A VC in Vacationland

In my previous three Blogs on start up marketing, The Basics, Capabilities & Technology and Content Development, we covered the fundamentals of developing a world-class marketing program for your start up.  In our final (for the moment) installment, we will examine how can you best manage messaging to ensure you are reach the broadest relevant audience through methods that optimize content placement.

In the past, content placement consisted of writing a white paper for mail or email distribution, getting an article published in a trade journal, speaking at a conference, among other focused approaches.  These are all well and good methods, both in the past and in the future. Distributing papers and articles which highlight your solutions and how your clients have improved their businesses using your solutions is still an excellent way to gain new leads, especially using the permission-based technologies detailed in my previous post.  The smart start-up marketers are taking advantage of a number of emerging channels for effective content placement going forward.  Some still support the distribution of white papers, etc., but many are designed to be more real-time or topic-focused than the traditional, longer pieces.  Perhaps we can attribute this trend to the rise in influence of the Sesame Street generation, with attention spans of 15 seconds. Whatever the cause, here are, in no particular order, a few of the many new channels to consider in determining content placement for your marketing plan:

• You Tube–As part of my start up investment due diligence, I have recently been directed to a number of new product and solutions videos on YouTube and related social networking sites. In many cases, the videos helped me understand a complex product or video much faster than plodding through a business plan or web site.  A picture is really worth a thousand words in many circumstances.  But do not limit yourself to customer case studies or product profiles.  Why not have your CEO or a luminary from your Advisory Board post a video, either on an important topic to your customers or a major emerging trend in your space? I expect that business networking sites, such as Linkedin, will likely launch similar capabilities in the coming months. 
• Web optimized placement–If you are using a permission-based marketing tool to manage inbound requests for information, you are also gaining valuable knowledge on key words your potential customers may be using to search the web.  Your up-front permission surveys are full of keywords that detail emerging client concerns and interests.  For example, China supply chains, green logistics, supply chain risk, among other search words are hot topics in supply chain at the moment.  Are you buying the right ad words to optimize search flow to your web site?
• Widgets–Widgets are becoming the rage of the business press, with major articles in magazines in recent months. Business Week succinctly described widgets recently: "In the Web world, widgets are modules of software that people can drag and drop onto the personal page of their social network or onto a blog. There, widgets typically look like a little window or box, packing a bit of the functionality that you would get with a stand-alone Web site or software package. The result can be as mundane as the WeatherBug, or a YouTube clip of your favorite video of a bulldog riding a skateboard, or your wish list from on line jewelry retailer Blue Nile or Wal-Mart."  I have a widget selling tech toys on my Blog (all proceeds go to charity), courtesy of Tumri, one of my portfolio companies. Widgets can be an important content placement tools that you can use as ad boxes on relevant and popular web sites, Blogs and industry publications to promote your content.  Construction is easy.  I built my own widget from a simple kit Tumri provides on Typepad, who hosts this Blog, 
• Second Life–do you have a first life yet?  Probably not if you are running or working in a start up, but no matter, you probably need to see if you can also live in Second Life.  So you don’t think this is a place where software or solutions companies can do business?  Then how come IBM is all over Second Life, even holding meetings with clients.  Like it or not, such new realities will become content placement opportunities in the future.  At least get yourself an avatar with tattoo’s, but try and avoid the second wife as that may cause problems at home.  Seriously, your products and solutions may have a home in Second Life.  Check out the options.
• Blogs–Yes, Blogs are work, but they are also a fantastic way to communicate in nearly real time with your clients and potential customers.  You can even share the Blog among your senior staff to have varying information and points of view.  If you have lots of interesting things to say about the space you are selling into, then a Blog on your web site is a great way to quickly get the information out.  But a Blog should be something that all want to do; otherwise it can become a burden, or at worst dull and uninformative.  Be sure that you use permission-based click throughs on the Blog to access any relevant papers or other details so that you can capture marketing information and potential leads from the process.
• Webinars–Webinars are currently the rage in the software community, and will continue to be for many years, as they are an inexpensive way to reach a relevant marketplace.  Some of my portfolio companies report valid lead acquisition through webinars at less than $1,000 per lead.  Although your inbox is probably flooded with ten webinar opportunities per day, the relatively low cost per lead acquisition will continue to make this a preferred option.  Typically, the best webinars feature a combination of industry analysts or gurus coupled with one of your clients telling potential customers what a great product you have.  Webinars can also be used to train new customers, to do a weekly demo of your product, to have your CEO announce new products and features, etc.  Webex and others are good sites for setting up webinar meetings and brainshark is a useful site for prerecording Power Point presentations for use on your webinars.

These emerging channels for content placement should help jump start your start-up’s marketing programs.  If readers have other channel suggestions, please add them as a comment to this Blog.