Resources for building marketing strategy?
Hey hackers,
I'm looking good resources for building up a marketing strategy to my startup (commoninja.com). It's an existing product with users and revenues, and I want to build a growth plan.
Do you have any recommendations about articles / videos / consultants?
Shameless self plug: you could find some inspiration by reading my newsletter 🙂
Would 100% recommend Zero to Marketing. Insightful every time!
One thing I've found to be almost universal in growth strategy (having done it for myself, others and also read a huge amount about it), is that growth is a result of a clear understanding of value propositions and positioning.
Without a clear value proposition, almost everything is guesswork. I actually wrote this article (with an in-depth video too) about setting value props for a SaaS. There's also a template that you can use to walk through the process for yourself.
Hope that helps Daniel!
I really think that a marketing strategy should come together around two things: focus and execution.
It's so easy to want to do 10000 things, and then never actually get any of them done.
When you narrow down your focus it is way easier to execute on tasks and see the results.
This post we put up on our Blog (today!) is a good example of what I mean by being focused on just a couple of tactics and channels.
https://www.gosquared.com/blog/saas-marketing-plans-you-can-copy-for-your-launch
I also really love:
What sort of marketing are you leaning towards so far? And what kind of resources do you have (team wise, budget wise)?
Thanks @bethkcarter!
I still haven't established neither a team or a budget, just wanted to understand how to begin.
I do think that team and budget will impact any plan you put in place because it will give you an understanding of the capacity you have in your business to carry out the strategy.
Personally, at this stage I would focus on content marketing with a really personal point of view and tone. You can still make this relevant to your audience and SEO optimised (ahrefs have great articles on this, also Neil Patel), but the personal touch makes it mean something to your readers.
Also, starting your content marketing early is like starting to invest early on in life - that compound interest builds and builds and will always be a strong backbone for you business!
I agree. Content marketing is definitely the 1st channel I would invest in.
Hi Daniel, if you look for building an organic marketing strategy, this may help you-
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if you want to learn more, here i have written a blog on how to market your SaaS with low budget- https://arnabghosh.co/saas-marketing-without-budget/
That's a great blog post, very insightful!
Thanks!
Glad you liked it:)
Focus on a couple of channels - Blogging and Paid Ads on sites like LinkedIn. Other options would be a referral program and an email newsletter or a youtube channel. You are trying to target professionals. Any other marketing would be futile in IMHO. Blogging would take time but results will outlast any other type of marketing. Same thing with YouTube channel. Stay away from committing yourself to too many marketing channels. Focus on one or two. I would try Blogging and Referral marketing.
Thanks @silicontech2018, great tips!
What about professional communities?
Your strategy should hinge on where your customers (and competition) reside. Sounds simple but people often overlook this important part. A practical approach is to look at where you anticipate 80% of your customers are and forming your strategy around that.
For example, if your customers are on Facebook, then FB ads are very much in-play. However, you should also have a content strategy that educates your customers, sparks their interest, and generally gets them clicking to your site. This content should be good, and it should have ad spend behind it to put it in front of your customers.
If they will primarily find you through Google searches, then Google ads mixed with content (YouTube and blogging) is the way to go. If you aren't confident in your writing abilities, hire writers and formulate the content approach with them. You can use a free tool like UberSuggest to drill down into your niche a bit more.
Thank you so much for the tips, however, potentially the channels I wanted to explore are the non paid channels.
@dsternlicht Just went through this process myself - I launched my startup (foundhq.com) earlier this year and have grown it to ~$10K MRR mostly through a pretty manual outbound sales approach but was looking for advice and resources to start laying the foundation for a more scalable, organic growth strategy. GrowthMentor (growthmentor.com) has been an unbelievable resource and gives access to a global community of Growth Marketers that you can connect with for 1:1 sessions - it's a small monthly investment for access to the platform but a ton of the mentors offer free sessions, so there's no cost to connect with them for 30-45 minutes. I honestly found ROI on the monthly subscription after the 1st call (and I've now done 5-6 with different Marketers each offering a specific focus).
Congrats on foundhq.com!
And thanks for the recommendation on GrowthMentor, looks promising :)
Sadly you can read 1000's of articles, listen to hundreds of podcasts, but what works for others is highly likely not going to work for your business. No such thing is a pattern for success that anyone can use. Read the book: Traction by Gabriel Weinberg. You need this foundation first. https://medium.com/@yegg/78-takeaways-from-traction-book-1b44d2a03dda . Once you have this foundation, here is the growth design - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0APJlxMjPw4 - What was obvious to me is audience. Build an audience early and always, never stop.
Will look into that. Thanks.