Quite a few startups have asked me how to approach their marketing plan. They hear that it’s important to do specific things, but that list eventually grows long, and they don’t have a plan of attack or a prioritization. While my post on three phases of startup marketing helps, it doesn’t go into enough detail on the framework behind that prioritization, and what to do with a new idea not represented there. Well, the good news is there is a framework you can apply to evaluate a list of ideas and prioritize them, and it’s not too different from the traditional marketing world. It just may be a bit inverted.
You may have seen a marketing funnel like this before (everyone calls the stages different things, but it’s generally something like this):
Startup marketing is a bit different. Instead of products being driven top down as in the above diagram, startups have to work bottom up due to budgets and what will be effective. Also, startups need to focus more on the inverted funnel post-use not seen in the above. So, your startup marketing funnel looks like this:
Now, instead of working top down here, startups need to work inside out. You work on the on site experience to make sure the few users who come convert and have a great experience. Then, you get them to come back and have another great experience. Once they are hooked, you ask them to invite friends. At this time, you also target those who came and didn’t convert. Then, you target those with a need for your product that haven’t tried. Then, you can define your core audience well from those using the product and do core audience targeting to find more like them. After saturating all of those methods, you finally work on general awareness.
Now, how does that translate to tactics. Well, let’s have a look:
Making sure people convert is all about conversion rate optimization. Email and push can help trials turn into repeat purchases, but the big winner there is an engaging product experience or a community. To get those who checked the product out but didn’t convert, you use use retargeting. To find others in need of the product, you focus on search (paid or organic). To find more people like your current audience, you can use Facebook lookalike targeting or interest targeting (thousands of other options here as well, of course). to pursue general awareness, that’s typically when you work on larger spend initiatives like TV, radio, outdoor, and sometimes PR.
Follow this funnel, focusing on each step until it saturates, and you can be sure you’re always working on the most effective and impactful projects to grow your business. Conversion, product, and community never tend to saturate, so you’ll almost always have dedicated people working on that even as you move further up the funnel.
Currently listening to Sonnet by Benoît Pioulard.