Marketing & PR for Startups: London Edition

MARKETING & PR
FOR STARTUPS
Courtney Boyd Myers
Founder, audience.io & 3460 Miles
Wednesday, December 4, 13

INTRODUCTION

2

COURTNEY BOYD MYERS (@CBM)

FOUNDER, AUDIENCE.IO & 3460 MILES
‣ Working

with Fueled, Makeshift, SHADOW, REQQI, Artsy, Rize,
YPlan, Qriously and Ignite100

‣ Director

of Audience Development at General Assembly London

‣ Member

of #10’s Tech City Advisory Group

‣ Writer

at Wired UK & The Next Web

‣ Mentor

at BBC WorldWideLabs, Seedcamp, Ignite100

‣ Community


Member of Sandbox, Summit Series & ICE

AGENDA

‣ Setting

the Foundation
‣ The Many Facets of Marketing
‣ Building an Audience
‣ Tools of the Trade
‣ Media & PR
‣Q & A


3

MARKETING & PR FOR STARTUPS

FIRST RULE OF MARKETING:
DON’T MARKET A SHIT PRODUCT


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MISSION, VISION + VALUES
‣

Vision: The company’s long-term,
aspirational business goals. What's the
change you want to make in the world?

‣

Mission: The company’s purpose and reason
for being. What are the big first steps to
make that change?

‣

Values: How will you make those choices,
changes and first steps?


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MISSION: To become the
world’s largest community for
dreamers.
VISION: To create the world’s
best app that helps people
remember and record their
dreams.
VALUES: Curious, DataDriven, Exploratory, and
Secure


“Many companies try to dive into driving
awareness for their product or service
before they figure out who they are, what
they stand for, and what they are driving
for. At Eventbrite, we set out 6 years ago
to democratize the ticketing industry
through innovative products and top
notch support. The great news is that
through all the growth we’ve had – in
customers and in company size – these
are still our primary areas of focus.”
-JULIA HARTZ, CO-FOUNDER OF
EVENTBRITE


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MESSAGING
It’s is the one thing you want to tell people about your
startup.
-It needs to be compelling (NO BS!) Text different from
and
your competition.

Source


MESSAGING
It’s is the one thing you want to tell people about your
startup.
-It needs to be compelling (NO BS!) Text different from
and
Text
your competition.

A fun online world where kids can adopt their very
own monster, go on adventures, play games, solve
puzzles, be creative, and communicate with their
friends.


9


10

Text
Text



MESSAGING FOR A TWO-SIDED MARKET


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MARKETING & PR FOR STARTUPS & PR FOR STARTUPS

STARTUP MARKETING
If you are a marketer working at a startup, today you might be
strategizing about a new campaign, and tomorrow you’ll have to go
open Adobe Illustrator and change the copy on a flyer that you’ll
send to be printed at Staples later. In the morning of the next day
‣L
you might be trying get ahold of the editor of the lifestyle section of
the Seattle Times and in the afternoon you are creating 7 ad
variations for a Google Adwords campaign, and that same night you
and the CEO will be having dinner with the VP of Marketing of a
large consumer company and you’ll be discussing a two-year
strategy roadmap and bringing product vision ideas back to the
team the next morning.
-Marcelo Calbucci, the co-founder & CTO of EveryMove

12


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PRODUCT AS MARKETING
• Hotmail’s growth was almost entirely due to a “Get your free email at Hotmail”
sentence at the bottom of every email.
• Airbnb reverse-engineered Craigslist to let users post listings automatically
despite no public Craigslist API.
• Allowing users to embed videos was key to the success of YouTube and Vimeo.
• Slideshare included a plain-text link in their embed code, driving traffic back to
their site to get an SEO boost to boot.
• Dropbox incentivized referrals by giving free extra storage space – a strategy they
claim accounted for 60% of their growth.

Source


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STUNT MARKETING
‣L



SIDE NOTE MARKETING


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USING SOCIAL GOOD AS MARKETING
Your
actions
speak
louder than
words.



EVENT MARKETING


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EMAIL MARKETING
How do I get users to sign up for my mailing list?
•Start

by scraping you inbox. Your friends will forgive
you + they can always unsubscribe.
•Grow your user base through strategic partnerships,
events and sweepstakes!
What kind of content should I send?
Don’t always sell, sell, sell; also send emails that are
100% value-add
•Repurposed content from your blog or exclusive content
•


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CONTENT MARKETING
• Content marketing is a cost
effective, smart and
scalable way to acquire
customers
• Content should include
educational, analytical
industry-related blog posts
mixed with fun, viral content
like infographics
• Content marketing should be
authentic and show your
company’s culture (culture
marketing)

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CONTENT MARKETING
• Remember to
capture as many
email addresses as
possible!


• Be educational. Tie it
back to your product
but don’t SELL


CONTENT MARKETING
• Content marketing can be
easily enhanced with
social media marketing
and syndication
• Your content marketing
should support your
company’s SEO efforts


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GROWTH HACKING
“When women do it, it’s
marketing. When men do it,
it’s growth hacking.” @Shanley

Source

MARKETING & PR FOR STARTUPS & PR FOR STARTUPS

COLLECT THE DATA
•Do people event want your product?
•What do they think of your product?
•How are they using your product?
‣L
Are they referring their friends?
•
•Who are your top users? Where do
they live? How many Twitter followers
do they have?
•How can you incentivize your power
users to share the service?
•How will you communicate with your
customers?

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TOOLS OF THE TRADE
•Market Research: Typeform
•Database Analytics: Wrangler
•Customer Support: Intercom
•Email marketing:
•Mailchimp
•Analytics: Google Analytics,
MixPanel

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SOCIAL MEDIA BEST PRACTICES
•Improve your inbound
•Make more original content
•Curate other people’s content - Like, Share
and RT
•ENGAGE!- Answer questions, tweets,
comments, etc.
•Be opinionated
•Throw a Party (Get to know people IRL
first)
•Make your details public + up to date
•Get off social media!
•


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PINTEREST - THE LONDONER
Great for:
• showing off products
• categorizing content
• building your brand
visually


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INSTAGRAM
Great for:
• showing off company culture
• show-casing products in-action
• building your brand visually


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YOUTUBE

•Viewed more than 12.5 million times
•instantly went viral + jointly conveyed the brand personality and the
benefits of the service deftly.

28


TOOLS OF THE TRADE
•Facebook
•Twitter/Twitter Ads
•Pinterest
•Tumblr
•LinkedIn
•Foursquare
•YouTube
•Instagram
•Mention
•Hootsuite
•Buffer

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PRESS - ARE YOU READY?
“Patience is important. Media coverage is easier and
more effective once you have a killer product. If
you’re trying to create buzz too early, you’re doing it
wrong.”
-MICHELLE ZATLYN, CO-FOUNDER OF
CLOUDFLARE


30


BEFORE PRESS
‣ Your

product has been thoroughly alpha tested with
not only friends, family but a wide group of users so
you know it works
‣ mTurk.com,

followerwonk.com,
usertesting.com, betali.st

‣ You’re

familiar with the media landscape and can
name at least three journalists...


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UK/EUROPE TECH MEDIA
@TheNextWeb

@WiredUK

•

•

@MartinSFP

@TechCrunch
•

@MikeButcher

•

@IngridLunden

@TechCityNews
@AlexWoodCreates

@Olivia_Solon

@tech_eu
•

@RobinWauters

@Telegraph
•

@Kate_Day

@WSJEurope

@GuardianTech

•

•

@BenJRooney


@CharlesArthur

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CROSSING THE POND

READ!
Blogs
‣Fred Wilson (A VC) — http://avc.com
‣Chris Dixon — http://cdixon.org
‣Paul Graham’s Essays — http://paulgraham.com
‣Hacker News — http://news.ycombinator.com
‣The Full Start - http://fullstart.com
Newsletters
‣The Fetch http://thefetch.com
‣3460 Miles http://3460miles.com
‣Startup Digest http://startupdigest.com

33


GETTING PRESS
‣ Tell
‣ Be

a Story

technically prepared

‣ Choosing
‣ Tech

Press first?

‣ Think


Outlets

non-traditional

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WHAT’S THE STORY?
•“We’ve launched”
•Funding
•Trend Stories
•We’ve hit X # of users
•New features
•Acquiring
•Big, new hire
•Future plans

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FINDING THE JOURNALIST
1. Do your homework
2. STALK
3. Get an introduction!
5. Cocktail party rules apply
5. Talk like a human
6. Give them a scoop!


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WRITING THE PITCH
1. Be brief.
2. Craft an eye-catching subject line.
3. Don’t copy paste! Oh Hey Caroline at The Next Crunch..
4. Give a reasonable time frame.
5. Say why it's DIFFERENT
6. Avoid jargon like DISRUPTIVE, CURATED, HYBRID,
INNOVATIVE, GAME-CHANGING etc.
7. Give an offer if you can: Beta invites. App Codes. Exclusive
details, etc.


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Courtney B of the deep blue sea,
Would you could you should you if
you please
When you’ve got a moment so free
Let known when you could lend
your ear to me?


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Subject: Exclusive for TC: Launching XXX- make any blog look like a sexy iPad app
Hey Mike,
I’m George, the founder of XXX.
Launching XXX next week, on Thursday at noon EST and TC gets free reign on an exclusive before then. XXX makes any blog look and
behave like a native iPad app. We’re talking accelerometer aware column resizing, swipe to advance articles, touch navigation, home screen
icon support, and more. We’ve built somecool tech to make this happen smoothly, and it works with your existing layout...
PS- Would also be happy to do giveaways to TC readers. Thanks again and feel free to reach out if you have anymore questions
(skype,phone,etc. listed below).
Video Demo: http://vimeo.com/13487300
Live demo site (if you’re on an iPad): jasonlbaptiste.com
Feature overviews: http://padpressed.com/features
My contact info: George@xxx.com , Phone:xxx.xxx.xxxx, Twitter: @xxx, Skype: xxx
-George
#xxx.xxx.xxxx
You Should Check Out xxx.com


GIVE WRITERS EVERYTHING THEY NEED
Provide external links (not
attachments) to:
•Awesome Videos
•Beautiful, High-Res Photos
•Company Facts: Founded Date,
Funding Details, # of employees,
Founder’s Names, etc.
Be Available!


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AFTER THE PITCH
1. Follow up! - Appropriate time on this?
One week? 3-4 days?
2. Handling multiple outlets. Tell Multiple
Stories. And Don't be misleading.
3. Don't break your own embargo.


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TIPS FOR YOU
-Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Is this on or off the record? What’s the story angle?
Do they require exclusivity?
-Don’t say “we have no competitors” -- choose your competitors are or the media will
choose for you.
- Put yourself in the mindset of the journalist. How will this story get them on
Techmeme or featured by their editors? Is it like stories the journalist has
written before?
-Be good to the journalist. Don’t just hit them up when you need them. They want
your scoops, tips, etc. since you’re on the ground in the midst of it all.


TAKE NOTES FROM


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SHOULD YOU HIRE A PR AGENCY?
‣ Internal
‣ Doing

vs Agency

it on your own


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RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS
Get Involved


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Get Involved
Make Friends with Founders, Investors, Journalists, Startup
Wannabes, Coworking Space Heads, the Cleaning Ladies and
everyone in between


47


Get Involved
everyone in between
READ, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD READ.


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Get Involved
everyone in between
Tweet.


49


Get Involved
everyone in between
Tweet.
Write.


50


Get Involved
everyone in between
Tweet.
Write.
Be happy. But know it’s OK and TOTALLY NORMAL to be sad,
angry, frustrated, disappointed and insanely crazy too.

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Marketing & PR for Startups: London Edition

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