What we learned in the course called "marketing" may not be so relevant to a startup.
Actually, it may be rather damaging.
Marketing is very individual. What works for a well-known big company wouldn't work for a startup with a new product, unfamiliar to the public.
Before you start marketing, you should ask yourself several questions:
1. Who are your customers?
2. What motivates them to purchase?
3. What do they love about your offering?
4. How do they make purchasing decissions?
5. What problems do they have?
6. What problems do they have and don't know about?
7. How do they buy things?
8. How do they cluster? On the net or physicaly?
9. Where do they find out about things?
A very mediocre and not recommended way of marketing :
Make an assessment -> Select tactics -> Execute -> Measure -> Improve.
The above strategy does not work well because it doesn't start marketing strait to the point. This leads to selecting tactics that are not 100% assured as the best tactics. This is because it is hard to assess which tactics made the improvement and which were indifferent or damaging. It also leads to dispute and arguments between the marketing team members .
The right way is to start with a marketing model.
Ask all the above questions. Talk to the customers throughout the process. They are the key to your success. Surveys are relevant. One survey should be based on the scores of the previous. In this way, the customer feels that there is a dialogue between him and you. He sees that you are routing yourself to his needs. A very important thing is to ask the customer how he would describe the solution you are giving to his problem. How would most of the future customers describe your product? It may very well be a matter of the name of the product, because of the fact that in one name the solution to the problem is described and in the other name it isn't.
For example: There was a company that tried to sell a very big and organized data base by calling it a "Database" when the customer had enough data bases. However, when the functionality of the data base was described to the customer, the customer started calling it a "Data Wharehouse", an "interface"- something they needed. So the company said: "OK, sure, it's an organized interface what we are selling".
When the solution is new-> Talk about the problem. And then about the solution.
Example: When a smart-phone was new to the public, Apple talked about the problem of the disability to surf the web and check mails from everywhere.
When the solution is known -> Talk about- "Why choose us and not the competitor"
The right way to market:
Project- Oriented Tactical Execution -> Outputs (Numeric stats) -> Conclusions (Analysis) -> Inputs (Customer offering buying process) -> Tactical Execution
All of the above is a summary I made from the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgwJbE1wIzk
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