1 Bootstrap MarketingBootstrap MarketingWhy You Need To Read This GuideYouve got a great idea, and weve got some great experiencelets see what can happen if we combine them! Our team has worked or consulted for over fifty start-up companies and has over 200+ years of start-up experience. We understand the unique marketing challenges start-ups face, so we packed this guide with the knowledge that we have gained in the form of our Bootstrap LaunchPad Processa proven process to get you to market quickly and effectively. Who Is This eBook For?Simpleyou. This eBook is for anyone with an open mind and a desire to learn from people whove been in their shoes. It doesnt matter whether youre an engineer, a marketer, a CEO, or an investorthere are ideas in this guide that can save you time, money, and pain and most importantly, increase the chances that your start-up will be successful.If You Like It (Or Dont Like It)Tell Us!We hope you read this guide and get something from it. If you do, please follow us on Twitter and tell us what you liked or found most useful. If not, please tell us how we could have made this more valuable, or if you have any questions, tweet us using #ASKBOOTSTRAP.Let the countdown begin!Martyn Crew,CEO, Bootstrap Marketing@bootstrapmktgmartyn@bootstrap-mktg.comCOPYRIGHT 2015 Bootstrap Marketing89 Launch Process SIX! Know Who Your Customers AreFIVE! Positioning and MessagingFOUR! Build Your PresenceTHREE! Establish Metrics, Experiment, Measure, InvestTWO! Marketing Build or BuyONE! Ready to Launch?Bootstrap MarketingKnow Who Your Customers AreMany start-ups view market research as too expensive and time-consuming, but its an essential part of any go-to-market strategy and plan. Understanding your customers wants and needs, market trends, and validating product direction can be the difference between success and failure. Even start-ups that ultimately succeed without doing market research end up pivoting repeatedly, wasting precious time and resources when ideas dont connect with the market.SIX!1213 Market Research Isnt Just for the Big PlayersInvesting some time (and often a little bit of money) in market research throughout your companys growth helps keep your product, positioning, and messaging focused. So how can a start-up with limited resources do effective market research?Start by asking why you want to do market researchwhat are you hoping to accomplish? There are a number of possible reasons, including:Test a hypothesis about the market.Validate product features, value proposition, or road map plans.Test positioning and messaging concepts.Better understand customer wants and needs.Explore market trends, issues, gaps, and challenges.Test product or service pricing and packaging.Who Should You Interview or Survey?The why informs whom you need to talk to and what you need to ask. Most market research will focus on customers, prospects, or industry experts (people in a relevant job role) and thought leaders (if you can get their time). For qualitative information and more in-depth feedback, youll want to do phone or in-person interviews.For quantitative research, online surveys are the best option, but youll want to have at least 200 qualified responses to get meaningful data. Qualified responses? Yesmake sure you survey the right people. Identify the job title, job responsibilities, expertise, industry, company size, and any other relevant factors. You can apply screening criteria in an online survey to make sure you get a reasonable sample. To get 200 qualified responses, you may need anywhere from 300 to 600 respondents (people who actually attempt to take your survey).Where do You Find All Those People to Interview or Survey?CustomersYour own customers will almost always be willing to provide feedback, so if theyre a relevant audience, ask them.Your own networkBe careful not to focus exclusively on people you know since you can easily bias the results.Ask for introductionsYour customers, partners, investors and others can easily introduce you to 4 or 5 of their own contacts.Social mediaYou can use LinkedIn to prospect for participants, or promote a survey on Twitter or other platforms, but beware of introducing bias and of professional survey-takers especially if youre offering any incentive.A third-party provider.People will respond, especially if they know you or feel like theyre part of something new and innovative. In general, people love giving feedback, so you can appeal to their nature, but you must also be prepared to give something back, such as sharing the survey results.The Most Valuable Commodity: TimeIts easy to do a basic survey and call it market researchtheres no shortage of infographics on the web that pretend to provide meaningful data. If youre investing millions of dollars in building a company, its worth putting the time, effort, and perhaps a little bit of money into good market research to test your assumptions. It may take a month or two to conduct research and analyze the data, but it is valuable time spent.You will also want to ensure your survey is time well spent for the survey taker too. Time is the most valuable commodity a participant is providing, and asking the rightor wrongquestions can make or break your market research. Focus on questions that the survey taker or interviewee will feel like they have the expertise to answer, and dont ask more than theyre willing to give in either information or time. 1415 And of course, be mindful of how you phrase questions so you dont inadvertently ask something that turns off the survey taker. Have a trusted advisor read through the survey or questionnaire to provide feedback before you send it out. With interviews, note what works and what doesnt, and make edits to your questionnaire after the first or second interview.A Small Investment Goes a Long WayIts tempting to just throw the survey out there on social media and hope for the best, but you should also be prepared to spend a little bit, especially on quantitative surveys. Phone or in-person interviews are usually free other than your time and maybe the cost of lunch or a coffee. Heres where you should consider investing:A paid account with an online survey toolSurvey Monkey, a perennial favorite, charges $228 per year for their Select planwell worth it for the additional capability.A qualified list of survey candidatesYou can purchase, rent, or build a targeted audience list. Beware that purchased lists quality is low. Rented and self-built lists are stronger. Another option is to utilize a survey company network of survey takers. Prices vary by responses, targeting criteria, and survey length. Lastly, professional survey organizations can run your survey for you and provide basic analysis results, often for under $10,000; however, cost can vary widely depending on the audience (CIOs and CEOs will cost more).Survey incentivesOffer a prize drawing for an Apple Watch or other hot new consumer technology, or an Amazon gift certificate. If the data might be of interest to your respondents, offer them a summary report (business managers often want to know what their peers and competitors are doing!) Lastly, consider reusing your research to create marketing content. If the information is informative to your prospects, create an infographic and a report. Also, offer it up on your website, post it on SlideShare, and maybe even issue a press release if theres a newsworthy angle to it. However, content should never be the primary goal of real market research.Know Your Competitive LandscapeOne of the most important things you can do as a marketing leader is to develop and maintain a current and detailed understanding of the competitive landscape. Your knowledge of the marketplace and your companys relative position in it is critical to the success of your positioning and go-to-market strategy, as it empowers you with information and insights critical to making smart business decisions that will keep you competitive.But the competitive landscape is in a constant state of flux, especially in fast-moving technology sectors like big data and analytics. New start-ups pop up every day. Established players add, remove, sell, acquire, update, and enhance their products and solutions continually. Keeping up is no easy task!There are a number of ways to keep in touch with whats happening in your marketplace. This includes online or printed resources; for example, analyst reports, blogs, thought-leading business journals, industry specific publications and social media groups. However, it would be unwise to rely entirely on these online resources at the expense of information collected in webinars, at conferences, or through discussion with your customers, field staff, industry peers, and colleagues.All of these tactics will keep you current on the gist of the industry, but its important that you also perform periodic deep dive competitive analyses. A fresh and focused analysis will:Validate your understandingDispel apocryphal claimsCrystallize your value propositionSpot opportunitiesUncover best practicesReality check your pricing policyRe-assess your partnershipsShape product and corporate strategy1617 Market Research Checklist and WorksheetThese are some questions you should ask yourself before you begin your research:What are your market research objectives?What market research information should I collect?How do I feel the research data will help my business?How will I reach the desired target audience and collect the data?Who will view, analyze and draw conclusions from the data?What is our timeline to complete this research?Competitor Analysis WorksheetSelf-analysis:What is our core message?What are our key benefits?What is our value proposition?Competitor 1:What is their core message?What are their key benefits?Similarities:Differences:Competitor 2:What is their core message?What are their key benefits?Similarities:Differences:Competitor 3:What is their core message?What are their key benefits?Similarities:Differences:Competition also comes in other forms, not just products. Here are a couple of common examples:Competitor 1: HomegrownThis is so important well build it ourselvesCompetitor 2: Do nothingTiming is not quite right, well get back to youIn the blank section below, list three other alternatives or sales objections that you may encounter or already have come across. Its important to be proactive and have answers to these factors influencing a potential customers decision to buy your product or not.Competitor 3: Competitor 4: Competitor 5: 1819 Market Research ChecklistSurvey tool (e.g. Survey Monkey)Target audience Qualified list of survey candidatesWell defined survey questionsMethod to appropriately and concisely measure and interpret dataSurvey incentivesTeam list and responsibilitiesEstablished timeframeQUESTIONS? #ASKBOOTSTRAPBootstrap MarketingFIVE!Positioning and MessagingCreating a positioning statement may seem like a daunting task, but having a solid direction from the beginning will align all stakeholders and guide you in positioning yourself in the mind of your prospects and against your competitors with targeted messaging and content creation, which is vital to the success of your company.2223 What Are Positioning and Messaging?Positioning is how you want your audience to perceive your brand, product or service, and how it fits into the market. However, the positioning statement is an internal document, not customer facing. Thats the role of messaging.Messaging is how you externally convey your positioning statement and is customized to the audiences and markets you are targeting. It clearly communicates key differentiators and values of your brand, product, or service while addressing different solutions your audience needs.Why Are They So Important?Are you lost in the crowd of me too players? Can your prospects easily recognize the value you bring over your key competitors? If there is no clear differentiation between you and your competition, what will the buyer base their purchase decision on? Most likely price, not whats best for them. In addition, a well-crafted positioning statement will also:Define the direction for your company and identify the path which your company will take in order to achieve its goalsCreate alignment across your entire team around the company strategy and missionHelp you and your team to clearly and consistently describe your company and product(s) through your website, collateral, social media, over the phone, and at eventsHelp establish the company tagline and campaign slogansHelp develop sales and investor pitchesQuantitative Product-Market Fit (QPMF)In 2007, VC and start-up veteran Marc Andreessen drew a very simple graphic that changed the way smart start-ups think about their world. His graphic was a crude, hand-drawn Venn diagram. One circle was labeled Market, the other, Product. The intersection of the two circles was labeled Fit and it was in Marcs words only thing that matters for a new startup. At Bootstrap Marketing, we agree. Finding this Product-Market Fit is the breakthrough that separates the successful start-up from the herd. But how do you find that fit and how, in an ever-changing market, do you keep yourself in this zone?One of Bootstraps old friends and colleague is 30-year product marketing veteran, Matt Brocchini. Over the years, Matt has evolved a quantitative approach that enables companies to assess and improve their product-market fit. Matts approach is called Quantitative Product-Market Fit (QPMF). We found Matts approach so useful that weve incorporated elements of it into our Customer Discovery and Alignment Workshop. It has also become a core process of the positioning and messaging framework and process we employ for our own customers, which helps to develop persona based messaging and a compelling value proposition by identify the following:Target market and market segmentsProduct-Market Fit and key differentiatorsCompetitionThe following section will provide you an overview of the QPMF process and demonstrate how marketers can use this approach to focus their positioning on the markets that have the greatest chance of success. 2425 A Secret Weapon for MarketersA start-ups job is to create a new product that a lot of people will buy.Theyre operating in a complex environmentdifferent market segments have different needs, existing products are evolving rapidly, and other start-ups are chasing the same opportunities.Its a high stakes game. Every player is working with partial information, and its complex enough that members of the same team frequently have very different assumptions and beliefs about these two basic questions:1.Where are we? and2.Where do we want to go?With this challenge in mind, Matt Brocchini asked himself, How can I help these teams develop a solid, shared concept of their core value proposition? So, along with his fellow entrepreneur in residence, Chris Sorensen, at one of the big Silicon Valley accelerators, they worked on developing a process to help start-ups develop a clear, shared, actionable vision of where they are and where they need to go to succeed. Over the course of a few months, they created a strategic framework they call Quantitative Product-Market Fit.QPMF can help marketers create more effective strategy, positioning, messaging, and content by using the tools of QPMF to clarify the true competitive position and the possible strategic directions of the products they are marketing. Because, after all, marketing is about doing three things:1.Communicating the competitive advantages of a product2.Enhancing the competitive advantages of a product3.Creating new competitive advantages for a productThe better you connect the real desires and needs of your target audience with the differentiated advantages of your product, the better your marketing will perform.What is Product-Market Fit?Remember when Cinderella slides her foot into the glass slipper? She finds that the dimensions of her foot and the dimensions of the shoe are a perfect match.Product-Market Fit is the level of match between what customers want and what a product provides. It is a magnetic force that attracts and binds customers to products. The better the fit, the higher the market share, the more loyal customers tend to be, and the more difficult it is for a competitor to lure customers away.High fit means low customer acquisition cost, high loyalty, and high lifetime customer value. Low fit means high customer churn, high customer acquisition costs, and low loyalty.It really is like a magnet: in one polarity it attracts customers, and in the other it repels them.Marc Andreessen put it very well:You can always feel product/market fit when its happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers.Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. Youre hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because theyve heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it. Marc AndreessenHowever, recognizing it when you have it is one thing; achieving it is another. And its not just about having the right product. Its also about marketing it to the right people in the right way.Thats why marketers can use the Quantitative Product-Market Fit framework as a secret weapon. It can help you find the market 2627 segments where your product has the greatest advantage, and it can help you determine what messages are most likely to drive sales in those segments.The following will describe how to quantify Product-Market Fit by looking at the Customer Value Model (what customers want) and Product Performance (what the product provides). The precision of the fit between the two is quantified as Quantitative Product-Market Fit. Customer Value Model The Customer Value Model describes what customers care about when they are considering buying a product. The things they care about are labeled as Value Dimensions. For example, if the product category is automobiles, the Value Dimensions might include:PricePerformancePrestigeCapacityFuel EconomyComfort The second component of the Customer Value Model is the relative importance of these Value Dimensions, known as the weight of each dimension. The weight of each Value Dimension indicates how big a role it plays in purchase behavior by customers in that segment. This can be depicted graphically:At a glance, you can tell that this Value Model is for a luxury car customer segment as Prestige and Performance are the Value Dimensions with the highest weight; whereas Fuel Economy and Price dont matter much to customers in this segment.Prestige9280Performance75Comfort54Capacity34Fuel Economy30Price2829 Product PerformanceProduct Performance is a measure of how well specific products deliver on the Value Dimensions in the Customer Value Model. This can be depicted graphically in the same way:The orange bars represent how well a particular product performs in each Value Dimension. Overall, this product looks pretty good.In the Comfort Dimension, the fit is almost perfect. It also does well in the primary Value Dimensions of Prestige and Performance. Its Capacity, Fuel Economy, and Price are not great, but those are less important for this segment.The following chart defines the weight of a Value Dimension and its impact on purchase behavior. VaWith this strategic foundation and secret weapon at your disposal, youre already a step ahead of most marketers. Youve taken the first steps towards having an analytical picture of your products true advantages and weaknesses, which will help you create marketing messaging that works.PrestigePerformanceComfortCapacityFuel EconomyPrice92807554343096%81%99%68%53%53%Value DimensionWeight01-3030-6070-100Impact onPurchase BehaviorIrrelevant. This dimension has no value to customers.Moderately Important.Highly important. These are the value dimensions that will have the greatest impact on purchase behavior. Not very important. Has a small impact on buying decisions. Performance in this dimension is unlikely to drive purchase behavior unless two products are in very close neck-and-neck competition. 3031 Crafting a Winning Positioning StatementDeveloping a positioning statement requires your team to go through a thoughtful and honest analysis of both your company and your customer. The following Positioning Worksheet uses the Geoffrey Moore template that will guide you towards developing your own positioning statement.But before we show you our process and you begin working on your own positioning statement, here are things to remember while going through the process:Stay descriptive; dont create a categoryCustomers create and influencers name categories Emerging companies often do not have customers, influencer leverage or resourcesCustomers will not know where to look for youPrompts What does that mean? not How do you do it?Lead/differentiate with non-category messagesCo-opt an emerging or align with known spaceDont confuse core positioning with messaging and go-to-market tacticsSelect message/target market subsets and tactics to support market entry phaseDont explain everything. The goal is to find at bats in your sweet spot and accelerate repeatable sales modelLead with the problem you solve, category, differentiating features or benefitsMake a provocative claimHighlight competitors short-comings against this claimCreate a debate you winQUESTIONS? #ASKBOOTSTRAP3233 Bootstrap Process OverviewPositioning StatementCompanyIsForWhoThatUnlikeKey DifferentiatorsTagline OptionsCreative expression (long 200-250 word positioning statement)Creative expression (short 100-125 word positioning statement)Audience-specific positioning (100-125 word descriptions for 3-4 specific audiences/use cases, plus positioning statement for each)Elevator pitch (10-15 second pitch about what you do and who you are)ExampleOverview: Redwood Marketing is a full-service marketing firm located in the San Francisco Bay Area, offering strategic marketing services tailored to the needs of agricultural businesses and the desires of their target consumer. With over 100 years of experience in agricultural marketing, our grasp of farm market dynamics, technology, science, and audience attitudes has helped us incite growth for a myriad of agricultural clients, season after season. Company: Redwood MarketingIs: a full service marketing firm For: Northern California agricultural businesses Who: are looking for a well-versed marketing partnerThat: drives results which exceeds marketing objectives and create a sustainable marketing advantage.Unlike: trying to do it ourselves or taking 3 months to locate a permanent hireKey Differentiators: Over 100 years of agricultural marketing experience and extensive industry knowledge, which allows Redwood Marketing to quickly understand agricultural products and fair marketing practices, providing immediate value and requiring little direction.3435 Try It For Yourself!Overview:Company:Is:For:Who:That:Unlike:Key Differentiators:Messaging ChecklistOnce your team has gone through the positioning process, use the following checklist to ensure your messaging encompasses the right elements.Is the statement clear?Does it focus on and motivate the core target audience?Does it provide a distinctive and meaningful picture of your product, service, or brand?Does it differentiate your brand from the competition?Is it authentic and believable?Does it allow for future growth?Bootstrap MarketingFOUR!Build Your PresenceThe key to any effective marketing campaign is to provide customers with the right information at the right time. At each stage in the buying cycle, marketers must determine what information customers need and what type of content and channels would be most effective in delivering that information to them. As a marketer, your role is to make sure that your marketing assets represent the company in the best possible way.3839 Start with Your WebsiteWhats the first thing someone does after theyve met with one of your sales people or opened one of your marketing emails? Theres a good chance that, if they are interested in learning more about your company, the answer is visit your website.Out-of-date websites reflect poorly on any company. In fact, one of our prospects once told us that he lost a business deal at a global enterprise because his internal sponsor wouldnt recommend his company based on the look of his seven-year-old, HTML 1.0 style website.Your website is arguably your top marketing asset and what it communicatesboth visually, through its content and its ease of usespeaks volumes about your company. You need to get this right! Best practices is to keep your website simple and your customers experience streamlined. Here are some Bootstrap tips for building simplicity into your website:Easy to navigateYour website should be easily navigable. Visitors should not have to go deeper than 2-3 clicks to find the information they are looking for.Easy to understandYour pages should be easy-to-read. Include visuals and dont drown people in details.Clear call-to-actionYour call-to-action should be clear and it should always be visible to a customer on your website.Customer successesProvide customer testimonials, links to third party reviews and recommendations to validate your value proposition.Customer listYour customers are your most valuable asset, so make sure that you present them in an impactful way.Improve Your Site RankingThere are many articles and blogs written on how to improve SEO, and there are myriad consultants who claim to be experts on the topic. Weeding through all of this information and/or selecting a trusted social media consultant who is worth the expense can be overwhelming. At Bootstrap, we have one piece of advice to offerstart out by using the KISS principal.You also need to understand that SEO is a moving target. Search engine ranking algorithms are always changing, so what works well for you today, might not have the same impact in the not-too-distant future. To impact SEO effectively requires active and regular participation.It has been our experience that with some thoughtful on-going effort and a little investment, you CAN affect SEO rankings. In fact, we helped one of our customers move from page 5 to page 2 in their Google rankings for one of their most important keyword searches. Whereas there are a lot of things you can try to achieve higher rankings, following a few simple rules can have an impact. Here are a few of the rules we follow:Blog regularlyProduce and publish blogs each week that included backlinks and crosslinks to a partner website.Leverage social mediaFor every blog post, post a link to that blog on various social media channels including LinkedIn and Twitter.Produce SEO-friendly website contentMaximize SEO for website pages by utilizing the many SEO tools available such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool and Alexa Traffic Ranking, or simply use WordPress plug-ins like Yoast.Increase Engagement with VisualsAccording to the Social Science Network, 65% of humans are visual learners, something that marketers should always keep in mind when presenting information. The human brain is wired for visual image processing;40% of all nerve fibers connected to the brain are linked 4041 to the retina and they are responsible for an amazing 90% of all the information the brain receives. So its no surprise that infographics and videos are two of the most in-demand marketing assets.Text simply cant do what images can do. Images fast-track and enrich communication by enhancing understanding and stimulating an emotional response. In short, images amplify your message by:Accelerating communicationResearch by MIT neuroscientists reports that the brain can identify images seen for as little as 13 milliseconds! Its clear that humans are designed to process information from images much more efficiently than text.Increasing comprehensionVisual clues help us decode text and attract or direct attention to specific information. They stimulate our imagination and quickly connect us to concepts and patterns that are filed in our brain.Improving retentionAs mentioned earlier, your brain is wired to work with images. For example, after three days, you will only retain about ten percent of the information you hear, but you will retain almost two-thirds of the information you see.Affecting emotionPictures affect emotions by heightening our creative thinking and stimulating other areas of our brain. Behavioral Psychologists agree that most of our decisions are based on intuitive judgment and emotions.Infographics are eye-catching, attention grabbing illustrations great for communicating and presenting facts and figures, and helping marketers present their message without overloading their audience with too much information.Videos, especially animated whiteboard videos, are excellent for storytelling. Why? Its a blank canvas and your only constraint is your imagination, allowing you to carry your audience with you as you describe the problem, the options, the solutions, and the outcome. But its important to remember that every type of video has a distinct and different lifespan. To keep this as simple as possible, here is a list of the most popular types of company videos and some best practices around the lifespan for each.About us videoThis type of video must give viewers an accurate impression of who you are now and, with the pace of change in business, that means its lifespan is probably less than a year.Product or services videoThese videos must reflect your current product or service linetheres no point generating leads for products you no longer sell! When your products do change, updating video should be part of your product life-cycle management process.Customer testimonial videoThese are probably your highest value video assets and they are relevant for as long as the customer and content featured in the video are current. Be careful though, theres nothing worse than featuring a customer testimonial video that you cant back up!Whats new or update videoThese videos should reflect the natural cycles of your business, so you may need to refresh them quarterly, monthly or even every week. Keep these videos short and to the pointthis tells your audience that you are relevant, awake and ready to do business.Building Your Social PresenceAt the start of a social media program theres one question everyone wants answered, Which social media channel do we focus on? Its a smart question because you want to make sure you focus your efforts for the greatest results. Unfortunately, you cant just pick a channel at random, run with it, and be successful. To be successful you must understand the following three points:Understand which channel is best for your companyWhere is the web activity for your business community? Think about where your potential customers are spending their time.Who are the top bloggers, analysts and companies? Where does their following live online? This 4243 is another way to find where your potential customers are going online.What channels are your competitors using to spread/expose their message?The channel with the highest activity from your target audience is where you need to be.If there are several channels, zero in on the channel with the most interaction between the audience and whos managing that channel.Understand the strengths and purpose of that channelFor example:Facebook: This network is great for personal interactions. Its also best with branding products because all the information is in one place.LinkedIn: This social network is dedicated to connecting professionals. Use it to showcase your business and personal accomplishments.Twitter: Since Twitter is limited to short messages, use it to create conversations with customers and potential customers. Monitor which conversations take off and try to figure out why.Understand and follow best practices for each channelHere are a few best practices to follow when establishing and growing your Twitter and Facebook presences.Twitter What to Post? Create tweets that resonate and are engaging to your audience. This includes style/tone of voice, images, videos and links. Quality over quantity. Include a variety of pictures, links, and videos; not just text. Images and video have much more influence over text and links. Share timely and useful information. Do not over-promote yourself, or the business and product.Tweet LengthYou dont have to use all 140 characters. Actually, shorter tweets receive higher engagement, and also allow others to retweet without having to MT (modified tweet) what youve created. TimingTiming depends on the content of the Tweet, your objectives, your audience, their geography, and more. The best way to optimize the timing of your tweets is to test and learn.FrequencyThere is no magic number here, but a good rule of thumb is between 3-5 tweets per day. Try tweeting a couple of times a day to see how your audience reacts, then adjust as needed.Engage with othersFollow others that are interesting to your business. Then engage with them using @replies or @mentions4445 #HashtagsJoin a specific conversation and gain greater visibility with each tweet by using #hashtags. Frequently research which #hashtags (targeted or broad) your audience and industry are using, especially around industry news and events.Use them strategically and in good taste. Also, be mindful of where in the tweet your hashtags are located. They can become distracting to the reader.OthersUse calls-to-action, dont just assume readers will take action.Retweet and thank others for sharing your content or for following you.FacebookWhat to Post? As with tweets, create posts that resonate and are engaging to your audience. This includesstyle/tone of voice, images, videos and links. Include a variety of pictures, links and videos; not just text. Images and video have much more influence over text and links. Share timely and useful information.Facebook is great for sharing tips and tricks, product features, promotions, and customer success stories.Dont post a cute dog or baby video just because its trending. Find a way to tie your product into that trend.Post LengthLike Twitter, shorter is better. Keep your posts to a maximum of two lines. However, if you need more than two lines to get your message across, use breaks.Example 1:Help Redwood Marketing fight hunger by donating a can of food to Second Harvest, San Carlos, CA.Example 2:1 in 8 people struggle with chronic hunger. The community is working to make a difference: http://RedwoodMarketing.com/fighthungerTimingTiming depends on the content of the post, your objectives, your audience, their geography and more. The best way to optimize the timing of your posts is to test and learn.4647 FrequencyTesting and learning is also key here. Try posting once per day and scale up or down based on how your audience reacts. HashtagsHashtags are gaining traction on Facebook, but its too early to tell how effective they are. Like Twitter, use them tastefully.Others: Dont push your Facebook posts to Twitter, and vice-versa. They are two distinct networks and your followers expect different forms of communication on each channel even though they may be the same group of people.Tips for Managing Your Online PresenceNever before has online presence management been so important to marketers. According to Forrester Research, todays buyers are between 66% and 90% of the way through the buyers journey before they reach out to the vendor. Forrester also found that B2B buyers will find three pieces of online content about a vendor for every one piece that marketing can publish or sales can deliver. Therefore, marketers should regularly and comprehensively review their online presence to ensure that the information presented to prospects and customers is easily accessible and accurately reflects their story. Online Presence ChecklistTo ensure youre always putting your best foot forward, here are four key things that you should evaluate on a regular basis.Website:Is your product information easy to find?Is it bolstered with compelling use cases?Does it clearly communicate your value proposition?Are the Calls-to-Action optimized?Social Media Channels:How well have you mapped out your channels to your audience?Are your profiles consistent and up-to-date across all channels?Are you effectively leveraging the channels that have the most activity? How are you leveraging it?3rd Party Reviews:Do you respond appropriately and professionally to negative reviews and encourage happy customers to post positive ones?SEO:Is it easy to find you?Where are you ranking in search? Bootstrap MarketingTHREE!Establish Metrics, Experiment, Measure, InvestTheres no such thing in marketing as a Magic Bullet. Finding the right marketing approach for your company requires considerable effort before you uncover what works best. But even then, this shiny new solution wont sparkle forever.Having a balanced, integrated, and agile marketing approach enables you to adapt to customer needs, setting you up for marketing success. 5051 Establish MetricsMany marketing teams are often unsure about whether or not their campaigns are successfulthis is often because they havent defined what success means to them yet. If this sounds like you or your team, you may be wondering how to define success.Success can be defined in many ways depending on your marketing objectives, but the only way to truly understand success is to establish and tie metrics to your goals and objectivesboth internal and external.For example, when running a campaign on Twitter an internal metric would be for you to craft and post two promotional tweets a day for 2 weeks. This is an objective that only you can meet, and wont rely on outside, external results. For external metrics, you can track clicks to your destination page, overall reach (impressions), and engagement (such as likes, RTs, replies, favorites). What is important is for you to tie metrics to each post.Experiment Its amazing how often customers say, Were differentnothing works for us! What we usually find, when we drill down on this blanket statement, is that the customer is a serial marketer. This month they try email, next month they try a webinar, the month after that they blogand so on. What they really mean (and we agree) is that nothing works on its own. You need to use multiple tools in a coordinated manner. Marketers call this integrated marketing to effectively get their message across to their customers. Heres how we see this problem and our guidelines on how to overcome it: Your customers dont live in a one-dimensional universe, and neither can your online marketing campaignsYou need to build a presence in as many information channels your customers are involved inHeres the minimum you need for effective online marketing in 2015:Blogs for awareness and thought leadershipStrategically engage on social sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn for awarenessSEO for traffic from self-qualified prospectsEmail for engagement and nurturingLive meetings for businessMeasureIn our recent survey, 94.7% of people said marketing is important, very important, or critical in reaching their goals. What does this statistic mean? Marketing is a key tool that organizations of all sizes have to take seriously because, as 40.4% of our survey participants said, marketing is critical to reaching revenue goals. The myth that marketing is not measurable has been disproven. Knowing what to track is vital to know what works and what needs to change. Here are some practical ways to measure your success across your digital presences and activities:WebsiteWebsite success is something that absolutely must be monitored. Whether its on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, your webpages analytics will often reflect your companys success. Heres what you should be looking at:Visitor CountYour visitor count will be the number of people that visited your page in a given time frame. Specifically, we recommend focusing on unique visitors in other words, someone who is not a repeat visitor from the same computer or session. Lets say you are running a campaign, such as a print adafter publishing it you can begin to look out for a spike of visitors as a metric to determine its effectiveness.5253 Bounce RateA visit becomes a bounce when a visitor only visits one page then leaves your websitegenerally indicating that the person did not find what they were looking for. This isnt always a reflection of your website not having compelling content, but may simply be a miss click. However, dont take that notion to heart and simply brush off this numberyou should make considerable effort to keep everyone that lands on your website as long as possible. Each visitor to your page is an opportunity, and you should not knowingly allow opportunities simply bounce away.ReferralsThis is a bit of a blanket statement; it refers to visitors that were directed from known locations. This can be perhaps through your social media, or through others writing about you and linking to you, etc. If there are instances of a person or page that has created a link that generated a healthy amount of visits, it may be beneficial to create a relationship with them to see if this can continue or at the very least, let them know you appreciate them having mentioned your business.Exit PagesAs the name suggests, these are the pages that a visitor is on before going elsewhere or closing their browser. This is a very context-sensitive metric, so be very careful when making conclusions based on your findings. For instance, if a page with a high exit rate is your checkout page (after a purchase), then that is a good thing. If, on the other hand, you have a flow of pages you want to guide a visitor through and they never reach the final page, you would be interested in seeing where the highest attrition rates are and work to mitigate this. It may not always be a content factor, it may be something as simple as the page not loading correctly or in a timely manner, so be sure to live-test.Additional MetricsAre you an analytics junkie? Need more data? There are so many data points to look at and optimize that you could hire a full-time employee solely to look at all the numbers. Here are some additional metrics that you can take a look at: Number of unique visitorsAverage time spent (on site, and on page), Average page views per visit, Returning visitors, Top landing pages, Most viewed/downloaded content, Top referring URLs, Visitor browser, visitor locations, and visitors using mobile devices, Peak hours of engagement,Heat map analysis. These are just a few extra things you can look at. We recommend starting with the basics before moving on to more complex metrics/analyses.EmailEmail marketing campaigns will require you to be diligent, adaptive, and agile. Youll have to stack as many things in your favor when you send your mail-outs, and get as many aspects of your mail-out optimized, as possible. To do this you have to work closely with the metrics you receive. Email metrics have very straightforward terms and every email marketing service will provide you with these metrics.Bounce rateThe amount of emails returned to you from the server. Bounces are characterized as being either hard or soft depending on how far the email makes it through the server before being returned. Ideally, you want this number to be as low as possible. When you receive bounces you will want to consider removing these contacts from your lists. Having too many bounces may lead to your email service provider blocking you either temporarily or permanently. Bounce rate numbers are a reflection of the soundness of your list.5455 Soft BounceA soft bounce is when the target email address is recognized by the recipients mail server but doesnt make it to their inbox. This could be for a number of reasons and, theoretically, a soft bounce may be deliverable at another time due to a temporarily full inbox, overloaded/offline server, or simply because the email was too large. Because of this, contacts with soft bounces are not usually removed from lists until several repeat soft-bounces have occurred. We recommend not tolerating too many repeat soft-bounces, as errors from bandwidth issues and full mailboxes are generally a thing of the past. What you dont want to happen is to be recognized by the mail servers as a spammer, which will result in being blocked. To avoid being blocked, keep a close eye on them.Hard Bounce A hard bounce occurs when an email did not reach a mailbox for a permanent reason. This could be because the email address or domain does not exist or that the recipient has blocked delivery. All hard bounces should be removed immediately from your mail-out lists (most services will automatically do this for you).Open RateAs the name suggests, this is the number of emails that were opened from your list. This metric can help you understand how compelling and attractive your subject line is when comparing different mailings to the same recipients. This can be in support of a preliminary A/B test before committing the bulk of the mail-out to go to the more successful one. This metric is not entirely accurate because emails do not get marked as opened until the images embedded are receivedand mail providers often block images automatically.Click-through Rate This is the rate at which recipients click links within the email. The click-through rate (CTR) is one of the most telling metrics email marketers use; it helps you understand the number of people engaging with your content. At a deeper level, you can break click-throughs down link-by-link and learn how they are engaging with it (which links & CTAs are performing).Conversion RateThis is the rate at which recipients who have clicked-through on your email have converted. In other words, they have accepted or performed whatever action you asked of them in the email. For instance, asking users to download a new demo, or eBook, or to sign up to attend an event.Unsubscribe RateSimply put, this is the rate at which your recipients opt-out of receiving your emails. This means they will be removed from your list. Naturally, unsubscribes happen every email on large lists at some level. This metric is helpful when considering the growth of your list, and in some cases may suggest an offer may need to be reworked if there is a spike in unsubscribes after a particular offer.Email services like Mail Chimp and Constant Contact provide industry statistics to help you establish benchmarks for your business email marketing.Email Marketing Industry Averages*Open Rate 18.81%Click-Through2.44%Soft Bounce1.30%Hard Bounce1.22%Unsubscribe0.29%*Industry average for Marketing & Advertising email campaigns. Source: Mail-Chimp 5657 Social MediaSocial media is a continuous marathon, and like email, requires constant tweaking and cadence. While social media may arguably and understandably be the most difficult to track, with the right tools you can go so far as to identify leads and assisted conversions with the right tools. As a rule of thumb, use a unique tracking link for each different post to identify where activity is coming from.ReachIn other words, reach is the size of the audience your posts can reach. This can be simply the size of your audience (number of followers,) or this can be expanded to include your maximum potential reach, which also includes the audiences of those who have shared your content. In either case, you can compare the growth of this metric over time and across different types of posts and campaigns, to see how far your message is reaching.ReferralsThese are referrals to your target pages from your own social media activity. Through correctly tracked links you can gain insight into which of your social media activities are driving views to your pages. From there, you can go on to track if they convert on a call to action. You may go a step further and chalk them up as social media assisted leads if their action qualifies them. This is a great way to track the value and Return on Investment (ROI) of your social media.EngagementAcross all social media, there are different ways to engage with the content you post (such as saring, liking, retweeting, commenting, etc.). As your presence grows and you gain a following, keep track of this metric to see how many (as well as which) people are paying attention to you.InvestSome early-stage start-ups may view marketing as a low priority and an unnecessary cost their limited funding cant support. But it shouldnt be viewed in this manner. It should be regarded as an investment back into your company, and not a black hole of uncertainty.Marketing is changing the conversation between organizations and their customers. With all of the advances of different digital marketing channels, marketing now owns the relationship with the customer until he or she is ready to purchase. Marketing is crucial to developing this relationship and will get you that much closer to landing that account or sale. Once you have established goals and metrics to measure success, effectively built your presence across relevant channels, and measured your activity to see what is getting results and what isnt, its time to scale your efforts and optimize your investments. Just continue to track your marketing expenditures and measure your ROI to ensure youre getting the most out of your limited budget.QUESTIONS? #ASKBOOTSTRAP5859 Metrics to Track and Goal Setting WorksheetThe goal of marketing, if done right, is to create new leads and strengthen current leads, which are both measurable. We are often asked, How is social media marketing measurable? and our answer is start with a goal. Like any sales team, they have a quarterly goal. Every three months, set a goal for all your marketing efforts, not just social media. For example, you may set the following goal: by the end of the quarter we will have three hundred Twitter followers, ten leads from a webinar, and reach fifty views per blog.Use the following tables to set goals and track metrics for your social media pages, website and email campaigns. If you hit your goal in month 1 or month 2, set a new goal for the following month.Twitter Goal Month 1 Month 2 Month 3TweetsFollowingFollowersLikes/TweetShares/TweetComments/TweetReach/ImpressionsFacebook Goal Month 1 Month 2 Month 3PostFansLikes/PostShares/PostComments/PostReach/ImpressionsEmail Goal Month 1 Month 2 Month 3List SizeOpensClickedBounceUnsubscribesAbuse 0Google Analytics Goal Month 1 Month 2 Month 3VisitorsUnique VisitorsAvg. Session TimePages Per SessionBounce RateLanding PagesExit PagesTraffc SourceDevices & BrowserQUESTIONS? #ASKBOOTSTRAPBootstrap MarketingTWO!Marketing Build or BuyIs your company faced with the decision of either hiring an in-house marketer or a marketing agency? This can be a difficult decision to make as there are pros and cons to both, and every company and situation will be different. Here are some key considerations before making this critical decision. 6263 How to Know if You Need to Hire a MarketerSales are stagnantThings are not getting doneYou hate marketingYou realize you dont have the skillsSales are complaining there are no good leadsMarketing results are a hit or missYou wonder whats workingYou want to hire an entire marketing team, but dont have the budgetBenefits of Hiring vs. Agency:Agency BenefitsLower Cost Software expertise and licensingHigher skilled personnel-to-cost-ratioLowers internal resource time and investmentMultiple, agency-wide skill setsHiring BenefitsManagement and staff controlTargeted product/service familiarityAccountability to upper managementSoftware controlyou own/license itPerson-specific skill setsQUESTIONS? #ASKBOOTSTRAP6465 Outsourced Marketing ConsiderationsMany organizations find that they lack the in-house expertise, technology or bandwidth to fully execute their marketing plans, so its no surprise to learn that 62% of companies today outsource their content marketing. Outsourcing can certainly provide you with access to highly qualified professionals who can provide the marketing services you require but, in our opinion, you need more than a great freelancer.When choosing an outsourced marketing provider, youre choosing a partner. Your partner should have a work ethic that mirrors yours and should be dedicated to your success. They should maintain a strong breadth and depth of talent, be trained in leading-edge technologies and have a firm grasp of your industry and its best practices.Dont wait until you need help. Invest some time now to learn which outsourced vendors offer the kind of expertise your company requires. That way when the time comes, youll be able to hit the ground running. At Bootstrap, we believe we have the expertise you are looking for and would love to be your partner.But dont take our word for it, see what some of our customers have to say:Its important to partner with world class leaders, like Bootstrap Marketing...and get world class service.-Dan ScheinmanAngel InvestorTrying to get one marketer in-house and imagining that person is going to do all of your marketing, just doesnt work. The most cost effective way is to partner with someone who can bring the different experts in as needed.-Monica PalCMO @ AerospikeEarly on with marketing, its often hard to find the one person to do everything. Being able to use and rely on a network of partners, such as Bootstrap, is an incredible advantage to a young, fast growing start-up.-Eric TileniusCEO @ Blue TalonThe one thing we coach most CEOs is to go get someone with great marketing skills. Either get a firm like Bootstrap, or go get someone that has experience, (is) successful, has some mentorship and get them in the company.-Warren WeisGeneral Partner @ Foundation CapitalBootstrap did a great job to help Treasure Datas initial positioning, messaging and company launch. Now the relationship has evolved, but Bootstrap remains a trusted advisor. -Hiro YoshikawaCEO @ Treasure Data6667 Build vs. Buy ChecklistDo I have the marketing bandwidth or do I have to hire?No matter the type of business youre in, marketing is something you cant survive without, and as an entrepreneur, marketing can be a major drain on time and resources when its not your primary job. Luckily, there are a lot of methods and tools to help you streamline your marketing efforts; however, there will be a time when even these tools wont be able to help get all your marketing done. Its important to understand when youve met your match, as a haphazard approach to marketing will eventually result in stagnant sales and hit or miss leads. Whats the opportunity cost of not having a marketing person on board?Many entrepreneurs have the DIY mentality built into their genes, especially when it comes to marketing. But in todays modern marketing landscape, there are many different elements to develop and execute a successful marketing strategy. And if you dont have considerable marketing experience, all of your time and attention will be on a steep learning curve; forming holes in your marketing strategy. So, instead of calculating if you can afford a marketer, you should focus on how much you are costing yourself in time, money and missed opportunities by trying to do this without a marketer. What type of marketing person do I need? Generalist or specialist?There is a lot to consider when making this decision, and this isnt a simple question to answer. Things you should factor into your decision are: How broad are your business/marketing goals? Do you have the budget to reach those goals?How big is your current team and what are their strengths?Whats the level of competition and how differentiated are you? How senior does this person need to be and what will it cost?If you just need someone to push posts on social media, write the occasional blog and press release, and send out your monthly email campaign, an entry-level marketer is a great option. But if youre looking for someone who can position your company strategically and generate quality marketing leads your sales team is actually excited about, a senior marketer is a better investment.Bootstrap MarketingONE!Ready to Launch?There are many elements that need to be in place when its time for your company to make its grand entrance into the market, so here are some bonus tips and best practices to help you get started.7071 Formulate a PlanThe first stage of preparing to launch is planning. Planning may not be sexy, but for those of us whove been around technology for a while, weve seen how time and time again its the company with the planand the ability to executethat comes out on top, not the company with the coolestor even besttechnology.So what makes up a good plan? First, you must have a pragmatic approach to planning and the ability to set a plan and stay focused on it. So as you start laying out your roadmap, remember these top three planning elements that make up a good plan:RealismClarityFlexibility All of these points are important, but that last one is critical. As the famous philosopher and pugilist Mike Tyson said, Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Not everyone has a plan, but lets pass over that and focus on the essential truth of the statementeven the best plans have to be flexible.Easily said, but what does it really mean? It means that you need a strategic direction and a plan to get you there, but that beyond a six to nine month detailed window, you need to be ready and able to flex the plan in the light of changing market conditions, new opportunities, or new learning.Another critical element of planning, which is not mentioned above is the calendar. The calendar is where the rubber meets the road. You can have a great plan, but if it doesnt map to a realistic and achievable timeline and to the capabilities of available resources, its nothing more than a statement of intent.There are many calendar apps available, but its much easier than that. A simple Excel worksheet remains among the best. Although it wont serve as a project management tool, it will provide the one key thing that management needsan easily understood, one page summary that provides the visibility to know if the project is on track, if more resources are needed, or if something needs to be rescheduled or dropped. An effective calendar is typically monthly and features:ThemesEstablish two or three key themes or messages to permeate all campaigns (e.g. our product is proven, were 100% committed to customer success).CampaignsThese should be topic-based not product-based, because topics and issues not product features, drive customers and especially prospects.ActivitiesThese are the specific elements that make up a campaignan event, a news release, a series of blogs, a customer case study, etc.ResourcesBe realistic and base your plan on available resources, because the lack of resources is the #1 risk to not meeting your planning and calendar goals.Calendars, like plans, can get over-complicated, so keep it simple. If it doesnt fit on one piece of paper, its probably too long. 7273 Tell a Compelling StoryWe recently had the opportunity to coach one of our customer CEOs on two presentationsone for his company launch, one for a major partner event. We started off with an earnest list of professional presentation tips on posture, eye contact, using your hands, good slide disciplineand then we realized that we were totally missing the target.What the CEO needed wasnt presentation tips to make him a slicker, more professional presenter. He needed to tell his story in a way that captured the passion that had led him to found the company, of his belief in his team, and of his conviction that the company was doing something worthwhile and important. So we adjusted our list to the following ten points:Tell the story of your company and how it will change the worldMake it personalInject the energy you feel around your company into the presentationUse a minimal slide-deckpeople want to hear your story, not read slidesWhen you do use a slide, dont read it, interact with itKeep your head up Make eye contactSpeak clearlyUse pauses and gestures for effectRehearse, rehearse, rehearseBuilding Your Prospect ListDo we have enough names in our database? is one of the most common questions we get asked by our customers. It would be nice if there was some algorithm or formula that looked at average deal size, length of sales cycle, number of sales people, etc. and gave you a simple (and accurate) answer to this question. Unfortunately, theres no simple answer. Over time, you can build the knowledge and data to develop a formula that will work for you, but for most early stage companies, if youre asking Do we have enough names? the answer is almost certainly no and the real question is How do we get more names?That is a question that we can, and do, answer every day for our customers. Here are some of the approaches that we use and a few observations about what to expect with each approach:List brokersList brokers are a pretty mixed bag, but the usual rule appliesyou get what you pay for. Pay less than $1 a name? Expect high bounce-rates. Pay $23 a name? Expect decent quality and for the broker to make good on bounces. Pay $5 a name? Expect results.SyndicationContent syndication through the major online publishers is, no surprise, dependent on having good content to get responses. If you have the content this can be a good way to get self-qualified prospects into your system. As with list brokers, work with the best quality publishing companies you can afford and, based on current data, expect to pay $80$120+ per contact.Online advertisingOnline advertising, particularly targeted advertising through LinkedIn Groups, is another aspect of list building thats well worth considering especially 7475 as its relatively inexpensive and you can set a test budget to determine if this approach will work for you.Build it yourselfHere are two suggestions that actually make this one of our preferred options: interns and tools. At any point in the year, there are students or recent grads that want to get work experience, and this is an ideal way for them to get it. Plus it doesnt have to be brain-dead, web-scraping work; there are good tools that help accelerate and refine these projects.Online databasesA couple of years ago, many marketers hoped that databases like Jigsaw (now Data.com) would solve a lot of list building problems. They turned out to be useful, but not a silver bullet. Rule of thumb? Costs will be about 50 cents per name, but buy (or subscribe) at quarter end and you can often get a deal. Based on our recent experience, expect bounce-rates similar to a list from a list broker.SurveysSurveys, whether conducted through syndication, list rental, events, or survey websites, can be good ways to collect valuable data and get people who are interested in the results of the survey to opt-in to your list.Here are three suggestions for better list building:Dont put all your eggs in one basketLike any portfolio play, spread your risk and dont put all your eggs in one basket. Theres no quick answer on how to find the right mix, so commit some budget and experiment to find what works for you.Build earlyIf you know you need a 20,000 name database, get moving because theres no point waiting until Q4 if you need deals in Q4! This is a key asset for your business and it takes time, thought, and effort to build it.No list is perfectNo database, no matter how thoughtfully assembled or how well funded, will be perfect. Even if you could build a perfect database, such is the rate of churn in the IT industry, it wont be perfect for long. List cleaning is part of list ownershipget used to it!Happy list building. As someone once said, its a dirty job, but someones gotta do it!7677 About BootstrapBootstrap Marketing is a full-service, high-tech marketing agency with deep expertise in start-up and high-growth marketing. Our team is made up of experienced software marketing professionals with deep backgrounds in marketing, business development, research, and graphic and website design.Based in San Carlos, CA, we serve companies in Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, including European, Asian and Pacific Rim companies taking their first steps into the U.S. market.We believe that in todays mobile and web-based 24x7 marketing world, ideas and campaigns must be brought to market quickly, and must be agile and adaptable to meet the needs and expectations of todays business consumer. And to do that, we believe you need a smart, fast, responsive, and scalable marketing partnerBootstrap Marketing. Stay ConnectedVisit www.bootstrap-mktg.comFollow @bootstrapmktgJoin the Conversation #ASKBOOTSTRAPBootstrap Marketing1785 San Carlos Ave., Suite 2CSan Carlos, CA 94070+1 (650) 394-4749info@bootstrap-mktg.comBootstrap MarketingBootstrap Marketing1785 San Carlos Ave., Suite 2CSan Carlos, CA 94070+1 (800) 595.4965(650) 394.4749info@bootstrap-mktg.com