Marketing for Startup: 14 Things You Shouldn't Miss

Marketing
for Startupsfor Startups
— Lukáš Obdržálek, entrepreneur & marketer

Marketing for StartupsStartups

Turning 
ambitions
into realityreality

years on market
10people locations
25+

1. Getting your marketing ready
2. Building your marketing team
3. Choosing and working with agency

1Getting your
marketing ready

Strategy

#1Start thinking about
marketing at the beginning

We have people coming to us who are launching their
project in a week and they need their marketing
running. That’s late. Marketing should be part of your
business plan. You need to have an idea of what you
want to achieve and how much it’s supposed to cost.
After that, you should start thinking of the strategy and
tactics with your marketer or agency. Your general
marketing approach should be clear before you build
your website and start working on campaigns.

#2Ask yourself 4 basic
questions first

What is your communication problem?

Who do you want to attract?

What is your value proposition?

What is your value proposition?
What are your expectations?

#3Be clear at what you do.
Obviously

Many startups we encounter are solving a complex
problem and they have a very complex way of describing
it. But that’s usually the wrong way. Especially if your
service is complicated, find a simple, catchy way to get
attention. If you get attention, you will have more space
to explain the solution you provide.

#4Learn first

Launching a start-up is not only acquiring customers
and building a brand. It’s a lot about learning from
people who come across your product. Gathering
their feedback and understanding it is crucial
especially at the beginning and you have many tools
for that – chat, empathic interviews, user testing,
Hotjar, Intercom, Google Analytics… Use them,
learn from them.

#5Don’t bet everything on the
online world

Though our own main focus is online marketing, you
shouldn’t limit yourself to it. We think you shouldn’t
even start with it. Start by spreading the word.
Continue standing in the middle of a square giving
away leaflets and talking to people. Learn from their
feedback, ask more people who are willing to talk
with you.

#6Accept that marketing is
a long-term process

I could sit down with you for a day, learn everything
about your project and the only thing I would be able
to tell you is what I would start with, because
marketing is about trying, learning, optimizing and
trying something new. It’s not a tool where you press a
button, get your espresso ready and put your legs up.
Stop searching for answers such as: “Video! That’s
what works! Do it and you’ll win!” You win only when
you accept the hard work you need to do in the long
run. Accept that, be smart, and you’ll see what
happens.

Campaigns

#7Don’t run digital campaigns
by yourself if you don’t have
experience with them

Google, Facebook and other companies might be
telling you how easy it is to run your campaigns with
them. It’s not rocket science but it’s not so easy
either. If you have no experience, you will most
likely waste your money away. Find somebody
good who has experience to help you out and make
sure you get the most out of your advertising
budget…

#8Do your research first

You can do a lot of research even before
spending any money on developing your
product. For example, advertising tools like
Facebook Ads Manager, Google AdWords and
Keyword Planner let you estimate how much
users are searching for these types of products
or the size of your target group.

#9Measure everything you can

It seems obvious, but you wouldn't believe how
many times we saw the analytical part of the
project put aside in favor of a closing deadline or
other priorities. Don't get us wrong, we are all for
the quick launching of a project but never at the
cost of having very limited insight about your
campaign performance.

#10Make a diary for your
campaigns

Do you know what you had for breakfast 14 days
ago? No? What about five days ago? Or
yesterday? Keeping track of daily stuff is hard and
when it comes to campaigns it’s twice as hard. So
every time you make changes in your campaigns
make a note about what you did and why. When
you come back to your campaigns after a few
days you’ll be able to evaluate if these changes
helped the performance or not. If you have an
agency taking care of your campaigns make sure
they have such a tracking system in place.

#11Draw your customers’
shopping cycle

Every customer’s journey is a little different but the
main phases are similar to the majority of businesses.
Together with your team (or in a focus group), draw a
customer cycle specific to your product or service.
Which channels do your customers use when
researching a solution to their problem or a need?
And which are they using when deciding where to
buy it? After you determine your customer’s shopping
journey, you can then decide which channels and
messages you’ll use in each phase.

Design

#12Don’t conduct user testing
unless you know why

User testing is without a doubt one of the most
hyped topics right now. Everybody knows its
importance and wants to do their own research.
But there is this one thing that, surprisingly, is often
absent from our clients’ demands—what do they
actually want to find out. Therefore, the
recommendation is: always set up your purpose
and specific questions before you start spending
money on user testing.

#13Good and bad times for
design adjustments

Of course, you can always change your mind
about your design projects. You may find out
important new data, change your business plan
or expand your business. Just know that most
adjustments made in the late stages of projects
are very expensive, because there is already a lot
of work done that needs to be suddenly remade.
Keep this especially in mind when you think
about adjustments because your personal
opinion has changed.

Bonus

#14Not everything is given,  
use your own intuition

There are facts—such as that the A/B test is not
usable on low-traffic websites and there are
experience-based recommendations. Don’t take
everything we, or anyone else, recommend as a
given unchangeable thing you must follow. For
example, we write that PR is important to make
your brand more trustworthy, yet there are startups
who have never been published in major media
and are highly successful. Remember—marketing
is a process not a tool, and use your intuition and
own experience as well.

2Building your
marketing team

Testing

Freelancer / Small agency
+
You

Running

Small agency
+
Your Marketing Manager & You

Scaling

Solid agency
+
Your Marketing Manager,
your marketing specialists
(& You)

3
Choosing and
working with
agency

Choosing
agency

Dedication

Experience
Dedication

Experience
Universality
Dedication

Universality
Team
Experience
Dedication

References
Team
Universality
Experience
Dedication

Working
with agency

Setup expectations

Setup responsibilities
Setup expectations

Have a weekly status
Setup expectations

Have everything explained
Setup expectations

Require feedback
Have everything explained
Setup expectations

?Q&A

Staying in touch
1. Blog
2. Facebook
3. LinkedIn
4. E-mail
blog.digital-ant.com
facebook.com/digitalantcz
linkedin.com/in/obdrzalek
obdrzalek@digital-ant.cz

Marketing for Startup: 14 Things You Shouldn't Miss

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