In my previous four Blogs on start up marketing, The Basics, Capabilities & Technology, Content Development and Content Placement, we covered the fundamentals of developing a world-class marketing program for your start up. It occurred to me after I finished the last installment, and promised you that it was the last for a while on this subject, that I missed an important part of any marketing program–public relations.

The role of public relations in a start up is as critical as having good product or service offerings. What type of public relations you need is the first question to answer.  The PR nirvana for start ups is mention in the top business press, such as Tumri’s recent mention in Business Week’s article on Widgets. Associating your start up with a hot business or technology trend will get you quickly noticed by venture guys, analysts and potential customers.  Absent such opportunities, getting the word out to media about important happenings at your company is an ongoing task that should be managed, not done as an afterthought.

Let’s start with the basics.  First, realize that most people really don’t care if you have hired a bunch of people, moved, brought out a marginally better version of your software or other such irrelevant stuff.  Put it on your website, but please spare all of us the news release.  Second, carefully determine and rank key media outlets for your technology, including business press, industry-specific publications/web sites, Blogs and technology-focused media. Third, limit general media releases to important announcements, such as innovative products and services, new white papers discussing hot topics among your customers or industry awards–as long as you did not pay to play. Finally, save your best media outlets for making a big deal about new customer acquisitions. Do people really care about P&G or H-P signing up for your software?  Absolutely.  Make sure you get customer quotes in the releases, assuming they are willing. 

Notice that I have not said anything about hiring a PR person or technology yet.  Before you decide on who or how you will manage PR material flow, you should do your homework, as outlined in the steps above. Only then should you begin researching the "channels" to be used to get your messages into the media. Channel options range from expensive, fee-based, full-service PR firms, to local "single-shingle" PR consultants, to do-it-yourself web-based PR technologies. Wait a minute, you say, what happened to all that permission-based marketing stuff Dave pitched in earlier Blogs?  The simple answer is that the permission-based marketing tools are highly focused on professionals who have opted-in to specific information streams from your company.  PR is all about fishing for and educating new prospects, analysts and influencer’s in the world beyond permission-based marketing.

A full-service PR firm can easily run you $50,000 per year.  These firms take your content, manufacture press releases, distribute them to appropriate media outlets and provide your with a monthly placement report.  You will want a firm with experience in and key media contacts in your industry.  Media outlets, whether print or web based, get thousands of press releases a day.  If you are paying the big bucks for placement, then you need to be sure that your PR firm will get your releases noticed and published. But you are wondering, is this worth $50K per year?  How do I know if I am getting my monies worth?  Here is where your permission-based marketing technology comes in.  You can ask visitors to your web site where they heard about you in the opt-in survey questions, or do the same thing if you get an email or phone call inquiring about your products and services.  Return on PR investment is easy to calculate in the permission-based environment.

A local, one-person or small PR firm is more cost effective, but may not have the industry experience or contacts to get you noticed.  The smaller the firm, the more input you need to have to the PR process, such as introducing the principals to the right media/analyst people, assuming that you know them. Ask fellow start ups in your area if they have any recommendations or experiences with using local PR firms.

For the techie who wants a virtual business model, there are a number of web-based PR sources that can be cobbled together to produce a virtual PR machine.  You will have to do all the basic content preparation work yourself, as these technologies are primarily distribution channels for press releases.  PRweb, vocus, MyPRGenie, and dna13, to name a very few, are all web-based technologies that will send your content to relevant(read:industry specific, but not targeted) Internet media outlets, print/Blog journalists and optimized search engines.  None of my portfolio companies have used these services, so I cannot report back on the success of the offerings.  They are very popular with web-based product businesses who are trying to drive consumer eyeballs to their sites.  Prices range from $50 to over $500 per release, depending on the complexity (video attachments, etc) of the release. Other, more exotic fee-based plans are also available. In addition, some of these services also allow you to track mentions of your company in the print and on-line media, as well as let you configure Internet feeds providing you with news on industry trends and competitor releases. 

Finally, for the complete novice in marketing and PR, many people recommend John Janstch’s book, Duct Tape Marketing.  The book provides a complete roadmap for setting up a marketing program.  I personally found it boring and simplistic, as did some other reviewers.  But John has his loyal followers, so you may want to spend the $13 on Amazon to find out for yourself.  His Blog is more informative, but the book lays out the complete marketing program process for the neophytes.

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.

In my two previous posts on start up marketing, The Basics and Capabilities & Technologies, I examined the fundamentals of developing a successful marketing initiative for your new (or established) company.

Developing value-creating content for professionals who may be interested in your products and services is just as critical as having the right technologies and processes in place to manage lead and sales streams. Often, content development is an afterthought, or reserved for time on planes or the spare weekend moment.  In reality, it needs to be a major part of your business strategy.  No matter how great your product or service is at solving client problems, if you cannot clearly communicate how the solutions create value for prospective clients, you are going to fail.

So, how should you manage your messaging to ensure that you not only have a compelling set of ideas that can create value for a customer, but also ensures consistency across multiple messaging platforms, such as speeches, white papers, webinars, case studies, etc.?  The old Marketing 101 stalwarts of defining your marketing Hook, Core Vision and Secret Sauce still should be the basis of your content development plans.

• Hook–First, you need to establish how the urgent needs among your customers can translate into key marketing messages for your products and services.  Whether it is a current fad such as global sourcing and supply chain risks or more ongoing concerns about working capital costs, you must get potential customers interested up front in how you solutions can help them be more successful.  Too often, I see marketing programs where products are chasing a solution rather than the other way around, or web sites touting product suite instead of solutions on the home page. The best marketing offense is always leading with ideas on how the company’s tools can solve customer’s current problems.
• Core Vision–The second major aspect of a content development program is understanding and clearly defining the core vision of your company and how it will be incorporated into the marketing program.  Much of the core vision development should be centered on what sets your company apart from other competitors.  Again, too often, I see "me too" or overly complex visions that only a mother could love (when was the last time you tried to explain what you do to your mother?  My mother used to just look at me after I tried to tell her what I did and say  "I hope you know what you are doing, because I don’t have the faintest idea").  Simpler always works better.  If you have to spend more that a few minutes detailing your company’s vision to a customer(or your mother), then it is too complex. If you are unclear about how to create a core vision, visit Jim Collin’s ( the "Good to Great" guy) vision building website for a free tutorial.
• Secret Sauce–The last key piece of content development is defining the "secret sauce" around your offerings.  What differentiates you from others in the marketplace?  What hurdles can you establish for competitors to jump over?  Why will prospective customers decide to buy your solution over others?  Well, let me let you in on a little secret–it’s not as secret as you think.  First, find three themes that resonate in the potential customer marketplace (most likely purloined from your existing customer issues, which you can easily gather at a lunch with them by asking them what problems your solutions are solving). Second, drive these themes very hard in your content development/marketing campaigns.  This is what will attract the customers to your solutions, as will getting existing customer testimonials on video, audio or webcasts where they speak about the themes.  Finally, reuse/reuse.  Take that white paper and turn it into five or ten monthly email tidbits for your permission-based mailing lists–focused of course on the key content themes.

In my final start up marketing Blog next week, I will delve into the interesting topic of content placement, especially focusing on the many, emerging options for on-line marketing, such as webinars, widgets, Blogs, and YouTube.  As always, comments and suggestions for improvements are much appreciated.

Last week, we covered the basic marketing strategies for a start up company.  This week we will focus on the primary capabilities and technologies you will need to successfully implement the strategy in your company.

There are six key capabilities behind a successful start up program:

1. Clean Lead Database–most companies, no matter how small, have some sort of customer and potential customer database. Usually, it is not very up to date and often does not reflect the interests of the member, such as products/solutions used and/or interested in. Developing a decent database is a critical first step in designing a marketing program.  You can learn a lot from the list, even more as you add permission based members. You can develop targeted marketing programs to vertical or solutions based on what members want to receive. I have seen small companies with thousands of mailing list members–most of which have no interest in their products.  Don’t waste your money or their time sending them stuff they do not want. Even if your first list is only a few hundred people, fine.  As long as they are interested and have indicated what information they would like to receive, you have a good start.
2. Ensure Website Readiness–You have spent a lot of money on designing a great website, full of product/solution information, client testimonials and white papers. But can people who are interested in what you do find you?  We often see the companies have either ignored or poorly designed web site analytics–tools designed to drive relevant searches to your site.  Ask your web master how they designed your analytics. At minimum, they should be using Google Analytics. There are many other tools available a minimal cost to build site traffic.  Make sure your web master has a strategy to maximize relevant traffic flow to your site.
3. Re-purpose Content Data Base –The best web sites and extra-nets are currently being designed around content management systems.  Such systems allow marketing professionals to easily re-purpose white papers, blogs, product information, etc. into new materials that can be sent out to the mailing list members.  Companies often have loads of good written materials that can be used again and again, both with current and prospective customers.  Mine the mother load , or contract with a good academic to produce some leading edge papers that can be sent out to mailing list members.
4. Add Permission-based Marketing Technologies–Next, you will need a technology platform to use drive your marketing program.  There are a number of players in this space, but only a few do a good job in the B2B space.  Check out Vtrenz and Eloqua.  I have used them both in my portfolio companies and both do a great job in helping you manage marketing programs.  You can easily spend $50K for the first year software license and a consultant to get it up and running, but it will pay for itself in the first year of operation. You can also add other capabilities, such as leadlander, to track how people are visiting your website.
5. Link to Sales Force Management Software–you need to develop a direct feed from the permission-based tools to your sales management software. Most current tools link directly to salesforce.com and similar software systems.  Make sure that you provide a step for lead processing by a pre sales person to ensure only highly qualified leads enter the sales force management tool.
6. Develop Engagement Model–The final step is to develop your marketing campaign/engagement calendar for your market, vertical and geographic segments.  This would list webinars, white paper distributions, newsletter, etc. distributions that are planned over the next year.  You can set these programs up to run automatically in the permission-based software, reducing the time spent in managing individual programs.

There are many more nuances in developing a successful marketing program for your start up, but the above capabilities will get you going along the right path.  Let us know how you are doing, or if you have any questions.

If you are a software start up trying to get market attention these days, you know that the process is difficult.  Analysts give you a few minutes and perhaps a few lines in an article, press releases go unnoticed, blog buzz is hard to get and harder to manage, mailings have no results, speeches yield many business cards, but no business, among other trials and issues.  Even your prospects mailing list is probably out of date and not generating many leads from your occasional newsletter.

Sound familiar?  You are suffering from what I call the "a priori marketing syndrome". A priori marketing is often referred to as scatter-shot marketing, generally practiced by your PR firm. You spray out a lot of marketing materials randomly through various channels into the ether, have no way of determining effectiveness and end up with a big expense and modest results in the lead stream.  Traditional business school marketing theory, upon which this approach is based, was often the only option in past years to reach potential customers and likely the approach you learned in your first business experiences.

My friend, Padman Ramankutty, founder and former CEO of Bristlecone, the very successful SAP integrator and supply chain consultancy, and myself experienced the a priori marketing syndrome last week when we were working with one of my portfolio companies.  They were primarily using a priori marketing methods to go to market and were unhappy with the amount of valid leads the method was generating. They were looking for a new approach to marketing, one that reached and nurtured potential customers on an ongoing basis, rather than episodically.

To be precise, there is nothing basically wrong with an priori marketing strategy–as long as it is executed correctly as part of a broader, experienced based marketing program. But new marketing strategies and technologies are critical  if you are going to maximize your scarce marketing dollars in today’s internet-enabled world.

What was missing from their plan was something Padman and Dave termed "a posteriori marketing"–using permission-based marketing tools and techniques to educate and capture the interest of the correct pool of potential buyers for your software.  Confused? Here’s what we mean:  a priori knowledge is independent of experience, while a posteriori knowledge is dependent on experience. In other words, a priori marketing randomly looks for new customers while a posteriori marketing hunts for leads in the pool of people who really need the products (those experienced in evaluating and using related solutions in their work).

So how do you find that magical pool of people who really need your product?  You set up all sorts of ways in which they can give you permission to market to them.  For example, the best permission based web sites I have seen, like Steelwedge, have at least five opportunities on the home page to "sign up" for something–white papers, webinars, product information, lunch with the CEO(not really, but why not?), etc, etc.  You fill out a short questionnaire with your name, email, what product(s)/solutions you are interested in, and if you are looking to buy soon or just starting a review process.  They also collect permission-based information in more traditional ways–at conferences, via emails and cold calls. The company then uses the data to target specific and relevant materials to the potential customers and define internal marketing strategies to move them up the lead stream food chain to sales prospect.

The best companies in the permission-based marketing game have fine tuned the process so that only the most qualified leads are presented to the sales force for action.  In many cases, when a lead comes out of the permission-based technology, pre sales professionals further vet the lead before it is passed onto the sales group. The net result is that the sales force is only working with prospects that are actively in a buying cycle.

Want to try this at home?  or in the office?  Next week, our post will cover capabilities and technologies needed to set up a permission-based marketing program in your company.