A Quick Guide to Marketing Your Startup

AQuick Guide to Marketing
Your Startup

2
A QUICK GUIDE TO
MARKETING YOUR STARTUP
Sandeep Mallya
Founder & CEO, Startup Café
Copyright © Startup Cafe Marketing Solutions
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
publisher.
Published by Startup Café
www.startupcafeindia.com
Cover Designed by Startup Cafe
A Quick Guide to Marketing
Your Startup

Contents
3
Introduction…........................................................4
Leverage Social Media…......................................5
Have a Great Content Strategy…........................ 6
Focus on SEO…....................................................7
Design & User Experience….................................8
Facebook Remarketing…......................................9
Email Marketing…................................................10
Facebook Contests…...........................................11
Facebook Custom Audience................................12
Google AdWords…...............................................13
Competition Analysis….........................................14
Discounts or Trial Model…....................................14
Video Marketing….................................................15
Google Analytics…................................................16
Conclusion….........................................................17
Your Startup

4
Introduction
Startup Marketing can be a massive challenge due to the limited time and
resources at a startup’s disposal. You may be solving a problem with your amazing
product, but if people don’t hear about it, then all your time and effort spent on
developing it is wasted. The “build it and they will come” motto is outdated and
impractical. It’s impossible to build long-term sustainable business without a robust
marketing plan. Despite being a crucial element for success, marketing always
takes a backseat when you launch your own business. The focus tends to remain
on building your product or adding new features to it. But startups which ignore
marketing do so at their own peril.
As we live in a digital, social and mobile world, the old school marketing
techniques which involved hoardings, newspaper ads, television ads et al are
expensive and don’t usually work for small businesses. There are many examples
of small businesses blowing humongous amounts of money on traditional
advertising and going bust. Startup Marketing is a whole different genre of
marketing. It does not involve traditional marketing techniques as these techniques
don’t work for startups. The secret sauce to startup marketing success is the right
combination of social media marketing and content marketing. In the following
pages, you’ll find effective ways you can market your small business without a
huge budget. Each point comes with links to tools and resources which will help
you in achieving marketing excellence for your startup. We’ve provided examples
wherever possible and recommended tools which either follow the freemium
model or cost very little.
“Good marketing
makes the company
look smart. Great
marketing makes the
customer feel smart.”
Joe Chernov
Your Startup

5
1.  Leverage Social Media
Social media is here to stay and there are multiple platforms where you can
showcase your product or service to your target audience. But don’t go social just to
promote your offerings. Your fans will get bored and will eventually stop bothering to
check-in on your page. Instead focus on educating and entertaining your fans and
occasionally promote the value proposition of your product. Follow the 80:20 rule of
social media. 80% of your content on social media should be aimed at educating
your prospects and engaging them in conversation while only 20% should be aimed
at driving sales and promoting your brand. Follow this rule and you will soon see
results from your social media strategy.
Before venturing out into social media, it’s crucial to define your buyer persona
and target audience. Social media takes time and energy. To start with, choose just
1 or 2 platforms. For many businesses, Facebook is the primary channel due to its
large active user base. Choosing the right social channel, however, depends mainly
on your objective. So if your primary goal in using social media is to recruit talent,
then LinkedIn may provide more value than Facebook. Develop an editorial calendar
so that you’re posting consistently on your social channels. Devote at least 30-45
minutes per day to create content and schedule updates on your social channels.
Like/follow other pages in your niche and interact with them on a regular basis.
Respond to the questions posed by your fans. And more importantly, don’t give up if
you don’t see results in the first few weeks. Be patient! It takes time to achieve social
media success. Don’t compare it with social media advertising efforts. Think of it as
an opportunity to build brand awareness, establish thought leadership, develop a
loyal community of fans, and to gain market insight.
Recommended Tools & Resources
Social Media Management
Hootsuite (http://hootsuite.com), Buffer (http://buffer.com),
PostPlanner (http://postplanner.com)
Social Media Usage of Startups
•  81% of small businesses use
social media
•  82% of small businesses use
social media for lead generation
•  91% of small businesses found
it increased brand awareness
•  Among social media users, 94%
use it for marketing
Source: LinkedIn
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2. Have a Great Content Strategy
From your website and blog to your social media channels and emails,
make sure your content is informational and educational to your target audience.
The Hummingbird update from Google rewards great content. Because of
Hummingbird, SEO is now more content driven and you should strive to make
your content great to increase its visibility on search engines. Follow the 80:20
principle once again by ensuring 80% of your content aims at educating your
prospects. Follow a consistent strategy for all your social media channels
and you will soon see some loyal fans and customers for your business.
If you’re struggling to create original content for your social channels, you
can curate content from relevant third party publishers in your niche. There’s no
point in setting up a Facebook/Twitter business page and keeping it empty. Tools
such as PostPlanner and BuzzSumo can help you in finding trending articles and
topics in your niche, and you can either curate content or create your own original
content by researching on these topics. Develop an editorial calendar for your
social media pages and post consistently and frequently as per the calendar. If
you’re maintaining a business blog, update it at least twice a month. Make it easier
for your readers to share your content by adding social media share buttons. This
also increases the chances of your content going viral. Shareaholic is a popular
WordPress plugin which allows you to add social media share buttons to your blog
posts. Also install a subscription plugin and place it prominently on your blog. If
your content is engaging, you’ll soon build a loyal set of subscribers. It’s a great
inbound marketing technique to generate leads for your business.
PostPlanner (http://postplanner.com)
BuzzSumo (http://buzzsumo.com)
Shareaholic (https://shareaholic.com)
What’s Google Hummingbird?
“Hummingbird” is the name of the
new search platform that Google is
using as of September 2013, the
name comes from being “precise
and fast” and is designed to better
focus on the meaning behind the
words.
Hummingbird is paying more
attention to each word in a query,
ensuring that the whole query — the
whole sentence or conversation or
meaning — is taken into account,
rather than particular words. The
goal is that pages matching the
meaning do better, rather than pages
matching just a few words.
Source: Search Engine Land
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3. Focus on SEO
As stated in the previous point, SEO is now more content-driven. So put all
your effort behind writing great content. Don’t just stuff random keywords in your
content to get a better search ranking on Google. That doesn’t work anymore.
Instead focus on long-tail keywords and use tools such as Google Keyword Tool to
find the relevant keywords in your niche. Focus on SEO best practices, and if need
be, hire a good SEO manager to optimize your content. Also ensure that your
website is responsive as mobile-friendliness of a website is now a ranking factor
on Google. If you’re using WordPress CMS, then you can customize your website
for mobile devices using the plugin WPtouch.
Yet another tool which can help you in resolving SEO issues on your
website is SEOSiteCheckup. You can sign up for free and check the on-page, off-
page, and technical SEO issues of your website. SEO is constantly evolving, so
the key thing is to keep yourself up-to-date with all the new changes and algorithm
updates. Moz has a resourceful blog and its founder, Rand Fishkin, is actively
posting articles on SEO which are extremely useful for budding SEO experts.
WordPress users can also install Yoast SEO plugin. This will make on-page
optimization for your webpages an easy task.
And while you’re at it, make sure you’re optimizing content for other search
engines as well. Bing now has a 20% market share in the US and DuckDuckGo, a
search engine startup, is believed to be the fiercest competitor of Google. So don’t
forget to check how your website ranks in these search engines as well.
Moz (http://moz.com),
SEOSiteCheckup (http://seositecheckup.com/)
Google Keyword Tool (www.google.com/AdWords)
WPtouch (http://www.wptouch.com/)
Yoast Plugin (https://yoast.com)
Avoid these 10 SEO Mistakes
1)  Keyword Stuffing
2)  Broken Links
3)  Copying Content
4)  Content Duplication
5)  Poor Content Quality
6)  Non-Unique Title Tags
7)  Non-Unique Meta Descriptions
8)  Non Credible Links
9)  Avoid the Using of Analytics
10)  Optimizing the Wrong
Keywords
Search Engine Market Share
(Global)
Google – 69.24%
Bing – 12.26%
Yahoo – 9.19%
Source: NetMarketShare
Your Startup

8
4. Focus on Design and User Experience
Websites that have great design and easy navigation always engage and
awe the users. While content plays a critical role in user engagement, design
is often the first thing that a user notices on your website. Use compelling
visuals and imagery to draw visitors to your website and to keep them hooked.
There are tons of websites where you can get free high-quality stock photos. A
website with great design and content makes you look like an industry
expert, even though you may just be a startup. Check out the website of
Fueled - a mobile app design and development company and you'll know what
great web design and content is all about. While you're at it, check out their blog
as well where they talk about top sites for design inspiration.
It’s also useful to do some user testing to see how your site is perceived by
your target consumer. Peek User Testing is a highly-recommended tool where real
users get a peek into your website and give a 5-minute review of your site. The
users usually comment on design, navigation, content, along with some other
insights which you can then use to improve the overall user-experience of your
website. When it comes to graphic design for social media, Canva is the best
because it’s loaded with features and extremely easy to use. You need not be a
design expert nor a Photoshop Pro to design beautiful graphics on Canva. It’s a
DIY tool with tons of templates and has a decent collection of stock photos as well.
Pablo by Buffer is another useful tool for designing amazing graphics. While it
doesn’t have as many features as Canva, it can still come in handy for creating
super-quick graphics for social media.
Canva (http://canva.com)
Canva Design School (https://designschool.canva.com)
Pablo (https://buffer.com/pablo#)
Peek User Testing (http://peek.usertesting.com)
Fueled Website (http://fueled.com)
20 Awesome Sites for Free Stock Photos
(http://www.startupcafeindia.com/20-awesome-sites-for-free-stock-photos/)
User Experience Facts & Stats
•  88% of online consumers are
less likely to return to a site
after a bad experience.
•  48% of people cited a website’s
design as the number one
factor in deciding the credibility
of a business.
•  94% of a user’s first
impressions are design-related
•  67% of shoppers were more
likely to buy from a website
that is compatible with mobile
devices.
•  Only 55% of companies are
currently conducting any
online user experience testing.
•  85% of UX problems can be
solved by testing with 5 users
Source: Techcrunch, Mashable
Your Startup

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5. Use Facebook Remarketing
Facebook direct ads are not as effective as they used to be back in 2012.
In fact, there are several videos online which criticize this model by Facebook and
some of the reasons are validated. The fact is that you can’t expect to achieve
great results with Facebook ads if you’re still using it as if it’s 2012. If the targeting
parameters of your direct ads are not precise and the messaging is not compelling
enough, your ad will receive very few impressions. Since the organic reach of
content has dropped significantly on Facebook, users have no option but to
budget for advertising. So if you’re not sure about setting targeting
parameters for your Facebook ads, the safest option is to make use of
Facebook remarketing. This is how it works:
•  You create a pixel code on Facebook through Ads Manager.
•  You place that pixel code anywhere on your website. Typically it should be
placed on the page where you’d like conversions to take place. Ex: Products page.
•  You wait for a good number of visitors to your website
•  Once you know you’ve had sufficient number of visitors on your website
(Facebook will let you know when you’re ready), you reconnect with those visitors
via Facebook ads.
Facebook allows you to exclude those visitors who have already made
some kind of purchase on your website. This feature comes handy if you’re an
eCommerce startup.
Getting Started with Facebook Remarketing:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/ads-for-websites/website-custom-audiences/
getting-started
Facebook Ads Manager -
https://www.facebook.com/business/products/ads/
Facebook Remarketing is great for
many reasons:
•  Reduced cost per impression
•  Better conversion rates
•  Improved ROI
•  Precise Targeting
•  Cost effective branding
Your Startup

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6. Email Marketing
Email marketing isn’t dead yet. On the contrary, it’s more effective than
ever. However, some companies are still using emails in the least engaging way
possible. As a result, most emails go to the SPAM folder. Have a content strategy
for your emails as well and make sure your call-to-action is strong and
compelling. Email lists are not difficult to generate. Have a form on the website or
run a meaningful Facebook contest and voila, you have your email list. Use this list
wisely and achieve results almost instantly.
By using a tool such as Mailchimp, you can then save these lists and use
them whenever required. Mailchimp also allows you to design templates which are
visually appealing and highly interactive. It’s also an excellent tool to familiarize
yourself with email marketing and most startups can design beautiful templates
and schedule email campaigns with the free version itself. Canva also offers
several free email templates which can be used on Mailchimp.
Recommended Tools
Mailchimp (http://mailchimp.com)
Klaviyo (http://klaviyo.com)
Stats Email Marketers Ought to Know
•  91% of consumers check their
emails daily
•  74% of consumers prefer to receive
commercial communications via
email
•  66% of consumers have made a
purchase online as a result of an
email marketing message
•  Email marketing has an ROI of
4,300%
•  59% of companies are integrating
email and social channels together
•  76% of email opens occur in the first
two days after an email is sent
•  48% of emails are opened on mobile
devices
•  Only 11% of emails are optimized for
mobile
Happy Email Marketing!
Source: HubSpot
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7. Facebook Contests
Facebook contests can serve multiple purposes. Firstly, it’s a great way to
engage your community on Facebook. Secondly, you can build on that community
and get fresh followers. And finally, it’s a lead generation tool which can help you
with your email lists among other things. If you’re an App startup, then Facebook
contests can help you create buzz for your app and get new users onboard.
Facebook contests are also considered to be more engaging than
direct advertisements which can help you break through the advertising
clutter. While third-party apps are no longer required to run Facebook contests,
these apps are extremely useful in guiding the fans through the entire process.
One such app is Wishpond and you can create your own Facebook contest at a
minimal cost.
How to Run a Facebook Contest
(http://corp.wishpond.com/how-to-run-a-facebook-contest/)
Wishpond (http://wishpond.com)
Facebook Contests can help
you:
•  Reach and recruit new fans
•  Re-engage with your existing
community
•  Launch new products and
services
•  Reward your fans
•  Get feedback from your fans
on a product you’re trying to
launch
•  Build email subscriber list
•  Increase brand awareness
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8. Custom Audiences Feature on Facebook
Another way to use your email lists is to make use of the custom audiences
feature on Facebook. To use this feature, you need to have a list of email ids or
phone numbers (at least 20) of the people you want to target. In Ads Manager on
Facebook, go to Audiences and click on Create Audience. Upload the file here or if
you're using the mail service MailChimp, you can directly import the file from
there. You can upload files in .csv or .txt format. When you're creating Facebook
ads, just select this audience and Facebook will deliver ads to these people if they
are on Facebook.
The advantage of using custom audiences feature is that you’re
targeting ads to people who are already familiar with your brand and your
products. As a result, the response rates to these ads will be considerably higher
than direct ads. If you’re comfortable using Facebook Power Editor (many people
are not), then I’d recommend it. Otherwise, Ads Manager should work just fine.
4 Creative Ways to Target Your Email List
with Facebook Custom Audiences
(http://www.jonloomer.com/2013/10/29/facebook-custom-audiences-target-
email-list/)
How to Use Facebook Custom Audiences
(http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-website-custom-
audiences/)
An Example:
Let's say your company sells car seats for
babies. The sales process is pretty long
because these seats are very high quality, and
your buyer persona does a ton of research
before making a purchase. So your sales team
usually calls potential customers at least two
times before people buy, and has a good
amount of lead intelligence about leads
because of all the research they do pre-
purchase. You've created a list of over 30,000
people in North America that have subscribed
to your blog, talked to a salesperson, or given
you their email address, and you want to target
these people on Facebook to remind them
about your business. Custom Audiences
would be an excellent way to target this
particular list of 30,000 people who have
shown interest in your products, and
potentially convert them into customers!
Source: HubSpot
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9. Use Google AdWords
While SEO is a cleaner way to rank high in Search Engine Result Pages
(SERPs), it can take some time for your website or blog to appear on Page 1 on
Google. An easy way to achieve that status is through Google ads or paid search
as it's called. Creating an AdWords account is simple and it’s one of the most
effective and proven ways to rank high on search engines.
Google ads are fairly straightforward – you pick the right keywords for your
business, you set the budget as per your needs, and you pay only when an
interested party clicks on the ad. Unlike organic search which has a long cycle
to prove ROI, ads run by Google show results almost immediately. Google
AdWords also contains an extremely useful feature called Google Keyword Tool
which can help you research on trending/popular keywords in your niche.
Google AdWords - https://adwords.google.com
Common Mistakes to Avoid While
Using Google AdWords
1)  Targeting keywords that are too
broad
2)  Putting too many keywords in an
ad group
3)  Sending traffic directly to your
home page
4)  Not including negative keywords
5)  Not running display ads for
Google’s Display Network
6)  Not measuring ROI
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14
10. Do a Thorough Competition Analysis
There are high chances your startup has a major competitor and this
competitor has deployed several digital marketing techniques to promote their
business. Study the competition and analyze everything they are doing
online. Check out the content on their website and blog, social media
strategy, and the kind of advertising they do. Use tools such as SpyFu to make
a thorough competition audit.
11. Give Discounts or Offer a Trial
In their groundbreaking book Rework, Jason Fried & David Heinemeier talk
about how entrepreneurs need to emulate drug dealers. Here's an excerpt from
the book - Drug dealers are astute businesspeople. They know their product
is so good they’re willing to give a little away for free upfront. They know
you’ll be back for more-with money. Emulate drug dealers. Make your
product so good, so addictive, so “can’t miss” that giving customers a
small, free taste makes them come back with cash in hand.
That is the reason why we have free versions of popular products such as
Hootsuite, HubSpot, BufferApp, Moz, and HireRabbit. All these companies realize
how good their product is and know that their customers will be willing to pay for
their products once they see the value in it.
Making Freemium Work
(https://hbr.org/2014/05/making-freemium-work)
SpyFu (http://www.spyfu.com)
One of the chief purposes of
freemium is to attract new users.
If you’re not succeeding with
that goal, it probably means that
your free offerings are not
compelling enough and you
need to provide more or better
features free.
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12. Video Marketing
There's nothing quite like a brief, informative video which explains your
products and services to your target audience. One of the most cost-effective
ways to make a video is to use easy-to-use tools such as GoAnimate to
make an animated video which educates users on your offerings. Create a
YouTube channel and link it with your Google+ business page to gain more
followers for your brand. Remember YouTube is the second-largest search
network in the world and videos are another factor that Google considers for SEO.
So have a video marketing strategy to engage your target audience.
If you’re yet to launch your product, then you can create a short 45-second
teaser video about your product to see how your potential customers are
responding to it. Or you can offer a short demo of your beta product just like Drew
Houston did for Dropbox. If you generate enough buzz, then you know there’s a
market for your product.
GoAnimate (http://goanimate.com)
DropBox Demo Video (https://youtu.be/7QmCUDHpNzE)
The Dropbox Success Story
Drew Houston is the CEO of
Dropbox, a Silicon Valley company
that makes an extremely easy-to-use
file-sharing tool.
To avoid the risk of waking up after
years of development with a product
nobody wanted, Drew Houston did
something unexpectedly easy: he
made a video.
The video is banal, a simple three-
minute demonstration of the
technology as it is meant to work,
but it was targeted at a community of
technology early adopters. Drew
narrates the video personally, and as
he’s narrating, the viewer is
watching his screen. As he describes
the kinds of files he’d like to
synchronize, the viewer can watch
his mouse manipulate his computer
Drew recounted, “It drove hundreds
of thousands of people to the
website. Our beta waiting list went
from 5,000 people to 75,000 people
literally overnight. It totally blew us
away.”
Source: The Lean Startup by Eric
Ries
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13. Use Google Analytics
All the activities mentioned in this book will be futile if you don't track and
analyze data on your website. Get a Google Analytics tracking code for your
website. With Google Analytics, you can track your website traffic, get to see
where people are spending time on your site, the bounce rate of your
website, the search engine traffic of your site, the top content on your site
which gets you the maximum visitors, and a plethora of other useful data
which can help you in developing a digital marketing strategy.
If you haven't installed the Google Analytics tracking code on your website
yet, stop everything right now and install it. You won't regret it.
If you’re using WordPress CMS, then we’d recommend a plugin called
Jetpack which provides valuable stats on traffic growth and other useful
functionalities.
Google Analytics (https://analytics.google.com)
Jetpack (http://jetpack.me)
Here is a list of important data that Google
Analytics will give you:
•  Where your visitors are coming from –
very important if you’re targeting a
specific audience.
•  How your visitors found your website –
this is very important for determining
which of your efforts are paying off. It
shows if visitors found your site directly,
through a referral from another website
(ex: Twitter, Facebook), or from search
engines.
•  Web browsers used by your visitors –
knowing which web browsers your
visitors use allows you to know which
browsers you should be focusing on.
•  What keywords were used by visitors in
the search engines to get to your website
– this is very crucial for SEO. Knowing
which keywords people are searching for
to get to your site determines if you are
on the right track.
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17
Conclusion
Startup marketing is not easy, but it’s a necessary function
that every startup needs to take seriously. Without marketing,
you may have a great product or service, but you aren't going to
generate enough buzz around it. You need to spread
awareness of your brand and make people talk about it. And
one way to effectively do that is through the digital marketing
activities outlined in this book.
We hope you found this guide useful. If you have any
questions or if there was something missing that you felt should
be included, send me an email:
sanmallya@startupcafeindia.com. For more resources and
insights on startup marketing, please visit
www.startupcafeindia.com, and follow our blog:
www.startupcafeindia.com/startup-blog.
About the Author
Sandeep Mallya (Twitter: @SanMallya) is the founder of
Startup Café Marketing Solutions, a company focused on
helping startups realize the true potential of social media and
content marketing. As the CEO of Startup Café, he has advised
a number of startups on social media and content strategy. He
lives in Bangalore, India.
Your Startup
© 2015 Startup Cafe Marketing Solutions

A Quick Guide to Marketing Your Startup

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