firmographic
Industry
Product(s)
Revenue
# of Employees
Titles
Hybrid
Firm + Attitude
Demo + Behavior
Geo+Firm+Demo
…
Most segmentation
strategies are
hybrids.
B2B
Startup Sauce: People buy, companies don’t. So make sure to include variables that
characterize your buyer.

Startup Sauce: Keep it simple
Use either a single base
segmentation model or combine it with one other
For instance:
B2B: firmographic & geographic
B2C: geographic and demographic
Stay away from behavioral and psychographic
They are the most powerful, but the hardest
to implement

Startup Sauce: Target the Beachhead
New Product
New Business
Model
Your Market
You will be targeting this
market!
And this beachhead segment

Startup Sauce:
Beachhead segments have
common needs.
Segmentation + common needs + persona = Initial target
Delivering to this segment
will provide you with great
referencable clients!
Segment PersonaNeeds
Beachhead Segment

Startup Sauce: Focus is essential
Don’t be afraid to be
extremely targeted at
first. Its much easier
to expand from a position
of strength than having to
contract due to failure

{ }2 Standing up your GTM Strategy
S&M Mapping

The Traditional Demand Funnel
Opp
Lead
Inquiry
Prospect
Deal
Market Awareness
Demand
Generation Marketing
Domain
Sales
Domain

Startup Sauce: Map your Sales &
Marketing Process
Demand
Gen
Prospect
Needs
Analysis
Demo Pilot
Prove
Value
Prop
Proposal Close
Critical to figure out what YOUR sales & marketing process looks like to
eliminate major hurdles and bottlenecks in order to scale your business.
After you have 10 deals under your belt, sit down and map out the steps of
every deal you WON or LOST.
1

Startup Sauce: Identify Customer Needs & Motivations
Demand
Gen
Prospect
Needs
Analysis
Demo Pilot
Prove
Value
Prop
Proposal Close
NEEDS/PAINS/CONCERNS
MOTIVATIONS
• Scalability
• Functional fit
• Company stable?
• Make me look good?
• Price
• Addons
• Partner strength
• Easy to implement
• Price
• Aging legacy systems
• Word of Mouth
• References
2

Startup Sauce: Craft a Tactic Map
Once you’ve mapped the pains and motivations of your prospects against
your sales and marketing process, then map the individual tactics that you
need to move the prospect down the funnel to closure. The tactics that will
best address their concerns and motivations.
3

Startup Sauce: Craft a Tactic Map
Demand
Gen
Prospect
Needs
Analysis
Demo Pilot
Prove
Value
Prop
Proposal Close
PR
Email
Search &
Social
Content
Marketing
Events
Qualifying
Questions
White
Papers/Con
tent
Success
Stories
Online
qualification
See-Try-
Buy
User
Survey
Decision
Maker
Survey
Economic
Buyer
Survey
Live Web
Demo
White
Papers
Interactive
tour
Download
Eval copy
90-day trial
Configuration
Services
References
Customer
Success
Stories
Direct
Sales
Proposal
Reseller
proposal from
Quote sheet

{ }Process Mapping Case Study
JBoss

Focused on Customer Concerns & Motivations
www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-marketing-machine/jboss-example/

And Then Mapped Tactics To The Process
Learn more: http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-marketing-machine/jboss-example/

{ }2Standing up your GTM Strategy
Metrics? We don’t need no stinkin metrics!

Without metrics you’re dead meat.
“
“

Remember the Demand Funnel?
Opp/SAL
Lead/SQL
Inquiry
Prospect/MQL
Deal
Market Awareness
Marketing metrics enable you to gauge
the effectiveness of your marketing
efforts and to understand your resource
utilization in capturing and retaining
customers.
Ideally you want to do this in context of
the Demand Funnel.

Critical: Conversion Rate
Opp/SAL
Lead/SQL
Inquiry
Prospect/MQL
Deal
Market Awareness
Purpose: determine the quality of your
marketing & sales as well as your
qualification process.
Enables realistic sales projections.
What does it look like?
Ratio of closed deals compared to each
stage in the funnel and the funnel as a
whole.
Inversely related to funnel leakage.
Typical B2B companies experience
13 wins: 1000 inquiries
Nurturing
Bucket

Critical: Funnel leakage by stage
Opp/SAL
Lead/SQL
Inquiry
Prospect/MQL
Deal
Market Awareness
Purpose: gauges effectiveness of tactics
by funnel stage or identifies a process or
competency issue.
What does it look like?
% of prospects that fall out of the funnel
by stage
Note that leaky funnels especially at the
marketing/sales handoff is not always bad.
Sales may determine that the lead is not
worth pursuing at the time.
Also helps manage the individual strengths of
the sales team if you are a sales manager.
Nurturing
Bucket
%age
declines
by stage

Calculating ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment)
Opp/SAL
Lead/SQL
Inquiry
Prospect/MQL
Deal
Market Awareness
Nurturing
Bucket
Purpose: Derivative of ROI (determines how much profit
one has generated from invested capital). ROMI looks at
how much return have I generated from my marketing
investment.
ROI (%) = Net Profit ($)/Investment ($)
Calculating ROMI:
ROMI = Incremental revenue attributed to Marketing
($)/Marketing Spend($)

Other Crucial Marketing Metrics
Opp/SAL
Lead/SQL
Inquiry
Prospect/MQL
Deal
Market Awareness
Nurturing
Bucket
1. Web Traffic – what is the volume, where is
it coming from, which content is most
popular
2. Leads by campaign/tactic – which
programs/sources/offers are driving leads
3. Email bounce/open/click thru
4. Revenue per marketing dollar spent, typical
B2B ratio is 1:32, best-in-class is 1:62
5. Pipeline Volume – what multiplier of volume
in the pipeline do you need to hit your
revenue projections?

{ }3Execution
Inbound v. Outbound Marketing

Consumers are no longer listening
Nurturing
Bucket

We play too many roles today
Nurturing
Bucket

61
And have too many product choices
Source: Darwin Day Conference, Google
TNS Media Intelligence
has over 2mm brands
in its DB, growing at
700/day, over 10% per
year
In the 1990’s the
number of brands on
grocery store shelves
tripled from 15k to
45k

62
Too much content
Today, media is fragmented
13,500 radio stations (4,400 in 1960)
17,300 magazine titles (8,400 in 1960)
82.4 TV channels per home (5.7 in 1960)
And the Web:
Millions of sites
Billions of pages
Source: Darwin Day Conference, Google

63
Too many access points
 Web TV
 Email
 Game Platforms
 Tablets
 Websites
 Texting
 Search
 Radio
 DVD
 TV
 Blogs
 Magazines
 PC/Mac
 Satellite Radio
 DVR
 Video On-Demand
 Newspapers
 iTunes
 Smartphones

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved. Courtesy: wordstream.com

200 M
On Federal DNC list
84%
of 25-34 YO
left a favorite site
because of
intrusive Ads
91%
opted out of brand
they had subscribed
44%
of DM never
opened

Source: 2001 Corporate Executive Board survey

So what’s a startup to do?
“
“

2015 AbleBrains, LLC. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved Courtesy: @bhalligan, Hubspot

Inbound marketing earns the
permission of the consumer to
market to them. Permission
may be implicit or explicit.
“ “

Revenues
Affinity
Relationships
Content
Experience
Conversation
Relationships
Brand Affinity
Ready to Buy
Create Content

Optimize and Promote

But should I ever use outbound?
“
“

It depends
“
“

Outbound marketing sends an interrupting message to
the consumer to try to initiate a dialog
eMail
Rented Lists
Cold Calling
Appointment
setting agencies
Direct mail
Retargeting

What’s Retargeting?
User’s
device is
anonymously
cookied with
search term
Search term triggers
display in ad networks

Startup Sauce: When to use outbound
Urgency to get started with marketing
Need immediate feedback
Have precise targeting information
Willing to pay more to acquire

Startup Sauce: Concerns about outbound
Lower conversion rates
Tie your outbound efforts to inbound
Not producing any viral awareness
Higher cost per lead
Courtesy AdWeek

What foundation do you need?
“
“

Startup Sauce: The Marketing Technology Stack
CRM
System of record for your customer,
prospects and contacts, marketing
results & purchased data also stored here.
Marketing
Automation
Automates marketing campaigns
so that responses are personalized based
on response. Nurtures prospects down the funnel.
CMS Enables management of all web content & keywords
Social Media
Social tools that enable you to manage your
engagement on social channels as well as tools for
listening.
Analytics
A broad array of suite tools and best of breed
solutions to analyze web traffic, brand sentiment,
engagement levels and marketing effectiveness

Startup Sauce: The Marketing Technology Stack
CRM
Marketing
Automation
CMS
Social Media
Analytics
1
2
3
TMS

{ }3Execution
Tying it all together

The root causes for ineffectual marketing
Lack of customer understanding
Poor execution
Inability to accurately measure and adjust

BrandBrand Position Persona Segment Map Tactics Measure Stack
Eight building blocks for great startup marketing
Talent Finance Management Content Digital

For young companies, the product is the
brand but a great product doesn’t do you a bit
of good if your interactions are negative,
inconsistent or unauthentic.
We will lay the foundation based on
culture, values, talent and brand position.
Be credible, authentic and consistent.
BrandBrand Position Persona Segment Map Tactics Measure Stack
Brand building

Distinctive positioning
Develop positioning using
the Moore formula.
Use it to drive our content and discussion.
Remember, people buy,
companies don’t so be sure to
tie it to the personas you develop
Brand Position Persona Segment Map Tactics Measure Stack

Develop your personas
Create explicit profiles of folks you want to
target with your product, service or solution.
Make sure you build personas for all
members involved in the buying process.
Tie it back to positioning
It’s a collaborative process

Create your segmentation
Once personas are developed, determine
segmentation for targeting purposes.
What companies are you going to target? What
individuals?
Basic: geographic, firmographic, demo or
light hybrid.
Develop a needs profile for your beachhead
segment and focus!Courtesy: Match Node

Map the process
Look at the first 10-15 deals worked
and map out the Sales & Marketing process
Map customer concerns and motivations at
each stage
Then figure out the tactics that will address
each concern or motivation.
Refine as needed but don’t make too
many changes too quickly. Test!!

Determine tactic mix
Start with inbound because it will take
longer, but will yield higher conversion rates,
lower cost of customer acquisition and rabid
evangelists for your brand.
You must earn permission!
Create>Optimize>Promote
Use outbound selectively to get into market
fast but be precise on your targeting or else
it could harm your brand.@bhalligan, HubSpot

Conversion rate, funnel leakage, win rates,
ROMI are all critical.
Make sure they are complementary to your
sales metrics.
The web makes it eas(ier) but with the
plethora of data that is out there you need to
select the right ones.
Don’t be afraid to experiment.
Measure

Build the MarTech Stack
Get a great System of Record (CRM) and
System of Engagement, &
make sure it deeply integrates with
marketing automation tools.
Ensure sales and marketing are running off
of the same CRM solution.
Look to Hubspot and SFDC.
Point solutions like Hootsuite and Spredfast
for social media.
CRM
Marketing
Automation
CMS
Social Media
Analytics

But most of all…
“
“

Experiment! Fail fast! And have fun.
“
“

THANK YOU!

The Essential Startup Marketing Playbook by Steve Mann

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