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Lean Marketing for Early Phase Start-ups
Rebecca Steinberg Herson
Presented to: BizTec Entrepreneurship Competition
April 30, 2012
1 Copyright © 2012 Rebecca Steinberg Herson
www.theleanmarketer.com
A bit about me
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• Led global marketing for over a decade in tech
companies & non-profits
• 3 high-growth Deloitte Fast 50 companies
• Primarily B2B, some B2C
• Today: principal at The Lean Marketer, providing
outsourced CMO services
• Fan of the Boston Red Sox & Celtics
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So this is marketing…
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Our ambitious agenda
• Getting to know your potential customers
• Getting to know your industry ecosystem
• Lean product management
• Segmenting your market
• Defining your message
• Increasing your influence
• Calls to action
• Promotion
• Identifying what’s working (calculating ROI)
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YOUR SOLUTION SOLVES A PAIN.
WHO SUFFERS FROM THIS PAIN?
Getting to Know your (potential) Customers
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Your Customer is Not You
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How to get to know your customer
• Old days
– Focus Groups
– Phone surveys
– Analyst Reports
– Trade Shows
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Today
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Market Surveys • Use surveys to
– test product ideas
– confirm your instincts
– refine your message
– discover new potential customers
• Google docs - its completely free
– Can be edited collaboratively (whoever you allow)
– Lots of available designs, or embed in your own web page or blog
• LinkedIn Polls
– Survey your own network for free
– Survey specific demographics for a fee (~$1/response)
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How to get people to fill out the surveys
• Post on groups, update your status, tweet, repeat
• Beg your friends and beg them to beg their friends
• Incentivize them
– free ipod/amazon gift certificate/ coffee with the founders…
– early access to your beta
• Reach out personally
– you can send a message to anyone LinkedIn member in the
same group as you
– Inmail also works but has to be very enticing
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Paid Survey Audience Solutions
• B2B:
– http://www.thinkspeed.com/ $3 - 5K/ survey depending on
the audience
• B2C:
– SurveyMonkey Audience
http://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/audience/
– $3.00 per finished response for standard demographics
(gender, age, income, education, employment, location.
Requires professional plan (~$20/month)
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Some results from our survey
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IDENTIFY 3 QUESTIONS TO SURVEY YOUR
POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE
BETTER PRODUCT-MARKET FIT
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EXPLORE YOUR ENVIRONMENT
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Don’t forget, polar bears can be sneaky
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Your Environment
• Narrow it down to the relevant:
– Sales Prospects
– Competitors
– Potential Partners
– Journalists/bloggers
– Industry analysts
– Marketing channels
– Industry events
– Etc.
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TechCrunch Disrupt is
not the relevant
launchpad for every
startup
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Free tools for Web research
• Identify industry events, active companies, potential
partners, competitors http://www.google.com
• Identify market trends over time, estimate potential volume
and geographies http://www.google.com/insights/search/
• Estimate traffic volume, cost of acquisition, find related
keywords https://adwords.google.co.il/o/KeywordTool
• Identify your competitors keywords:
http://www.keywordspy.com/
• Get your questions answered: http://www.quora.com/
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Don’t Know? Post a Q on Quora
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Jump in to Social Media
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Identify key people in your industry
• Search Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook for relevant people, groups, comments,
companies
• Follow, read their tweets, check their blogs
• Retweet relevant content – people appreciate it and it builds your
credibility
• Tweet your own thoughts – be authentic
• Join relevant groups on LinkedIn, Facebook
• “Lurk” for a while before you jump in – think cocktail party
• Then, start discussions (LinkedIn)
• Correspond with people who enter the discussion
• DM influencers (Twitter)
• Reach out to people – they are people, and most want to help
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Become part of the conversation
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Learning @ LinkedIn
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www.theleanmarketer.com Copyright (c) 2010 Rebecca Steinberg
Herson 20
www.theleanmarketer.com Copyright (c) 2010 Rebecca Steinberg
Herson 21
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Trade Shows – a concentrated learning
tool
• If you attend, do your homework
• Check on twitter what people are saying about the event, tweetups planned
• Review all the exhibitors and speakers – who do you want to talk to? Do
you want to meet the exhibitors or the attendees?
• Most of the people in the booths are sales reps – is that who will be most
useful for you? Some companies also send executives, but they don’t hang
around waiting for visitors; you need to book an appointment
• The Press are also there. Don’t bother with them unless you already have a
customer they can talk to
• Look up the people you want to meet on LinkedIn and memorize what they
look like – you just might run into them in a hotel lobby
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IDENTIFY 3 PLACES (ONLINE OR OFFLINE) THAT
WILL HELP YOU LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR
ENVIRONMENT (COMPETITORS, CHANNELS…)
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LEAN PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
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Test Early and Often
There is no substitute for watching real people try
(and fail) to use your product
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Testing Tools
• Your brain
• All the survey & social networking tools mentioned
earlier
• http://pickfu.com - $10 for 50 opinions
– Use for A/B testing
– Gauge popular opinion
– Determine consumer preference
– Predict consumer behavior
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WHAT ARE 3 LEAN TESTS YOU CAN RUN
BEFORE YOU RELEASE BETA?
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SEGMENTING TARGET MARKETS
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Identify your ideal customer(s)
Build marketing personas • Customer company size / end-user demographic
• Vertical industry – finance, medical, retail, automotive,
etc.
• Geographic location
• Who is my potential buyer? What is his/her job title?
• Who are my influencers? What are their job titles?
• What is the total addressable market?
• Who competes in this market already?
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Segmenting the market
• Different segments will require different marketing
strategies
• May require slightly different product features
• Try to limit yourself to the quickest acting segment at
first – for first customers
• Later, focus on the most profitable segment
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WHO SHOULD BE YOUR FIRST TARGET
SEGMENT? WHAT CHARACTERIZES THEM?
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DEFINING YOUR MESSAGE
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Value Proposition, Elevator Pitch
• The unique value you offer to your customers
• Boil it down into a very short, medium and long
statement
• Literally try saying it in the elevator – it’s hard
• Test it out on others, especially outside your company
• Polish this before you start officially promoting, to
maintain consistency
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Elevator Pitch Template
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From: http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/startups-give-us-your-best-one-sentence-pitch/
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WHO IS YOUR (INITIAL) TARGET AUDIENCE?
WHAT PROBLEM DO YOU HELP THEM SOLVE?
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INCREASING YOUR INFLUENCE
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Why you need a blog (or FB Page, or Vlog,
or Tumblr, or Twitter feed, or…)
• It’s the second thing people will look at when they want to understand
you and your company
• (the first is your LinkedIn profile)
• Great for SEO
• It becomes your own media channel - who needs ComputerWorld
anymore?
• Gives you more credibility with the mainstream media – you can become
a source for them
• Gives you something to tweet, for people to retweet, and for them to
comment on – gets you into the conversation
• Of course, you need to have something to say
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Start your blog (or X…)
• Blog can be your own personal blog, that is, if you have enough to say on your own
• If you open a company blog, you will have more options for contributors
• Facebook pages have lots of blog-ish options; main drawback: not searchable
• Be authentic
• Talk about issues in the industry
• Comment on newsworthy items
• Offer advice
• Blog at least 2 months before you want to publicize it
– This ensures you know what you’re getting into and can maintain it
– You will have archived content from day 1
• If you’re vlogging, include keyword-heavy descriptions for each video
• Include CALLS TO ACTION in your blog or near your posts
• Don’t know what to write about? http://blog.kissmetrics.com/topic-generation-machine/
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THINK OF 5 IDEAS YOU CAN
BLOG/VLOG/TWEET ABOUT
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THE CALL TO ACTION
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Calls To Action
• Sign up for our newsletter
• Visit our web site
• Download this white paper
• Enter this contest
• Meet us at this event
• What do you think about X? Tell us in the comments
• Register for our free version
• View this webinar
• Answer our survey
• Call our hotline… operators standing by
• BUY!!!
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WHAT ARE 5 DIFFERENT CALLS TO ACTION YOU
CAN USE TO MARKET YOUR SOLUTION?
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MARKETING PROMOTION
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Promotion
47 MIT Sloane School Marketing Management Course Lecture
Social Networking
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Public Relations
• Keep track of articles that cover your industry – these are most likely the
journalists you will want to contact when the time comes
• Journalists look for newsworthy stories:
– Timely
– Conflict
– Unexpected
– Meaningful
• Craft your “pitch” based on what you’ve learned about the journalist – what
kinds of stories does s/he write?
• Try for the less obvious publications – you may find coverage easier to
achieve
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Trade Shows/ Conferences
• You don’t necessarily have to exhibit (expensive!!) – try visiting the first
time, and making appointments – great research tool
• Apply for speaking engagements even if you don’t exhibit
• Check with the organizers if they have any matching-type services to
bring relevant people to you
• Request the press list in advance and reach out to relevant journalists
before you get there
• Tweet that you’re going; update your LinkedIn profile; Facebook
• Don’t expect the relevant leads to show up just because you are there.
You need to make the meeting happen.
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HOW TO KNOW WHAT’S WORKING (ROI)
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How to Measure What’s Working?
• SALES (of course)
• What if you’re not selling? Divide your pipeline into specific stages, and track
opportunities as they progress
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Social/ SaaS: 1-free trial registrant 2-spent time on site/app 3-populated personal profile 4-asked support question … 8-signed up for 1 month paid 9-Renewed for 1 year paid
Traditional Enterprise Product: 1-Qualified suspect – meets our criteria 2-Initiated contact 3-Interest expressed – potential opportunity identified … 9-Verbal commitment to purchase Closed Won Closed Lost Stalled/Postponed
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Sample Pipeline by Lead Source
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0
2
4
6
8
10
12
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Stage6
Stage7
Stage8
Stage9
Sold
Trade ShowLondon
Google Ads
Webinar
Articles
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Measuring Conversion Rate
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1175
94
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Unique page views
Respondents
58 Attendees
4700 Email blast sent
Invitations Opened
2% of invited
44% page conversion
25% open rate
Attendees > respondents indicates WOM
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Iterate, Iterate and Iterate Again
• Build in feedback models
– A-B testing
– Track opens, clicks, event attendance, registrations, etc.
• Do it better the next time
• Adjust your message
• Adjust your demo
• Adjust your home page
• Adjust your marketing channel
• Try to improve the # of leads coming into the funnel
• Track and improve your conversion rate at every step in the funnel
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WHAT SALES STAGES ARE MEANINGFUL
FOR MY BUSINESS?
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That first (second or third) customer
• Revenue is important, but in the early stage these are even more important:
• Feedback that can help improve the product
• Testimonial - a customer approves a quote for your web site or other marketing materials
– “This product is great because it solves such & such problem…”
• Case study – customer goes on the record with before/ after data and quotes
• Reference – customer agrees to talk to other potential customers, journalists or analysts about how great you are
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Useful Marketing Resources
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marketing resource list in right column, scroll down
Highly recommended reading:
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Thank You!
Rebecca Steinberg Herson
+972-54-444-2372
http://il.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaherson
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