Marketing for Startups 101: The Basic Overview

Marketing
for Startupsfor Startups
— Lukáš Obdržálek, entrepreneur & marketer

Hello everybody,
before we go to the topic for which I came
here, let me introduce myself. My name is
Lukas and I’m from the Czech Republic, a
country in the Central Europe.

I’m not in Hong Kong randomly, I actually worked in Hong Kong and Shenzhen for 1.5 year till
last September and though I moved back to Europe, I’m still coming to Hong Kong every 4-6
weeks. And I'm happy to be here to connect with the local entrepreneurial community.
So let me tell you something about my professional background. When I was around 15 years
old I started creating websites as a lot of people did at that time. Later on when I was 21 years
old I’d been working in an e-commerce company for several years already and I told my
university classmate to found our own marketing agency together. Our idea was that we will
consult companies who want to build their website to do it the right way—with the research,
data analysis, marketing message, good content, etc. It didn’t work much on the real market
perhaps because we had absolutely zero business experience and contacts. But later on we
switched to digital marketing—mainly PPC advertising and we started to be quite successful. In
April 2015 one of our clients texted me an SMS whether I know somebody similar to me who
would be interested to work on an e-commerce project in China for 3-5 months. I replied I
don't know anybody. But after few minutes, I replied that I might be interested myself as it’s not
a long-term project and China was very interesting. In two weeks from sending out the SMS I
landed here in Hong Kong, took taxi to Shenzhen, checked-in hotel, had dinner, drink, slept
and started working next morning. I was supposed to stay there for three months to kick off the
project but I’d actually stayed there for almost 1 and 1/2 year before I finally decided to go back
to Prague this September because I wanted to spend my time on my own business which was
during my absence run by my partner.
During the one and half year in China I’ve kick off digital marketing in the company that I
worked for, I've trained local colleagues and I introduced an innovation methodology within
the local team. Now I’m here and we can go finally to the topic.

I co-founded
a marketing agency
that is, in the end,
focused on startups.
Marketing for Startups

30projects
9people
2locations
More than

Start with analysis

1. Find & analyze your keywords

2. Review your competition

3. Analyze your target groups

3. Analyze your target groups
4. Analyze how people are dealing
with the problem you are solving

Make your
expectations clear

1. Define your numbers

- What are the numbers you need to reach
- When do you want to reach it
- How much money you have for it

2. But don‘t focus only on selling

2. But don‘t focus only on selling
3. Focus on learning first

How to learn from the
people?

1. Watch the numbers

2. Watch the behavior

3. Ask
2. Watch the behavior

A basic strategy
is a must.
must

1. What are your communication problems?

- That nobody knows you
- That your solution is now
- That your topic is complicated
- That your field has bad reputation
- That your are not sure what benefit to talk
about
- That your target group is not clear

2. Who are the people you want?

Define what target groups might be interested in
your product. Think about it from many perspectives
and find number of them.
Write down how big are these audiences on the
Internet — find the aproximate size of the audience
via advertising platform of
Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Instagram/Google etc.

3. What are your value propositions?

Do they differs from different target groups?
Do you have more of them?

4. What are channels should you use?

Online:
- Search Engines
- Social Networks
- Display Networks
- Affiliate Networks
- Remarketing
- E-mailing
- Influencers
- Video
Offline:
- Leaflets
- Outdoor
- Print
- …
PR! – Create the buzz
PPC, PPM, pay-per-lead (affiliate), pay-per-
download

5. What are your goals and how to
measure them?
From HK to EU: Starting Up in Europe
4. What channels should you use?

5. What are your goals and how to
measure them?
From HK to EU: Starting Up in Europe
4. What channels should you use?
Channel | Clicks | CPC | CR | Conversions | CPA

You have strategy.
What about the tactics?

1. Can you do something interesting?

2. Can you give away first?

3. How to keep the conversation going?

4. How to motivate people to share it?

5. How to make people coming
back?
4. How to motivate people to share it?

Who should be doing
the marketing at your
startup?

1. Hire a marketer to handle it
But marketing is too complex for one person.

2. Hire an agency to handle it
Maybe for the beginning, but you can‘t just outsource everything longterm.

3. Hire both
That‘s idea, if you have resources.

3. Hire both
4. Do it yourself
Not recommended if you don‘t have extensive marketing experiences.

Lessons learnt

1. No brand = no trust = no sales

2. Don‘t do digital advertising yourself
Unless you have enought experience.
You could burn a lot a of money without seing any results.

4. Don’t underestimate PR

5. Don’t forget the offline marketing
4. Don’t underestimate PR

Be ready to think it over

www.digital-ant.com
obdrzalek@digital-ant.com
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Marketing for Startups 101: The Basic Overview

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